The Wish Collector
Page 20

CHAPTER TEN
Clara waited with bated breath for Jonah to speak. Her heart filled her throat, her arms wrapped around her body as he told his story, as he bared his soul, for she knew that’s what he was doing—though she still wasn’t sure whether her final grace would be given from near or from afar.
Jonah had called her brave, and she wasn’t sure why he had that opinion of her, because recently she hadn’t felt courageous at all—just lost and uncertain.
But she was a girl who followed her heart, and she would do so in this case as well. After all, it was her heart that had led her here in the first place. To Windisle. To the weeping wall. To Jonah.
“I was going to the courthouse for something involving a new case that day. I was . . . distracted, tired I guess . . .” His words dwindled away.
She’d heard the same hesitation in his voice when he’d described his feelings about winning the case. He’d been troubled by the outcome, and confused by his ambivalence, or at least that’s what she suspected. But she didn’t want to put words—or feelings—on his tongue, and she didn’t want to assign emotions to him that he hadn’t already assigned to himself. Not just because it wasn’t her job, but because she didn’t want to let him off any hooks of which he didn’t deserve to be let off.
Clara followed her heart, yes, but she wasn’t willing to knowingly be a fool or an enabler.
“I don’t know,” he finally continued. “But anyway, I didn’t notice the news conference until I’d reached the courthouse steps where it was being held. I saw my brother first. He was on the steps listening. He didn’t see me. He was watching Amanda Kershaw who was there with her lawyers and they were answering questions, talking about the grave injustice of Murray Ridgley being acquitted. Amanda looked . . . uh, in shock I guess. She was just . . . staring at the crowd. And then her eyes widened in this way . . .”
He let out a sharp raspy breath. In shock, Clara repeated in her mind. Drugged more likely from what she’d read about the woman’s past. She’d been a drug addict who prostituted for her habit on occasion, though Jonah hadn’t mentioned that just then or when he’d spoken about tearing her apart on the stand, and Clara wondered why.
He had used her weaknesses against her once—from his own mouth—but seemed unwilling to now. Apparently, Jonah Chamberlain was bound and determined to carry every ounce of blame.
“I followed Amanda’s gaze and that’s when I saw him. Murray Ridgley standing at the edge of the small crowd, all the way at the back. Time seemed to . . . slow and I watched him reach for something in his jacket and then it was just . . . gunshots and screams and people scattering everywhere, diving for cover.”
Clara’s throat closed as she pictured that moment in her mind’s eye—the sheer terror, the sudden chaos as Murray Ridgley pulled a gun from his coat and began firing first at Amanda Kershaw and then into the crowd.
Jonah paused for so long that Clara tipped her head toward the wall, listening for his movement, wondering if he was going to continue, sensing his pain even through the thick barrier between them.
“I couldn’t get to him fast enough. People were fleeing, bumping into me. I . . . fell and got up and that’s when I saw the wires going from under his jacket to his pocket. He had a bomb. I ran toward him as fast as I could, but it . . . it wasn’t fast enough. I tried to tackle him, but he was already pushing the button in his pocket and then . . . I don’t remember much after that.”
The silence lingered, thick and heavy like the blood that had surely pooled on the courthouse steps that day. A dreadful blemish that could never be completely removed even when it had been scrubbed away. A stain that would forever remain between the cracks and crevices, in the deep, unseen places that could never ever be reached. Is that what it feels like inside, Jonah? Deep in your soul? “Why did you run toward him instead of running away?”
“What?” Jonah rasped.
“He was shooting. You saw a bomb. Everyone else was diving for cover. Running away. Why did you run toward him? What made you do that?”
“Why? Because . . . I don’t know.”
“Jonah—"
“No, Clara.” She heard him shift, sit up perhaps, gather himself. “I know where your mind is going, and you think far too highly of me if you’re suggesting I was being heroic. It was just a reaction, not a choice. I didn’t even think about it.”
“Maybe that’s what makes it truly heroic.”
He laughed, but it was cold and sharp like the uneven stones that poked at her back causing her to shift in discomfort when they dug too deep. “You want to believe that, but it isn’t true.”
Clara sighed. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but can’t you give yourself a little bit of grace? You made some bad choices and the result . . . well, it’s all so tragic. But you didn’t intend for any of that to happen. You didn’t know. How could you? Murray Ridgley is the true monster of this story. Not you.”
“There can be more than one monster, Clara.” But his tone had softened and there was something in it that hadn’t been there before, though she couldn’t tell exactly what that might be.
Maybe, she thought. Maybe we were all some shade of monstrous given the right circumstances. “You’re not all bad, Jonah,” she whispered. He’d done bad things, but the results had been unintentional, and he’d suffered for them. Still. He let himself suffer for them. He made himself suffer for them. She knew he did. And he’d relentlessly held on to that suffering for eight long years, and from the sounds of it, planned to forever.
“Is anyone?” he asked, and then laughed, an ironic sound she didn’t understand.
“No, perhaps not, but I believe there’s redemption for those who truly want it. Who work to achieve it.”
“Oh, Clara, you’re naïve. There’s no redemption for me. Do you know what happened when I left the hospital? There was a crowd outside, and they yelled and spit on me as Myrtle wheeled me out of the door.”
She had momentarily bristled at being called naïve, but that was quickly replaced with sorrow. Her heart ached and she closed her eyes, hanging her head at the vision his memory evoked in her mind. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you experienced that at a time you must have been in terrible pain. I’m sorry people were cruel to you when you were injured and grief-stricken and in need of love, not judgment.”
“Why? I deserved it. And I accepted it. I was the face of the trial, and I was the face of the carnage later. And what a recognizable face it is.”
“Is that why you stay behind this wall? Because people will see your scars and recognize you? Because you’re worried they’ll be cruel again?”
He was silent for a long moment as though he wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question. “It’s just better this way.”
“I don’t believe that.” Clara wasn’t sure at which point during his telling of the story she’d decided to offer him grace from up close rather than from far away, but she realized very suddenly that whenever it had happened, she had.
The conviction wrapped around her and made her spine straighten as though an invisible cord had somehow been roped around her and connected to him. It pulled tight and she rose onto her knees and turned toward the wall so that her mouth was pressed against one of the whisper-thin gaps. “I believe you deserve grace, Jonah Chamberlain.”
The rough stone was abrasive against the soft skin of her lips but despite that, she pressed even closer, hoping somehow she could breathe that grace through the tiny opening and over to the other side where her broken wish collector sat, despairing and in pain. Alone. “I believe—”
She felt moisture on her cheek and drew back, tipping her head to look up at the rain. But the sky above her was bright blue and cloudless, not a raindrop in sight.
Clara looked at the wall again as more water droplets ran slowly down the stone face. She sucked in a startled breath. It’s weeping! “Jonah,” Clara exclaimed, pressing her palms against the damp rock. “The wall is weeping.”