The Wish Collector
Page 57

Myrtle eyed him suspiciously. “What?”
“I saw Clara leaving the other morning.”
Jonah grinned. He couldn’t help it. It just spilled over his face like sunshine at the mention of her name and because she’d left his bed that morning.
He tried unsuccessfully to wipe it away, clearing his throat and squinting at the ceiling as he tried to distract himself from thoughts of her. “She was, er, visiting. It got late. She was tired.”
“Mm-hmm. I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, Jonah Chamberlain.” Worry creased the lines of her face, and she leaned in close, adjusting her thick glasses. “I heard you leave your room hours before she did.”
“Yeah, so?”
Myrtle reached a hand out tentatively, and Jonah instinctively pulled back, turning the damaged side of his face away from her touch. Shrinking.
Myrtle halted but then brought her fingers slowly closer, the way one might when reaching out to offer solace to an injured animal.
Jonah watched her, unmoving now as she grazed her fingers over his scarred cheek. He released a pent-up breath, closing his eyes at the feel of another person touching that ruined part of him for the first time since he’d left the hospital.
“You have to allow her to love all of you.”
He flinched, turning away, her fingers falling into the empty space he’d created. “What if she can’t?”
“What if she can?”
“I . . . I don’t know, Myrtle. What if she can, but what if I’m still not able to give her the life she deserves?” Jonah turned away, looking out the window at the brightness of the day.
“I have faith in you, my boy. But you already know that. You need to find faith in yourself.”
He turned toward her, the happiness that had flooded through him moments before crumbling to doubt. “Maybe it’s not about me, Myrtle. This town, hell, the world at large, isn’t going to be accepting of me just because I decide to walk out into it.”
“It’s always about you, Jonah. It’s always been about you. The world will react the way the world will react. That’s not your business. You have faith in your own worth and the world won’t matter.”
“I don’t think I know how to do that,” he murmured.
“You do, sweet boy. And if you need a hand to hold, you got old Myrtle. I might walk you right into a tree before I walk you into the world, but I’ll be there by your side.”
Jonah laughed, love for her filling his heart. “Thanks, Myrtle.”
Myrtle nodded on a smile as she picked up the grocery bags she’d brought in along with the mail and began unpacking them.
Jonah took the package, unwrapping the charger and stopping in his room where he plugged Amanda Kershaw’s phone in before putting on his running clothes.
As he ran through the trees, doing his familiar loop among the cabins, peace infused him, a sort of unfamiliar . . . bliss tripping through his system.
He started to recite the names of the victims who’d died that day on the courthouse steps, the lives he’d felt responsible for, for so long, but they kept drifting away from him.
He attempted to catch them at first, to start at the beginning, the first name on the list he’d thought was tattooed on his brain, but he kept losing focus, losing track, a certain . . . peace attempting to claim the space, pushing its way inside as the names floated away.
It almost felt as if those names were living, breathing entities and they wanted to be set free, wanted to disappear into the clouds above, like maybe his holding on had kept them trapped like him.
He’d run this path for so many years with the same syllables chanting through his mind, but now . . . now there was suddenly room for . . . more. There was suddenly so much space, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
What he did know was that he was in love. Desperately, irrevocably in love. Clara, Clara, Clara. Her name echoed through him, and he raised his face to the sun and found the muted rays that had filtered through the breaks in the trees.
Clara. Beautiful, thoughtful Clara. God, Justin would have liked the hell out of her. She was so giving, so determined to right a wrong that actually bore no reference to her own life.
It had all started with her. Everything good that had happened to him in the last few months was because she had shown up at the weeping wall that day.
Yes, he’d fallen in love with her, but even more than that, he’d sought and received forgiveness, done some good for a few people in need, found friends in the members of the Angels.
He was disappointed he wouldn’t be able to patrol with them anymore now that the media was looking to make a story out of him. Unless he . . . Jonah brought his hand to the bare skin of his face, running his palm over his scars . . . unless he found the courage to take the mask off. Maybe.
Again, that tiny yet immense word.
Jonah came to a stop, pushing his sweat-drenched hair back and walking in a slow circle in front of the main door to the manor. He considered the porch, seeing in his mind’s eye a rocking chair and a man sitting upon it, rocking a little girl on his knee. Angelina. Had Robert Chamberlain taught her to read? Or had he allowed her to remain illiterate? Only seen her as a slave girl who happened to share his DNA?
He’d promised Clara he’d dig through the attic to see what he could find. He highly doubted he’d locate a letter dating back to 1861, but he’d check anyway. For her.
Back in his room, there was a green light at the top of the flip phone. Huh. It still held some charge. He opened it, pacing in front of his window as the screen lit up. No passcode. That made things easier. Did these old phones even have passcodes back then? He couldn’t remember.
She had a few text strings and he opened them one at a time. One from her mom. He pictured her blind mother using some speech-to-text feature as she tried to reach her wayward daughter. He’d been thankful when he’d received an update from Neal McMurray, the contractor he’d sent and knew her place was being restored right that very moment, including new furniture and appliances an interior designer Neal had recommended was arranging. Mrs. Kershaw deserved some ease in her life, some comfort.
There was another string from a contact simply listed as “K” and he opened it, scrolling through. There were several “Meet me” and “It’s Thursday. What time will you be here?” and when he got to the top of the string, there was an address. Was that some kind of drug exchange? Or possibly, prostitution services being arranged?
He knew Amanda Kershaw had participated in plenty of unsavory activities for a fix. He’d spoken of them in lurid detail in front of a courtroom of witnesses. He’d seen her shame, her regret. He’d paraded every vile misstep to create reasonable doubt.
I know that some do, but me? No, I never blamed you. You didn’t kill her.
And in any case, from what I hear, you paid your price.
Mrs. Kershaw’s words rushed back to him, flowing over his soul like a balm. Grace. Jonah took a deep breath and opened another thread, drawing away from the phone in shock when he saw his brother’s number. There was no name attached to it, but he knew that number well. It was the one he’d avoided in those last days, sliding decline, as his phone rang over and over. Justin. What the fuck?
The string was short. Justin asked to meet with her several times and that she at least call him back. She never responded via text message. Whether she’d ever called his brother, and for what reason, Jonah had no idea for her call history only went back to the week before she’d died.
Nerves vibrated through him, the feeling that something was wrong, that he’d been left in the dark and finding out why was going to hurt.
“Get a grip,” he said aloud, forcing himself to enter that unattached state he’d adopted so many times when dealing with a disturbing case. “Relax and focus on all the information available to you first.”
Having looked through the text messages, he opened her photo stream, his eyes widening.
For a moment he simply blinked as his mind caught up with what his eyes were looking at. Sex. And lots of it.
He sat on his bed, dragging his finger down the tiny screen, looking at what was obviously Amanda Kershaw herself, with man after man in various sexual positions. It looked as if most of the photos had been snapped discreetly while the men were either in the throes of passion—for lack of a better word—or in a position where they couldn’t see the phone she’d obviously been holding.