Proposal (6 page)

 

Doce

“Y
OU DID IT,”
Mark said. “I didn't believe you when you said justice would be served. But you did it.”

He was growing fainter by the second, the paranormal glow around him less and less bright. Part of that was because of the tremendous amount of psychic energy he'd exerted, summoning that storm.

But another, greater part was because he felt ready now. He felt ready to go wherever it was his soul was meant to be.

“I didn't do it,” I said, wrapping an arm around Jesse's waist. “You did, Mark. Zack would never have admitted to any of it if it hadn't been for you scaring the living daylights out of him with that storm. The thing with the French doors? That was very excellently done for a BDP.”

Mark looked confused. “What's BDP?”

“Beginner Deceased Person.” I felt he'd earned the upgrade in title from Non-­Compliant Deceased Person.

“Trust me, Mark,” Jesse said. “You don't want to move past the beginner stage.”

“He's right,” I said. “Although you didn't do so badly yourself tonight, big guy.” I gave Jesse a little squeeze. “You burst in at the perfect time.”

“Timing has always been my forte,” he admitted modestly.

“Everyone did pretty well tonight,” I said. “Even our friends in law enforcement. Heck, even the media.”

“I never thought I'd hear you utter those words,” Jesse said, returning my squeeze with the supportive arm he'd slid around me.

“Well, they did hold back a description of the ring,” I admitted. “Otherwise, Zack could have made a copy and been wearing that, and we'd never have been able to convince anyone what a psycho he is. I mean psycho in a thoroughly diagnostic way, of course, not pejoratively.”

“Of course,” Jesse said.

The ring. The ring. What was it about the ring that was bothering me—­had
been
bothering me—­so much?

“So I guess . . .” Mark had drifted toward the balcony. The temperature had already begun to rise, warming the night air. “I can just move on now, like you said.”

“Well,” I said, following him, gratified that Jesse hadn't released me. I was lucky, he never would. “If there's nothing holding you back. I'm pretty sure Zack's not going to be putting any more flowers on Jasmin's grave, that's for sure. That prosecutor seemed to hate his guts, so I'm guessing he's probably going to charge him with everything in the book. What will probably happen is—­”

“Mark?”

The voice, sweet as nectar, seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

And then I saw her—­just an amorphous glow, at first, like mist rising from the sea. Then she became more solid, the mist shifting into the shape of a beautiful slender girl—­a girl I recognized, because I'd been looking at pictures of her all night.

Jasmin.

“Mark?” she said again, and smiled when she saw him. “Oh, Mark, there you are. I've been looking everywhere for you.”

It didn't matter that she was floating twenty feet in the air, just off Zakaria Farhat's balcony. It didn't matter to Mark, anyway.

When she lifted her slender hand toward him, he raced to take it, floating as lightly as she was. You'd never think he was the same guy who, a few hours before, had very nearly killed me, first by unleashing a meteorological nightmare on me, then by swearing to kill his murderer, and causing that murderer to turn on me.

Well, I'd caused Zack to turn on me, I guess. But it had been for a good cause.

Now Mark was in Jasmin's arms, softly murmuring her name, as she crooned his back. A moment later, there was a celestial burst of light—­their two souls joining as one—­and they both disappeared, together forever, into the afterlife.

“God,” I said, when I was sure they were gone—­and equally sure the tremble in my voice wouldn't betray the fact that I'd been weeping a little as I watched them. “I hate Valentine's Day.”

“I know you do,
querida
.” Jesse took my hand firmly in his own. If he suspected I'd been crying, it didn't show. “Let's go home.”

We were driving past the beach—­the one where he'd planned on proposing to me—­when I finally realized what it was that had been bothering me about the ring.

“Stop the car!” I commanded.

He slammed on the brakes. “What is it? A cat? Did I hit it?”

“No, you didn't hit a cat. Pull over.”

“Susannah, I can't pull over. Can't you see? It says no parking here. We'll get a ticket.”

“Jesse, it's nearly midnight on the night of one of the biggest storms of the century. No one is around. We're not going to get a ticket. Just pull over.”

He parked illegally, then followed me as I leaped from the car and ran to the steps that led down to the beach. “Susannah, I don't think this is a good idea. The tide is very high, and there's no moon. It's—­”

“You have a penlight. Come on.”

“How do you know I have a penlight?” He sounded bemused.

“Because you're a medical student. Hurry.”

He was right about it being dark, of course, and about the tide being high. The waves were still agitated from Mark's storm, though the surf was dying down a little.

Still, there was only the tiniest slice of beach on which to stand, and even then, the wind from the sea was more biting than bracing. There was no possible way to make a bonfire, because all of the driftwood was soaking wet from the rain, and of course we had no picnic basket, because we'd left it—­and the sparkling wine—­back in my dorm room at the Virgin Vault.

But we had privacy. There was no one else anywhere on the beach, because no one else was stupid enough to come near the bay in weather like this, in the middle of the night.

“Susannah,” Jesse said, wrapping his arms around me as the wind whipped my long hair against us both. “What are we doing here? It was much warmer in the car.”

“Aren't you glad you can feel cold, though?” I asked, hugging him back. “You used to not be able to. You used to not be able to feel cold, or hot, or anything.”

“I could still feel, Susannah,” he said, holding me closer. “Just emotions. Not the weather. Which actually there was something to be said for.”

“Where did you get the ring?” I asked.

“What?”

“Where did you get the ring?” I shouted so that he could hear me above the pound of the surf. “Really? I know you said it was your mother's, and before that, it was your grandmother's. But Jesse, I know you came here with nothing. Nothing except the clothes on your back. I was with you. So where did you get the ring?”

He pushed me away from him—­but not because he was angry, which was my first concern, but so that he could look down into my face in what meager light shone onto the beach from the streetlamps on Scenic Drive so high above our heads.

“Is
that
what upset you about my proposing?” he asked, the corners of his lips twisted upwards. “Where I got the ring?”

“I can't understand it,” I said. “I thought we didn't have secrets from one another. Well, not real secrets.” I had secrets, plenty of them, but only the kind that would hurt instead of help. I would take them to my grave—­well, cremation urn—­before I'd tell him about them. I didn't want him to turn into a murderer like Mark had almost been. “Where did you get it?”

“Oh, Susannah,” he said, and pulled me close, then kissed the top of my head. “Why didn't you say so?”

“I'm saying so now. The only ring I know of you owning was the one you gave your last fiancée, Maria.” I didn't like saying the name any more than Mark had liked saying Zack's. “But that was back in the 1800s, and you never got it back, because you ended up here . . . or murdered and a ghost, whichever parallel universe you care to believe is the right one. Unlike my stepbrother David, I don't really enjoy thinking about that kind of thing. Either way, you never ended up with your mother's precious ring.”

“Ah,” he said, and reached into the pocket of his jeans. “But I did. And do you want to know how I did?”

“Not really.” I was feeling sick to my stomach. I wasn't sure if it was from the sight of the ring, having been rammed so hard in the gut by a murderous high school boy, or not having eaten anything since lunch except radishes. “But I guess I asked.”

“Father Dominic found it for sale on something called eBay. There. Are you happy? Now will you marry me?”

I stared at him, aware that my mouth was probably hanging open, but unable to close it. I couldn't do anything, really, but stare at him. “What?”

“EBay,” Jesse repeated. “It's a website where ­people go to buy and sell almost any—­”

“I know what eBay is,” I said. “I just . . . how did . . . how could Father Dom have—­”

“Apparently he goes on there a lot. Father Dominic is very fond of the Internet. And he's been doing searches in my name for some time, looking for items that might have come from my family. He did one not long ago, and the ring popped up. There was a letter with it, too, you see, which is how he knew—­”

“
Letter?
What letter?”

Now he began to look slightly uncomfortable. “It was a letter from my mother to our local parish priest. As you know, my family never knew what happened to me after I . . . disappeared. According to this letter my mother refused to believe the rumors that I'd run off because I didn't want to marry my cousin Maria and had instead gone to seek my fortune in the Gold Rush. My father—­well, I think my father was more inclined to believe the worst of me.”

I winced. Jesse's father had never supported his only son's dream of becoming a physician. He'd wanted Jesse to return from Carmel with Maria, his bride, and take over the family ranch.

But that had never been going to happen in any universe.

“Oh, Jesse,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's all right, actually. My parents got the ring back—­evidently there was some awkwardness over it, since Maria, too, believed she'd been stood up at the altar.”

I winced again. I was the one responsible for Maria being stood up
twice
—­once by Jesse, and then by the guy with whom she was two-­timing Jesse. I'd be glad never to cross paths with
her
again.

“But she acquiesced in the end. And my mother ended up leaving the ring with our parish priest, along with the letter, saying that no matter what the reason for my disappearance, she forgave me. She wanted to make sure I knew that, Susannah. That's why she left the ring—­and the letter—­with the priest, and not my father or any of my sisters. She knew my father would burn the letter, or order my sisters to, as well, if he ever learned of them having it. But he could not order the priest to. The priest would keep it—­and her secret—­forever. And he did—­at least until he, too, died, and the ring and letter passed down through many other priests who kept my mother's secret until at last the diocese folded. Then it must have fallen into the hands of whoever was trying to sell it online . . . and finally into those of one who knew what to do with it, Father Dominic.”

I'd continued to keep my arms wrapped around his waist during the entirety of this speech. But now I simply couldn't stand it anymore. I dropped my arms and took a step away from him, allowing the cold wind to seep in between us.

“No, Jesse,” I said. “No way that story is true. That is just too many coincidences. And you know I hate coincidences. They make no sense, and I hate things that don't make sense.”

“I hate coincidences, too, Susannah.” Jesse set his jaw, but wouldn't let me go. He reached out to grasp both my hands in his, the ring box hard as a stone in one of them against my fingers. “And I'm not particularly fond of miracles, either, except the one that brought you to me. But this isn't a coincidence, and it isn't a miracle, either. It makes perfect sense. And do you want to know why? My mother wrote about it in her letter. She said she knew someday I might lose faith in our family. She knew how much I disliked Maria, and didn't want to marry her, let alone be a rancher for a living instead of a doctor.

“But she also said that she knew the one thing I'd never lose faith in was the church. That's the other reason she left the ring—­and the letter—­with the priest. She said I may have stopped speaking to my family, but I'd never stop speaking to God, and that though I might never come home to her, I'd come back to the church someday. And when I did, I'd find her letter—­and the ring. And she was right, Susannah. I never lost my faith. And through it, I met you.”

My eyes stung. “Jesse,” I said, though my throat was clogged suddenly with so much emotion I could hardly speak. “That's not—­come on. That's not how this happened. I mean,
eBay
.”

His grip on my fingers tightened. A dozen yards away, the Pacific kept up its rhythmic roar, and above us, the stars burned down in a night sky that was as cloudless as if Mark's storm for Jasmin had never happened at all.

“Let me finish,” he said, his hands warm on mine. “After more than one hundred and fifty years of living alone in the darkness, I met you, Susannah, and through you, I met Father Dominic. Everything my mother said in her letter came true. It wasn't the same church, and it wasn't the same priest. But the letter and the ring were there, all because of you. And now I want to give that ring to you.” He opened the ring box and dropped down to one knee before me in the sand. “So will you, Susannah Simon, kindly do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Tears were streaming so thickly from my eyes that I could hardly see. The wind and salt spray whipping my hair across my face weren't helping much, either. I seemed to have picked the worst possible place in the world for a marriage proposal.