Chapter Ten
Jace was laying down when he heard Daphne crying. He tried to ignore it as long as he could. He got up off the couch and went to Merrick’s spare room. He pushed open the door and swore under his breath.
Daphne was sitting up against the headboard wearing panties and a black tank top. Her round, perfect chest made him gnash his teeth and look away. Her husband had to be a complete idiot! The woman was gorgeous. He avoided looking at her amazing legs as he came to sit at the edge of the bed.
“Hey, it’s going to be alright,” he said and reached out to brush the tears from her cheek.
“I want my son, Jace,” she whispered in an anguished voice and began to sob brokenly.
“He’s safe with people who will care for him, Daphne. I know you miss him, but you have to try and concentrate on that.”
“I’m so mad! I remembered some more. I saw a car circling the diner. I knew the car because I saw it outside our apartment before. It was Aaron’s boss!” she told him and cried harder. “He worked at an advertising agency and his boss was the one he cheated with. I told him if he didn’t quit working for her; I was leaving him. He was looking for another job.”
“You think the boss had you killed?”
“She did it, Jace,” Daphne said with a bleak look in her eyes. “She walked up behind me when I was looking for my car keys and she shot me. I saw her standing over me before everything went dark. She didn’t care I wasn’t ever going to see my son again. She wanted that worthless snake of a husband of mine! I would have given him to her to stay with my son.”
“I know, it’s ok Daphne,” Jace replied and brought her to his chest, hugging her and feeling her tremble in the horror of her own murder. He smoothed her hair and held her, realizing it was the last thing he should be doing. This attraction he had for her was bizarre given they were both dead.
“I’m so sorry for crying all over you,” she apologized as she pulled away from him and sat forward, burying her face in her hands, rocking back and forth. “She did it on her own because I was making him quit his job.”
“How do you know?” he asked quietly, his brown eyes meeting her tortured blue ones.
“I don’t know how I know, I just did when I looked up at her,” Daphne recalled and shivered from the memory. “She loved him. She thought if she killed me everything would go back as it was with them.”
“Does it help to know?” Jace asked, hoping it did. He still had no clue why Cameron killed him and suffered with it.
Daphne wiped her tears and smiled sadly. “You know, it does. I understand why now. It didn’t have anything to do with me. She didn’t even know me. She just wanted him.”
“Guess she got her way.”
Daphne shook her head at his words. “No, Aaron slept his way into getting that job but he broke it off with her when I found out about them. I think he used me as the excuse to break off with her. He was seeing someone else when this happened. I found her number in his phone. It was a new woman he was seeing by this time.”
“Your husband sounds like a real jerk,” Jace said and was glad to talk about something else and ignore his growing attraction to Daphne. Just sitting next to her dressed so scantily was reminding him of Merrick’s assurances they could still indulge in certain human functions he refused to think about right now.
“Yeah, but knowing he didn’t have a hand in this gives me hope for Jacob. Can you imagine losing both your parents?”
Jace looked away. Yeah, he could. He lost his ma when he was seven and his pa was never there. You could say he was an orphan when Dawn Turner died. He knew what that felt like. He was glad the baby would have a father in his life and Aaron wouldn’t get carted off to jail to pay for his wife’s murder.
“You know everything now. Just listen to Merrick and hopefully your stay here will be minimal.”
“Tell me about this girl you were going to marry,” Daphne urged. “I’d like to take my mind off all of this.”
“Lindsay? I met her in the eighth grade. I was failing science because I missed too much time at school. She tutored me. Before long she tutored me in everything. That was a hard year for me,” Jace recalled, not wanting to tell her about Evie for some reason he couldn’t explain.
“What does she look like?”
“Lindsay is beautiful and doesn’t even know it yet,” he said wistfully and smiled. “She has big blue eyes and a sweet smile. She’s short but she makes up for it in attitude, trust me. She has blonde hair and it’s naturally wavy. She never leaves it alone though. She’s always coloring it or cutting it. I told her to just leave it alone. When I was thirteen; I fell in love with her at first sight.”
“She sounds like a good girl.”
“She is,” Jace assured her, “and smart too. She wants to be a doctor one day. She picked out the college we were going to. I think she planned our whole life for us. I would have gone along with anything she wanted as much as I loved her.”
“Wait, she picked the college you two were going to?” Daphne asked and frowned. “You didn’t have anything to say about it?”
“I got a full ride from a scholarship funded by our town. I could have gone anywhere and trust me, I had offers from every school in the country.”
“Where would you have wanted to go?” Daphne persisted.
Jace had never given it much thought. Lindsay insisted Georgia Tech was ideal for them both. He never even looked at any of the others. He never thought about how much Lindsay decided things for them until Daphne pointed it out. He was suddenly annoyed, as if she was poking holes in the only perfect thing in his past.
“Well yeah, I had something to say about it,” he said in irritation. “I just didn’t care. I wanted to be with her. I didn’t much care for Georgia. I would have preferred Oklahoma or even Texas. She has an aunt in Savannah she’s close with. She wanted family nearby.”
Daphne nodded and he could see she was coming to her own conclusions that Lindsay ran him. It wasn’t true. He bailed on her and decided not to go for a year to get his affairs in order.
“What were you going to major in?”
“Lindsay said they had a good finance program there. She said that was my best bet.”
“That’s not what I asked you, Jace,” Daphne replied. “I asked you what you wanted to be, not what she recommended you go for. Did you ever think for yourself?”
“You don’t have any right to say that!” Jace snapped and glared at her. “You act like I’m some big dumb jock who does everything my girl says! It wasn’t like that. You don’t know Lindsay. She’s smart and whatever she decided would have been fine with me.”
“That’s my point,” Daphne said sadly and shook her head. “She decided all of it for you. You were just going along for the ride. Did you even want to go to college?”
Jace thought about what he wanted to be when he grew up often and being in finance wasn’t at the top of his list. Rodeo clown was second to a fireman and somewhere on the list he wanted to be a cop.
He always admired Sheriff Wilson. That wasn’t in the plan. Small town cops didn’t go to college and get finance degrees. They went to the police academy in Helena and worked their way up.
Lindsay wanted out of Little Bend and somewhere down the line he realized he wanted to stay and not just because of the kids. His heart wasn’t into going away to a school in Georgia, never had been. He realized it now with Daphne’s clever probing. All along he was doing what Lindsay wanted.
“I wanted to stay in Little Bend near the end. She wanted to get out as long as I knew her,” Jace explained. “She wanted to be a doctor. I would have gone had my dad not been a mess. My brother is only ten and my sister is fourteen. They needed me at home. She assured me the state would find them a nice couple to take care of them so I could go to school. I couldn’t leave them. I told her no. The ring was so she would wait for me. At first she wanted to break up if I didn’t go with her.”
“Ok, now here’s the th
ing I have a problem with,” Daphne said and ignored his glare. “She knew about your family situation and still expected you to leave with her? Then, when you do the right thing; she threatens to break up with you? Where do you guys find these chicks?”
Jace was mad he even told her. “You don’t even know her!”
“I don’t have to know her to see she was a selfish little bitch who only cared about what she wanted,” Daphne stated with shrug. “Who would expect their boyfriend to watch his brother and sister get put in foster care and be alright with that? Come on, that’s family. Sounds like she wanted out and she didn’t consider you at all.”
“She had it rough this last year,” Jace told her angrily. “Her parents split up and everything she knew went out the window.”
“Give me a break, sounds like Princess Lindsay got a rude look at reality,” Daphne snapped. “I’m sorry, but if it had been me I would have stayed. I would have gone to a local school to be with my boyfriend and stick by him. If she’s as smart as you say; what difference did it make where she went to school?”
Jace didn’t know how to answer it without making Lindsay sound worse to Daphne. He was angry she seemed to twist everything to make Lindsay look like a controlling, selfish girlfriend who only thought of herself. Lindsay was not as severe as all that. Sure she made some tough ultimatums the night before he died.
It was the reason he bought the ring. He was going to propose so she wouldn’t break up with him. Hadn’t she already done that? She knew he couldn’t leave. Not him, maybe some other guy, but not him. Yet she forced him to act like that other guy knowing he couldn’t do it.
He was confused now, seeing for the first time Lindsay had to have known he couldn’t just leave. It wasn’t who he was. She knew him better than anybody. He didn’t like the train of his thoughts now or the smug look on Daphne’s face to have pointed it out to him.
“I didn’t say that to hurt you or ruin your perfect image of her and what you had,” she explained in a consoling voice, her blue eyes meeting his in understanding. “I just wanted to know who you are, Jace Turner, who you really are.”
“I’m dead, by the way, so what does any of this matter?” he fumed and tossed her an angry look.
“Because it looks like we’re going to be working together for a while,” she said and smiled, displaying a perfect set of teeth. “Given we get chased by hideous creatures and these Deadheads, I just thought we might want to keep it real, even if we’re dead.”
“That’s fair, I get it, just don’t put her down to me,” Jace warned, his brown eyes sad. “She was the best thing in my whole rotten life. Every guy in school had a crush on her and she loved me! She didn’t care if I was dirt poor. You don’t get it. When you were playing with Barbie dolls; I was changing diapers and taking care of my four year-old sister and a baby. That was my reality at seven, lady. I deserved the dream I had with Lindsay.”
“You wake up from dreams, Jace. They aren’t real,” Daphne said softly.
Jace eyed her in anger and stomped out of her room, so angry he wanted to break something. He went to the fire escape and got his temper under control. What did this Newbie think in showing how flawed and one-sided his relationship was? He didn’t want to hear it, but he knew Daphne spoke the truth.
Everything he had with Lindsay was driven by her and he went with it, never stressing his own wants and needs until his brother and sister’s situation forced the issue. Instead of staying local she threatened to break up with him. It hurt, knowing she wanted her future more than theirs and it was obvious to a stranger, no less.
Maybe he would have figured that out if he’d lived. What good did it do now that he was dead? It didn’t change the fact his killer still walked free and Lindsay was at risk. What about Marnie and the baby? He might even have a kid coming now. Dougie and Sara were alone. Nothing changed that. Death never felt so utterly final until Daphne pointed it out to him how very imperfect his future was had he lived.