A Lesson in Love and Murder (33 page)

She swallowed. “Mrs. Malone,” she called, even as Jasper's eyes implored her. It would have been easier if he had plunged a knife into her chest. “Please show Constable Forth out.”

Jem wondered why the stars didn't fall from their heavens around her. For she was safe and he was safe, and they were back in the city that seemed safer somehow, maybe because it was their own.

Jem interlaced her fingers with Ray's. He was going to go to the
Hog
and start typing up an adventure in Chicago. She was going to revel in Mrs. Malone's cooking. Jasper had orchestrated Viola and Luca's transportation back to Toronto, and they were currently settled in with his mother. “You need to stop thinking that you failed Viola and Luca the way your father failed you and your mother.”

Ray's ear thrummed. “I don't want you to make me feel better about this. There is nothing you can say, Jemima. I murdered him.”

“Viola and Luca would not have survived without you,” Jem said adamantly. “Her situation is not a result of your inability to care for her, and it kills you. But it isn't your fault. And it's not our story.”

“Jemima, please… ”

“We have a lot more hope.” She gripped his hand more tightly. “Your unbelievable devotion and care for your sister and Luca is part of the reason I fell so hopelessly in love with you.” She sniffed. “If you
could see yourself in my eyes for but a moment, you would never doubt yourself again.”

But he wondered if it would be a matter of moments until she focused on what he had done. How it would follow them forever. Maybe someday she would shirk away, untwine her fingers, and that passionate, hopeful faith in her eyes would be replaced by disappointment.

For now, Ray kept his right fist clenched, trying to wring out the memory of the act it had committed. Jem put her hand over his and grasped tightly. Her feet were solidly on the ground, her shimmery eyes on his face.
Feet on the ground. Eyes on the stars.
This didn't look like a girl who was one step away from turning and leaving him. This looked like a girl who would face it all head-on.

Ray cleared his throat. “The whole of my life is playing before me, Jem. And in that lifetime, Tony was a close friend of mine. We fished together and played jacks by the creek. We talked about the great, green land that is Canada, and we booked our passage. I watched him flirt with my little sister. Tony is…
was
Luca's father.”

They stopped silently under a streetlight. Jem made out the contours of Ray's face clearly, and it was tired and worn and rimmed with worry. She wanted to swipe her palm over it and iron out every crease.

Ray's eyes glistened. “She hates me. I was supposed to protect her and make sure she was safe and happy, and she hates me. She threatens to go back to Italy. That treacherous passage. We barely made it the first time. And Luca… ”

Jem nodded.

“I killed my childhood friend and broke Vi's heart and left little Luca without a father. A poor father is better than no father, Jemima. I would know.”

“She'll see, Ray. Someday she'll see, and the pain will turn into a dull ache, and she will realize that Luca needs you. That she needs you.” Jem set her chin. “I promise you that this anger and hurt is as much her grief over a man who was lost to her years ago as the act that ended his life.”

Ray felt a slight lightening in his heart. “Do you think so?”

“I
know
so. In the meantime, you will miss her and Luca. But you will write and you will visit no matter how many times she slams the door in your face, no matter how many tearstained letters she sends back. No matter the silence. You'll pursue her. And I'll be there. Always. Thinking of presents for Luca and picking and pressing little flowers for you to send in your notes.”

A moment later, Jem's fingers closed around a cold circle Ray had pressed into her palm.

“Quite shockingly,” he said with a wink at her under the halo of streetlight, “the pawnbroker on Michigan Avenue hadn't found anyone to sell it to.”

Jem pressed it to her heart. “I love this rusty old watch,” she said with a lilt in her voice, and she leaned up lightly to kiss him on the cheek. But he had another idea and circled his arms around her waist. His hand didn't shake when he was embracing her. So, he thought, brushing his lips over her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose, and then her slightly parted lips, he'd just have to do it more often.

E
PILOGUE

J
em gave Mrs. Malone a quick peck on the cheek.

“It is truly wonderful to see you,” she said as her dear old landlady's face brightened.

Merinda's face was flushed and her eyes bright as she called for coffee.

“You kissed him!” Jem said, feeling a jolt of exuberance pass between them. It was something new, of course, and something strange and something that evidently made Merinda visibly uneasy no matter how hard she tried to shield her face from uncertainty and straighten her shoulders.

And things had changed. Merinda might try to tie them up with an invisible string and keep them, but her world was fraying even as everything seemed the same.

The cookies and the tea.

The bellows for Turkish coffee.

The fanned-out newspapers, the chalk from their board on her fingertips.

But a force was pulling Jem away to her own sphere. A corner of which would, of course, always have room for a radical woman with blonde hair and a Cheshire cat grin. The same blonde girl who was blushing to high heaven and shrugging out of her bold exterior. The same blonde girl who now was prone to vulnerably talk about the man she could almost see herself following as far as the northern lights and into the cloak of the unknown.

While Jem couldn't keep her heart from racing at the sheer surprise of it all, Merinda was surprisingly buoyant and enraptured. “Yes!
I almost followed him! I almost did, Jemima!” Merinda flung her arms out dramatically. “But so much of myself is here.” She motioned about her, taking the King Street townhouse, its stories and secrets, and subsequently all of Toronto in her embrace. “I need to be here. I like to think that here needs me too.”

“Promise me, Jem,” Merinda said after the clock ticked away a few silent moments.
*

“Promise what?”

“I want you to swear we'll never be like these men. Benny and Jonathan, Ray and Tony. Growing apart.”

“Of course we won't be!” Jem said. “How could you think that?”

“Friendship is a kind of power balance,” Merinda said, studying Jem.

“Merinda, you are making very little sense.”

“It requires being completely, selfishly happy for someone even if they step ahead and leave you behind.”

“I'm not leaving you behind, Merinda.”

“All I have heard from DeLuca and from Benny are strings of how they thought things would turn out differently. How if they had only said one thing or done another… if they could turn back the clock. Jem, that won't be us. It can't be us.”

“How are you frightened of something that hasn't shown the slightest sign of happening?”

“Besides, we are narrowing in on our Moriarty,” Merinda said. “Just as you are going to be at home raising babies.”

“Tertius Montague.” Jem couldn't keep disdain from shadowing her voice, adhering to the first part of Merinda's sentence and not the latter.

It appeased her friend. Merinda prattled on about the mayor and the puppet strings that kept his marionettes bouncing. If he had a connection to these bombs and explosives, who could they trust?
Where were their allies? There was a tarnished surface on their glistening city.

Jem half listened, watching shadows web through the rustling curtains as the breeze funneling through the open window flounced them. She took an old, tarnished watch from her pocket. Its familiar tick was as natural to her as a heartbeat. Its circumference and chain as familiar to her as her own skin. It tingled memories across the sensors in Jem's fingers as she gently pried it open. She knew its interior too, its face and composition. On the right, an assuredly ticking watch face, and on the left, a photograph of Viola and Luca, one that never quite fit the watch's circumference. This photograph, this past that Ray had kept close to his heart, was impressed in Jem's memory. It was a token transferred when he used the selfsame gift in their harried proposal, transferring his faith and hope for their future to her waiting hand.

Now the picture was gone. In its stead was a picture of Jem—a shot from one of their first features in the
Hog
. The night of the election benefit, she recalled, recognizing the scalloped collar of her dress and the costume pearls she had secured from the trunk in Merinda's attic.

She snapped the watch shut with a smile. She unconsciously slid a hand over her midsection, wondering if she had felt a slight flutter.

“You're quiet, Jemima,” Merinda said from her chair by the hearth.

“I'm fine,” she replied, matching Merinda's tone even as her heart somersaulted. “And you?” She studied her friend in the waning light.

“Of course.” Merinda was hiding something in her voice that was half elated and half longing, with just a dusting of worry over its resolve. “I'm always fine.”

Jem lowered into the chair opposite her friend. “Of course.” She smiled at Merinda with all of her might, feeling that flutter again and the watch ticking in her breast pocket and the smile stretching lips so wide she wondered if she would ever stop smiling. No matter the hiccups or interruptions in her otherwise perfect ever-after. “We are both fine.”

*
During these moments, Jem's cheeks were starting to hurt from all her smiles at Merinda's tale of her first enraptured kiss. (Not to mention Merinda's description of Benny's splendid appearance in his red serge.)

A
UTHOR
'
S
N
OTE

Y
ou can't be Reverend Gerald McMillan's daughter and not have a working knowledge of the history of the Force. My dad's extensive collection of memorabilia, uniforms (from all eras), and incredible library were essential in infusing the spirit of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police into this world along with my own fictional touch. Of course, I had to use the famous Mountie Samuel Benfield Steele from my own hometown of Orillia, Ontario!