The Widow's Watcher

by Eliza Maxwell

  “So what if I am?” Jenna demanded. “I am guilty! I should have been on that plane, but I was relieved, Cass! I was glad you were gone! I should have been with you!”

  Tears were boiling just beneath the surface, struggling to break through and have their way. Her breath was coming faster, her heart beating an erratic, staccato rhythm.

  “And what would that have changed?” Cassie asked softly.

  Jenna covered her mouth with one hand, struggling to hold back the sobs.

  Nothing, she thought. Nothing. And everything. Because then I wouldn’t be left here with holes in my soul, carrying the weight of your love. It’s too heavy, Cassie. It’s too heavy.

  23

  A kind of sickness had taken hold of Jenna. This place, with its cold, false serenity, was getting to her. Chipping away her resolve. Pulling her deeper into its mire.

  Mostly, she was sick of herself.

  “I’ve been sick of you for months,” Cassie said. “You turn everyone’s sympathy away because you don’t need it. No one feels sorrier for you than you do.”

  A key rattled in the door, breaking the chain of spinning thoughts cloaked in Cassie’s disgusted voice.

  Diane Downey pushed her way inside the cabin, bringing remnants of winter weather with her. She stomped her boots on the mat at the door and removed her heavy coat. Bits of snow fell to the ground, where they puddled and died.

  Jenna took a deep breath to calm herself and said quietly, “Hello again.”

  The older woman spun in Jenna’s direction with a hand on her heart.

  “Oh my goodness, that’s the second time you’ve scared me,” Diane said, catching her breath. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

  Jenna forced her expression into bland pleasantry. “You must be dedicated to brave that snow.”

  “Dedicated? To Lars Jorgensen?” Diane laughed and shook her head. “Not exactly. I clean at another house a few miles down the road and realized I left my music behind.”

  She walked over and picked up the small white device and attached headphones sitting on top of the microwave and held them up for Jenna to see.

  Jenna managed a weak smile, but Diane didn’t notice. She’d caught sight of the boxes on the table.

  Jenna hadn’t replaced the lid, and the housekeeper had a clear view of the contents of the second box.

  “What’s this?” she asked. With no attempt to hide her curiosity, Diane walked to the table and picked up the baby rattle that was resting in the box. She turned it slowly in her hand. It made a soft sound, like captured rain.

  But if Lars had wanted his cleaning lady to have access to these personal things, she surely would have seen them before now.

  “I’m not sure if—”

  “These belonged to the little ones,” Diane said, her voice as quiet as a prayer. She placed the rattle back in the box and ran a hand over the other keepsakes.

  “Yes,” Jenna said.

  Diane pulled out one of the two photo albums Jenna had avoided and slowly cracked it open. The pages, made from stiff cardboard covered with transparent film, gave a sticky, peeling sound as Diane forced them apart.

  Jenna stayed where she was, not daring to take a closer look at the images that held the older woman transfixed.

  “A terrible, terrible shame, this was.” Diane flipped the pages. “Those poor babies.”

  The older woman blinked several times, holding back tears.

  “Did you know the family, then?” Jenna asked.

  Diane turned another page and ran a thumb along one of the photos.

  “No,” she replied with a sniff. “By the time I came along, the little mites had been gone for years, Mrs. Jorgensen locked away in the psychiatric hospital.”

  Jenna watched her face, then found the words to ask a question that had been nagging at her. “You don’t like him, do you? Lars?”

  Diane looked up in surprise. She opened her mouth to respond, but whatever she intended to say, perhaps a denial of the obvious, she bit back.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t say I do.”

  Jenna remained silent. After a beat, Diane continued, urged on by an innate desire to fill the gap.

  “He hasn’t always been the way he is now, you know.” She glanced up to meet Jenna’s eyes. “When I first started coming here? Well . . . let’s just say, Lars didn’t have as good a handle on his demons as he does now. I’ve dealt with my fair share of worthless men. My husband, for one. But I needed the work.”

  “It was just Lars and Owen then?” Jenna probed.

  Diane nodded. “Poor sweet boy. Everybody looking through him, past him, forgetting him. Even his own father.”

  Jenna tried to imagine what life must have been like for the boy who’d become the man with the tired face, left behind by everyone he loved.

  In a flash, Jenna’s mind turned against her with a speed so vicious she didn’t have time to brace herself. Owen’s young face became Ethan’s. What would her son have looked like once his cheeks had lost their sweetness? Would he also one day have had a daughter who was too smart for her own good, who wore too much makeup?

  She would never know. Instead, her mind tortured her with a vision of what her angelic son’s face must have looked like after the crash.

  Her baby. Her baby boy. Were they together, Ethan, Matt, and the girls? Did they have time to cling to one another, to comfort and to soothe, or was there only frantic, screaming death?

  Too slow to mount a defense, Jenna caught her breath and folded her arms tightly across her middle, struggling to hold herself together.

  “Excuse me,” she managed to mumble. “I . . . I’ve got to . . .”

  Jenna didn’t finish the sentence, trailing off as she turned and searched for any escape at hand.

  The cabin wasn’t large, and within a few steps, she was standing at the bank of windows. The snowfall was so thick she could barely make out the shape of the lake. Jenna leaned her forehead against the cold glass, then turned her cheek to the pane, trying to cool the burning panic that threatened to consume her.

  “Calm down,” Cassie said.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down.”

  “Are you all right?” Diane asked from a muffled distance that could have been miles.

  “Get it together,” Cassie said in a harder tone.

  “Yes,” Jenna managed. “Just need some air.”

  “You’re sure? Because I need to get going.”

  Oh God, please do, Jenna thought. Go. Just go away.

  “I’m fine,” she said, willing her voice to an even pitch. “Thank you, though.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure,” Diane called. “If I don’t see you again, it was nice to meet you, Ms. Shaw.”

  “You, too, Diane,” she called with false cheer.

  Jenna fumbled with the latch on the window while Diane made her exit. Once the door closed behind the housekeeper, Jenna managed at last to get the window unlocked. She pulled the pane up, and the glacial air slapped her in the face.

  Jenna knelt in front of the window and took long, deep breaths, willing her heartbeat to a steadier rhythm. She counted backward from one hundred, slowly, patiently. Her pulse began to slow.

  It almost worked.

  Then came the distant sound of laughter. Children’s laughter. Her eyes widened and she searched for the source of the sound, but saw little except white falling downward. She had no idea where it was coming from. Worse, she couldn’t be sure it was real and not some figment of her overstressed mind.

  Jenna lurched to her feet and slammed the window closed, shutting out the world again.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said under her breath. “A cab. I’ll call a cab.”

  She stumbled toward the kitchen, toward the phone on the wall.

  “A cab to where?” Cassie asked.

  “To anywhere,” Jenna said. “The next town, the next state. To the other side of the damn world.”

  “You’re being irrational.�
� Cassie mimicked the words Jenna had often spoken to her daughter.

  “Fuck off, Cassie!” Jenna cried.

  “Language. Real classy, Mom.”

  “I’m not your mom!” Jenna yelled, turning in a quick, tight circle and hiding her face in her hands. “I’m no one’s mom anymore! Don’t you get that?”

  Jenna stumbled toward the spare bedroom, practically running. From her daughter’s voice. From the image of her baby boy, his face broken and lifeless.

  Her body bumped along the wall. She burst through the doorway, her eyes open now and searching.

  Scanning the room, her gaze landed on her leather bag, lying on the floor next to the bed.

  She lunged toward it, crumpling to her knees as she did. Her hands were frantic as she dumped the contents onto the rug, too impatient to dig through the dark interior to find what she sought.

  Jenna swept through the leftover remnants of her life. For a moment, she thought it wasn’t there. Her hands grew frenzied. With a distinctive rattle, the pill bottle rolled across the hardwood floor, spinning away from her. She scrabbled after it on her hands and knees as it came to a stop against the wall.

  She grabbed the bottle with both hands, her breathing quick and short. Her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. She fumbled, and a whimper escaped her lips. “No,” she cried.

  With a final, desperate gasp, she managed to twist the childproof cap off the bottle, but her hands were trembling and the pills fell, spilling across the floor.

  Jenna dived after them, reaching for as many as she could gather and raking them back toward her. Nothing existed except the little white saviors.

  I can’t do this anymore was her one clear and coherent thought, and it played on a loop. I can’t do this anymore. Not anymore. Her mantra. Her prayer.

  Boots came into view in the doorway as she gripped the hard, bitter pills in the palms of her hands.

  Lars stood looking down on her.

  “It’s bad manners to kill yourself while you’re a guest in someone’s home.”

  24

  Lars was shaking as he reached into the back of the cupboard and pulled out the dusty bottle of bourbon. He unscrewed the cap and splashed just enough of the dark-amber liquid into a glass. Just enough to smooth his rattled nerves.

  By some small miracle, Lars had managed to avoid a drinking problem after the disappearance of his children. He couldn’t take any credit for that.

  If Francie and Will had been found straightaway, if he’d been able to bury them, to visit their graves and mourn for them in the natural order of things, he would have given his heart and his soul over to drink.

  Most likely, he’d never have come back from it.

  But the not knowing—it had fueled a burning obsession to discover where his children were. It had consumed him, filling his days and nights, his every waking thought, with how he could make things right.

  Too little, too late, as his mother used to say.

  But he’d hoped. For a long time, he’d parceled out that hope, rationing it in trickles and drops to quench his parched heart.

  For far too long.

  If Lars was grateful for a single thing in his pathetic, wasted life, it was that Owen had been strong enough to weather the worst time of both their lives alone. Lars had been no comfort to the boy; he’d barely registered his existence.

  But when Lars had reached the bottom of hope, and the well had finally run dry, Owen was there to pull him up.

  Standing before Jenna on her hands and knees, clutching those pills, he saw a woman at the bottom of her own well, one that was bone dry.

  He threw back the glass, gulping at the fiery burn.

  The look on her face when he’d knelt in front of her and carefully pried her fingers open, taking the last of her hope away . . . it gutted him.

  She’d stared back at him from an empty, cavernous space. He knew that space.

  To be left behind was a terrible burden to bear.

  She’d sat, immobile, her empty hands hanging at her sides, as he collected the pills she’d spilled across the floor.

  A glass of water from the faucet, and he’d given her two of the sleeping pills. He had to place them in her mouth, put the cup to her lips.

  He’d guided her to the bed, knowing sleep would be the only peace she’d find that day.

  He wasn’t a spiritual man. The idea of a higher power controlling things from some amorphous place in the sky would have only given him another target for blame and loathing. He was content to direct that where he knew it belonged.

  Yet as he stood in his empty kitchen with a devastated stranger sleeping though her pain in another room, he couldn’t help but wonder if Jenna had ended up here for a reason.

  With a faulty ticker pointing him toward his finish line, Lars had accepted he’d go to his grave without answers. Without that acceptance, he might as well have booked himself into the room next door to his wife.

  But Jenna Shaw might just be his last chance for a thin slice of redemption. If he could somehow manage to pull her up from the depths, maybe—just maybe—his long, empty years wouldn’t have been for nothing.

  Maybe he was where he was supposed to be. He’d never left this place, refusing to sell the cabin where his children had lived, with some unformed idea he owed it to Audrey, and to Francie and Will, to keep the lights burning.

  He knew they weren’t coming back. He’d known it for years. Even Audrey. She’d die in that place, without any sense of time passing or chances wasted.

  But maybe he could still do some good.

  Lars finished off the bourbon with a final gulp.

  Or maybe, he thought, setting the empty glass on the counter, I’m nothing more than a foolish old man looking for forgiveness at the bottom of the ninth inning, and in the wrong place, at that. More likely, Jenna Shaw had washed up on the shores of his life by chance, and the best thing he could do for her was let her be.

  The woman had clearly made her choice. Who was he to stand in her way?

  25

  “Get up.”

  The words cut through the cloud of sleep. Jenna groaned and rolled over.

  “Get up,” Lars said again.

  The quilt she was buried beneath was stripped away, and Jenna sat up in the bed with a gasp.

  “Wha—”

  Reality crashed in as she remembered where she was, remembered the day before with a hated clarity.

  “I’ve been waiting on you to wake up for an hour.” Lars tossed the quilt across the foot of the bed. “Get dressed. The roads are clear. It’s time to go.”

  Jenna’s heart beat heavily in her chest as Lars walked out of the room.

  She shook her head to dissipate the remaining fog of drug-induced sleep and rose to meet whatever came next.

  This was what she wanted.

  Wasn’t it?

  Shoving away the whisper of doubt, Jenna pushed her hair out of her face and took a deep breath.

  Half an hour later, showered and dressed, she made her way to the truck, where Lars was waiting with the engine running.

  Snow sparkled in the midmorning sun.

  She placed her large leather bag, where she’d stowed everything she owned, including the box containing her family’s ashes, on the floor mat between her feet.

  Lars glanced at it but made no comment.

  When the truck came to the top of the hill, Lars turned the wheel to the right, away from Raven.

  “Owen can keep the van.” It was the first time she’d spoken that morning. “He can sell it, get some sort of return on his time and trouble.”

  Lars wasn’t in a talkative mood. He merely raised a brow in her direction and sent her an inscrutable look.

  She took the hint, and they drove in silence for ten more minutes before she spoke again.

  “I feel like I should thank you for your help, Mr. Jorgensen. Even if I didn’t ask for it, and frankly didn’t want it.”

  “That might be the worst thank you I’ve eve
r heard,” Cassie said.

  Jenna shook her head and tried again. “What I mean is, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for bringing my mess to your door. You’re a good man. A good man to try and help, even if I am a lost cause.”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. Another moment of silence passed before Lars spoke.

  “I was fresh out of the navy when I met Audrey,” he said, surprising her with the abrupt change of subject. “I’d spent two years at sea, give or take, most of it in the galley, cooking minced beef or griddle eggs for a crew of almost two hundred. Audrey was . . . she was dazzling.”

  Jenna turned and watched his profile, drawn in by the words that seemed so out of character. But then, she didn’t know him, Jenna reminded herself.

  “She had something. Something I’d never seen up close. An energy. It lit up everything around her, made it all brighter, including me.” His smile was slow, bittersweet.

  He spoke like a man in a confessional, and a chill traveled up Jenna’s spine, despite the orange jacket that held her body heat close.

  “I guess it was what you’d call a whirlwind romance. Do people still say that?”

  He glanced over, but Jenna shrugged, unsure what her role was supposed to be in this story. His story.

  “We were married within a month,” he said. “I met her mother for the first time on our wedding day.” Lars shook his head. “That should have been my first clue. Mrs. Soderholm—Beverly—I thought she didn’t like me. But her worries didn’t have anything to do with me being a sailor who barely had his land legs back.”

  Jenna was falling under the spell of his words.

  “She tried to warn me,” Lars said, his brows drawn low over his gray eyes. “Sometimes I wonder what might have changed if I’d listened . . . but that kind of regret is a waste of time. By then, it was too late. I was head over heels.”

  Jenna remembered the look on the faces of the young couple in their wedding portrait.

  “When the judge said, ‘For better or worse,’ I agreed quick enough.” Lars pinned her with his piercing gaze. “Nobody tells you how bad the worse can get.”

  “No,” Jenna whispered, thinking of the phone call that had shattered her happily ever after. “No, they don’t.”