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His hands circled my hips. “And you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Tiny flakes of snow had begun to fall the moment we’d left Shepherdstown. It was in the late afternoon, and the chilly air seemed to seep through every crevice in Jase’s Jeep and no matter how high he had the heater cranked, it didn’t get warm enough.
Jase held my hand as we drove in silence. My knuckles were still swollen from when I hit Erik, but the rest of the scrapes and bruises had healed for the most part.
The first couple of nights after Erik had snapped had been the hardest. Thank God Jase had attached himself to my hip, being there when I’d awoken from a nightmare and staying up when I was too antsy to fall back asleep. He’d put those wee hours in the middle of the night to good use, distracting me from the dark memories that lingered from those hours spent with Erik.
I glanced over at him, and my heart did a little flip. He loved me. He was in love with me. My brain still whirled with all the possibilities of what that meant in the long term for us.
Squeezing his hand, I smiled reassuringly when he glanced over. Worry deepened his eyes to a steel gray. When he’d woken up this morning and asked if I’d do this with him before we went over to his parents for Christmas Eve, I’d been shocked but glad that he was taking such a huge step.
“You okay?” I asked.
Locks of brown hair flipped out from the gray knit toboggan. “It feels weird that you’re the one asking me that.”
“True.” From the knee injury to Debbie’s death and Erik’s breakdown, all his concern had been focused on me. “But I’m asking you.”
“I’m . . . I don’t know.” He paused as he turned right, cutting through a gas station. “I’m sad. Confused. Weirdly happy, like I’m proud of myself, and that sounds stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. You should be proud of yourself.”
A quick smile appeared and then vanished. “I guess I’m just feeling everything.”
Which was understandable. It had been years since Kari’s death, but this was a first for him. I squeezed his hand again.
By the time we arrived at the cemetery, a light dusting of snow blanketed the grounds. Based on his parents’ directions, he turned right into the cemetery and followed the curve until the large, bare oak tree came into view.
Kari’s gravesite would be near the tree—five gravesides over to be exact.
He parked on the shoulder. Only then did he pull his hand free to turn off the engine, but he made no move to exit the vehicle. Instead, he stared over, toward the tree. Branches swayed in the gentle wind.
A knot formed in my chest. “You really ready to do this? Because we can do it another time.”
“I’m ready,” he replied quietly after a few moments. “I need to do this.”
I agreed. Jase had moved on, but he hadn’t fully let go. All these years he’d treated Kari’s death like she’d broken up with him. That she was out there somewhere, living a life, and maybe that had helped him get over her loss, but he hadn’t completely come to terms with it. It was why he’d pushed me away after admitting that he’d loved me. I got all that now. It was the fear he’d carried for years of loving someone and losing them.
Several minutes passed and then he nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He opened the car door and a blast of cold air rushed in. I did the same, pulling my gloves out of my pocket as he grabbed the poinsettias we’d picked up at the nearby grocery store on the way to the cemetery.
My boots crunched over the frozen grass and light snow as I joined him on the other side of the Jeep. He stopped and glanced down at me. The uncertainty and vulnerability in his expression tore at my heart. With his free hand, unprotected from the elements, he reached between us. I immediately gave him my gloved hand. Through the wool, the weight of our joined hands seemed to give him strength to move forward.
We were silent as we passed the stones, and I tried not to think of Debbie’s funeral and how Erik had blamed me for her death in front of the entire procession, but it was hard. She was buried here too, but on the other side of the main road.
Cemeteries were supposed to be peaceful, but the stillness—the utter lack of life—always gave me the creeps. Today was different though. As we got near the great oak, I wasn’t thinking of the Night of the Living Dead or the fact there were a whole bunch of bodies under our feet.
I was only thinking about Jase and how hard this was for him.
When Jase suddenly stopped, I knew we were at Kari’s grave. Following his gaze, I drew in a shallow breath.
The gravestone was made of polished, gray marble and the head was shaped in a heart. An angel praying had been engraved in the stone, and below the kneeling figure was the name Kari Ann Tinsmen, and the birth and death dates were unfairly close.
This was her. No face. No body. Her whole life was summed up in the calligraphy below the dates, Loving sister, daughter, and mother, asleep with the angels.
