Chapter Nineteen
James stiffened at my side, and I offered my father a trembling smile—one that didn’t last and had to look as nervous as it felt. Two heartbeats later, he pulled me into an embrace I didn’t immediately return.
“I’ve been so worried about you.” He sighed with relief into my hair. “Why haven’t you called me back?”
“A lot has happened. Things I can’t explain right now.” I stepped away, and when I turned to James, his dark eyes were confused and maybe even a little hurt.
“Why didn’t you tell me this was your father’s house?” he asked, keeping his attention focused on me.
I don’t know why I didn’t tell him. I’d thought about it the entire drive back, but somehow voicing the fact that I’d grown up in the house where Nino Roselli was murdered, where I was murdered in another life, was inconceivable. I was still having a difficult time understanding it myself.
I nodded. “I didn’t know how to tell you.” I clasped my hands and twisted my fingers.
“Did you grow up here?”
“Yes.”
My father stepped between us. “I’m sorry. We haven’t met.”
James ripped his gaze from mine and focused on my father for the first time. He straightened and extended his hand. “James Kingsley, sir. I’m Abby’s…” He looked to me and raised his brows.
“Friend,” I finished keeping my eyes trained on James. I saw the skin around his eyes tighten as he clasped my father’s hand. “We have art history together.”
“Nice to meet you,” my father said.
When they dropped their hands, I walked through the small entry and into the kitchen. Turning in a circle, I studied the home’s structure, trying to see beyond the more recent renovations. “Can you tell me what you know about the house? From before we moved in.”
My father looked confused. “What’s going on, Abigail?”
“There’s something here—something we need to find. Do you know when the house was originally built?”
My father’s brows rose. “The entire back end of the house was built in 1956, I believe. The master suite was built in ’92.”
“What about the original structure?”
“Well…” He moved to the left of the kitchen and into the family room. “The house was originally built in 1920, but that only included the entry, front living, part of the kitchen and the two side bedrooms there.” He pointed to the small hallway just off the main living area.
I moved without hesitation and opened the door to my childhood bedroom. It was exactly as I’d left it when I’d moved out four years ago. It was small, square, and held a medium sized window that faced the side yard. My bed, still covered in the light pink quilt my grandmother had made, sat to my left and a dresser from my mother’s youth to my right.
I ran my hand along the soft cotton bedding and turned to face the opposite wall. My insides twisted with nervous anticipation. The necklace was here, I could feel it. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I closed my eyes. Voices hummed with hushed promises and secrets worth dying for. I breathed, heavy and full, and for a moment, I could smell a faint hint of tobacco.
“I can’t believe it’s been here this entire time,” I said to James.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
I nodded knowing exactly where the necklace was hidden. “Remember that story I told you? The one about the ghost I thought lived in my room?”
James nodded. “You think that had something to do with your drift?”
“I would bet on it.” An oversize rug covered most of the floor in my bedroom. “We’re going to have to roll back the rug before we pull up the boards underneath,” I said.
“Now you wait just a minute,” my father said. “I haven’t heard from you in days, you’re ignoring my calls.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “And he knows? He knows about your drift?”
I shrugged. “Daddy…” His eyes widened and demanded an explanation. “He’s a part of it. A part of me.” At the end, my voice was a whisper. James stepped to my side and took my hand. “We’re in this together.”
My father’s face went slack, and I floundered for something to say. I wanted to assure him, to let him know everything was going to be okay, but I couldn’t.
“I’m worried. You have to know how worried I am.” His arms hung limp at his sides, and panic creased the edges of his eyes. “When your mother first—when she started drifting—she started disappearing for hours, then days at a time.” The rest of his words were caught in his throat. He swallowed and his chin trembled.
“I’m not Mom.” I wanted to walk to him, to slip my arms around his waist and let him hug me, but I couldn’t. “You’re going to have to trust me. Trust us. We’re taking care of it. We’re going to stop it,” I told him.
“You can’t stop it. Believe me, I tried everything with your mother. If there were a way to end it, I’d have saved her.” His lips turned down and his chin crinkled up.
“I know you would’ve, but what I’m dealing with…” I motioned to James. “What we’re dealing with goes beyond seeing my past. Daddy, it’s repeating. History, our history, is repeating, and the key to stopping it is here.”
I’d never seen my father look so sad. The way his shoulders slumped, the way his face sagged under the weight of sorrow—he was hurting. He turned toward the door.
“Dad,” I said. He paused and glanced over his shoulder. The corners of his mouth were pressed into a frown, and tears glistened in his grey eyes.
“You sound just like her.” A tear fell from the corner of his eye before he walked out. For several seconds, all I could do was stare at the hole he left. Moments later the front door closed, and I heard his car start. He was leaving.
I took two steps toward the door, ready to go after him, when James spoke. “Abby, we need to find the necklace.” His words were gentle and quiet.
“Right.” I couldn’t think about my father, or the pain I’d caused. We needed to get what we came for. I pointed to the floor. “The boards creak there. About a foot from the wall.”
James stepped where I’d pointed, and the floor whined. We moved together, immediately picking up the edge of the heavy wool rug.
“You’re going to need to push the dresser to the right,” I told him as I rolled the rug back. James did as I asked, and when the floor was bare, we stared at the old wood planks that held scuffs and scars from a hundred years of wear.
I took a tentative step forward and toed the area that creaked, listening to what was obviously a hollow area underneath. James pulled a knife from his pocket and simultaneously flipped the blade open. He traced the edges of a wood slat until he was able to get enough purchase to pop the board from its place. I dropped to his side and peered down but saw nothing other than a blank space filled with bits of dirt and dust.
A vacancy settled where hope had lain. “It has to be here,” I said, sticking my hand into the newly opened hole.
“Hang on,” James said as he removed the neighboring boards. When he pulled up the third, I saw a wadded up piece of fabric. Nervous excitement pounded in my ears.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. I couldn’t control the tremble of my hand as I wrapped my fingers around the ball of cloth. When my fist closed, the fabric compressed inside my palm as if I held nothing at all. A heavy sigh fell from my lungs, and my racing heart jarred to a halt. “The necklace isn’t here.”
I pulled my hand from the hollowed space in the floor.
“What is that?” James asked.
I turned the bundle over. I didn’t have to examine it to know what I held, and the sick feeling in my stomach only intensified when I saw a single embroidered letter. I ran my thumb over the dense stitching and sat back on my heels.
“Abby?” James asked.
“The necklace was wrapped in this handkerchief. It was here.”
“Where could it have gone?” James’s hand swept the hollow space again, but came up empty.
“I don’t know, but—” I pulled the handkerchief Evelyn had given me from my pocket and turned it to reveal the embroidered letter B. “This letter. They’re the same.”
James stared at the blood stained handkerchief. “Evelyn had said it was her father’s.”
“You know what this means?” I looked up at James. “We were right.”
“Thomas was Evelyn’s father, but Valentina never told her.”
I held up the handkerchief. “But she gave her this and told her it was her father’s.”
He pulled it from my hand. “Bastone and Bellingham. With no other indicators, Evelyn wouldn’t have any reason not to believe it belonged to her mother’s husband.”
James shook the handkerchief to better see the embroidery, and when the fabric unfolded, something rolled out and hit the floor with a light clink. It bounced once and stilled at James’s feet.
He bent and picked up the fallen item. Holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he stood. Neither of us moved as we stared at the diamond ring glittering under the overhead light.
“Abby, this ring,” James said. “My drawings—it’s the same.” He examined the ring and turned it over several times, examining it from every angle. “There’s an inscription,” he said, bringing it closer to his face. “Yours, for all of time,” he read, and when he looked up, his eyes burned through me.
The words, an echo from our past, came back in a rush. Glimpses of that night shuffled and replayed: the party, the hotel, the laughter, James’s whisper as he leaned against my ear, and those words. They were the last words James spoke before we saw Thomas. I stepped away from James, needing space to help clear the uneasiness swirling in my gut.
For all of time.
Yours, for all of time.
I heard it over and over and over. I saw his eyes, James’s eyes, dark and impossible. I saw him place his hand over his breast. I saw his nervous smile.
“Abby?” I jumped at the sound of his voice. “What’s wrong?”
I stared at the floor, trying to understand what was happening. “That inscription, you said that to me. That night, before we saw Thomas, I think you were going to propose. I mean, I don’t know for sure, since you never did, but you reached for your pocket. The one inside your jacket.” I shook my head and fought the tightening in my throat. “You said, ‘I’m yours, for all of time.’”
I couldn’t finish my thought. It’s like I’d jumped off a cliff, and everything I wanted to say scattered in the wind.
“But I didn’t propose,” James said, removing the space between us. His body, too big for my small bedroom, crowded me. But instead of feeling suffocated, I felt charged up and alive, and the fatigue from the last twenty-four hours vanished.
I shook my head. “No. You saw Thomas. You never got the chance.”
My stomach fluttered, and a shiver spun from my center. James lifted his hand, his fingers opened, and in his palm sat the diamond ring I knew in my heart had originally belonged to him. This was the ring he’d meant to give me, but instead, Colin did.
“If I never gave it to you, how’d you end up wearing it?”
“I can only guess, but the night you died, Colin was looking for the necklace. He probably searched your body. He must have taken it.”
I placed my hand on top of his, and James interlaced our fingers with the ring caught between our palms.
“Why did everything have to go so wrong?” I asked as I placed my other hand over his heart, where I knew the bullet that ended his life had made a scar on his soul.
James pulled me into his arms. “I don’t know, but that was then, and we have another chance now.” His lips trailed across my cheek where he pressed his lips against the base of my ear. My head dropped to the side, hoping for more, but instead of the warmth of his breath, I only felt the chill of the air.
I opened my eyes. James pulled back. His eyes were hooded, his lips slightly parted. He lifted the ring and spun it around his pinky before he ran his fingers through my hair. Fisting his hand at my nape, he gently pulled, urging my head up until our eyes locked. I could see the storm brewing, the whirling emotions that said everything and nothing.
“You have no idea how long I wished for you.”
The corner of my mouth lifted in a smile. “When I was just a painting.”
His heavy brows, black as night, pulled together. “You were always more than a painting.” He released my hair and his hands palmed my cheeks. “You saved me.”
He opened his mouth to say more, but ended up sucking in a nervous breath. He licked his lips, struggled again for words, and closed his eyes.
“You asked me why I painted you.”
I nodded, hanging on every word.
“That night that I came home to find my house on fire, I told you, I didn’t think. I just went in, knowing I needed to find my mother, to save her. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, and when my clothes caught on fire—the pain was unimaginable.” He swallowed and his eyes searched mine, memorizing. “I blacked out. The pain was gone. I don’t remember anything except—” His voice faded and his hands fell to my neck. “I heard this voice, a woman’s voice, talking to me. I thought maybe it was my mother, but the tone wasn’t right. The woman was crying and begging me to wake up. When I opened my eyes, I saw her—I saw you—kneeling over me, but I wasn’t inside the fire. I was somewhere else, outside and lying on the pavement. I never understood it before.”
“You were drifting,” I said. “Have you since?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I would’ve experienced that had the fire never happened,” he whispered. “And I don’t think I would’ve survived had you not been there to see me back.”
“What do you mean?”
“My recovery was difficult and painful. Sometimes I wished I’d died, but every time I did, I remembered you begging me to come back, and on some level, I didn’t want to let you down. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
I pulled back. “Yes, you could’ve. That image of me had nothing to do with your survival. You survived because you’re strong. Don’t diminish it by giving me any kind of credit.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, his eyes wistful. “You gave me a reason to fight.”
James wrapped his arms around me, and his hands ran the length of my back, through my hair, and down my arms. He bent and lifted me from my feet, our eyes level and unflinching. I traced the line of his jaw, loving the way the coarse stubble scratched my fingertips.
“For all of time.”
“For all of time,” he repeated.
When he set me back on my feet, our lips fell together with a fire that threatened to burn me from the inside out. The blood thrummed loud in my ears, like ocean waves crashing against the beach, and I felt the pull of my drift. Pressing against his shoulders, I turned my face away, hoping the break in contact would keep me here.
“No,” I said as I sat on the edge of my bed. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to hold on to the parts of me that were desperately trying to slip away.
“Abby?” But it was too late. I could already smell the salty air. I could feel the warm water lapping against my legs. I could see the sky, an endless and cloudless blue.
I opened my eyes, wide and searching, and for a moment, I came back. James was kneeling in front of me, and I grabbed his face in my hands as his image began to fade. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I love you.”
James’s lips parted, and he screamed my name, but all I heard was the call of the ocean.