When he’d settled her, she felt his heat warm her and looked up at him.
“I don’t remember anything else, Jack. Not one second of it. The kids come and see me at the shop, sometimes at my cottage. Their parents bring them. They act like I’m some kind of superhero. They bring me gifts, some of it silly stuff, like stickers. Sometimes it’s cakes their mums make. In the beginning, I didn’t remember a single face. It was like someone else had done it and I was impersonating her.” Belle stopped talking and when Jack didn’t reply, she continued, “Now, of course, I know them, all of them.”
“Post-traumatic stress, poppet,” he murmured, giving her a squeeze.
Belle tucked her forehead into his neck. “That’s what the counsellor said.” She moved so she could wrap her arms around his middle and then whispered, “The bus driver told me,” she stopped and added, “his name is Bob, by the way, and he comes to visit me too.”
“I bet he does,” Jack muttered and Belle went on as if he didn’t speak.
“Bob told me that the bus was filled with water at the end. He was the last live person I pulled out. The window he’d opened to get the kids out had filled the bus with water. He knew I was getting tired. I was too cold. I was slowing down. He was injured in the crash, dislocated his shoulder. So were some of the kids, bouncing around in that bus. Two of them were trapped. He couldn’t get them loose before I got him out. Though he tried. Nearly drowned doing it. He didn’t want me to keep going back knowing the bus had been filled, knowing those kids were trapped.” She stopped and swallowed. “But I did. I don’t remember it. I don’t know how I did it but I pulled out the dead kids.” Belle took in a shattered breath and said in a trembling voice, “Davey and Penny, they were called.”
Jack’s arms got so tight, they took her breath and he ordered, “Stop talking, Belle. Just stop.”
She squeezed her eyes tight, pushed closer to Jack’s warmth and breathed, “I don’t want to remember, Jack. Never. I never ever want to remember.”
“No one’s making you remember, poppet,” Jack said softly.
“I know,” she whispered.
“What you did was extraordinary. You couldn’t have done any more,” Jack told her.
“I know,” Belle repeated.
“Clear your mind, love,” Jack advised.
She nodded against his neck and pressed even tighter to him, feeling his arms do the same.
She took in a ragged breath and asked, “Do you think we could do anything for Myrtle and Lewis?”
She felt Jack’s body go solid under hers then it started shaking.
Her head lifted and she looked at his shadowy face.
“Jack?” she called then heard his chuckle and it was her turn to go solid. “What’s funny now?”
“Poppet, you just shared an inspirational but unbelievably terrifying story considering it was you who did what you said you did. I love that you’re the kind of person who would do something like that. What I don’t love is the thought of you giving yourself hypothermia and likely nearly drowning while saving a busload of kids, no matter how heroic. I also don’t like the trauma you have to endure when you think of it. Therefore, after witnessing that trauma less than a minute ago, I’m not overly enthusiastic that you’re willing to throw yourself into another heroic endeavour to save the souls of two nonexistent ghosts.”
She pulled away slightly and looked in the direction of his face. “I doubt it would be dangerous.”
“Belle, they don’t exist,” Jack retorted with what she could tell was waning, if amused, patience.
“I saw them. Mom saw them. Joy’s been seeing them for years!” Belle reminded him kind of loudly.
“No offense, love, but you’re a little emotional at the moment and our mothers aren’t exactly the kind of women who live lives ruled by logic and reason.”
Belle’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying I saw two ghosts, ghosts many others have seen before me, because of hormones?”
She heard his chuckle again and went solid at it again before he said, “No, I’m saying a lot has happened to you, some of it you just shared with me and that you’re willing to believe in something in order to keep your mind off something else that distresses you.”
“So, you’re saying I’m seeing ghosts because of post-traumatic stress?”
“Perhaps.”
“So what about everyone else who has seen them?”
“Poppet, the story of the murders of Joshua Bennett’s family is famous. The resultant whisperings of the ghosts of his children haunting this castle is just as well-known. You might not remember having heard them but you likely have. Myrtle and Lewis are lore in this area of Cornwall. Your mother, likely the same. My mother, definitely the same. She knew of them before she moved into the castle after she married Dad.”
Belle found she was aggravated, not shy, not retiring, not meek, nor mild but straight out annoyed.