“Mom likes your behind,” Belle blurted, caught up in a moment of relaxed sharing, she didn’t think to censor her words and she felt the heat hit her cheeks, glad, for once, that Jack couldn’t see it.
“I think I could have died without learning that information,” Jack returned and Belle instantly wished for magical powers to turn back time but Jack’s legs pressed against hers for a moment before they relaxed. He went on in his low and rumbly tone, “Even so, my love, there’s never anything you can’t share with me, no matter if I don’t want to hear it.”
Belle swallowed and looked out the window.
“Belle,” he called. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” she told the window.
If this was true (and, considering he’d used his low and rumbly voice, it had to be), she could tell him about Calvin and she could tell him about her desire to help Myrtle and Lewis.
It would be a risk but she had to learn to take them no matter how much they frightened her.
Not only for herself but also for their child and finally, she suspected, for Jack.
She turned to face him and announced, “I’m worried about Myrtle and Lewis.”
She felt his eyes on her, the trill went up her spine straight to her scalp but he didn’t speak for a moment.
Finally, he did.
“I guessed that would happen.”
“You did?”
“Poppet, you dove into the freezing sea to save a busload of school children. It isn’t a fantastic leap to guess you’d want to release two child ghosts to heaven,” he replied.
“It’s not the same,” she returned.
“It’s not?” he asked.
“No,” Belle answered.
“How is it not the same?”
She shook her head and looked back to the storm. “It’s just not. That day, with the school bus, I didn’t think. It wasn’t like I watched it happen and I thought, ‘Here I come to save the day.’ I didn’t think at all. If I did, I would never have done it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and for some reason she kept sharing, “I don’t even remember most of it.”
She hadn’t spoken of this to anyone save her Mom and Gram, of course, and the counsellor she had to see when she’d stopped sleeping.
Other than that, she hadn’t spoken of it to anyone.
Not once.
Even though lots of people had asked, she’d never uttered a word.
His voice had gentled considerably when he asked, “You don’t remember it?”
Belle shook her head again and kept her gaze at the window.
“I remember stopping, getting out of the car and climbing over the railing, standing at the side of the bridge, staring into the sea, watching the bus sink.” She felt his body go still and the air in the room went instantly thick but she just kept talking, “Then I remember diving in like it was a swimming pool not the November sea. It was freezing cold, instantly chilled to the bone cold and I felt bits in the sea hitting my body as I swam down. I don’t even know what those bits were but I do know they scared the heck out of me.”
She gave a shudder and his legs pressed hers again and, still, she kept going, thinking bizarrely that Jack needed to know this. In fact, or some reason, she thought he deserved to know it.
“I had to open my eyes and it was dark, murky. I could see the bus. The water was somewhat shallow so it wasn’t that far. Far enough to submerge the bus, though, and fast, weirdly fast. It had fallen on its side, the wrong side. The door was against the sea floor, the back doors wedged against a rock. There was air in the bus, I saw the kids banging on the windows, the bus driver frantically trying to open them.” Her voice dropped to a horrified whisper, “It was hideous, the sea felt like it was saturated with their fear.”
At this, Jack apparently had enough of giving her space.
He leaned forward, put his hands to her waist and pulled her to him, twisting her and dropping his knees so she was cradled in his lap, his arms tight around her.