From Glowing Embers
Chapter 10
Julianna got through the rest of the day as well as she could. Between comforting Jody and organizing and preparing meals—a job Paige admitted that she hated—she kept herself out of the mainstream of conversation. While the others taped windows and barricaded furniture against two of the three glass doors, Julianna cooked whatever she could find that would keep for a day or two without refrigeration. So far they had experienced no problems with power outages, but everyone knew it could happen anytime, and she wanted to be prepared.
More than prepared, she wanted to be busy and as far away from Gray as possible. Buried feelings were pushing to the surface. She didn’t want to feel anything, not jealousy, not sadness, not the irrational fear that the howling winds and driving rain induced in her. She wanted to be in bed, asleep, without so much as dreams to remind her she was alive. But when it came time to go to bed, sleep came with difficulty.
In the hours just before dawn, the rain stopped. Sometime during the long night she had made a fragile peace with the wind’s roar and the unrelenting staccato rhythm of the rain, but now their absence woke her immediately.
She lay in bed listening to the soft sounds of Jody’s breathing. If the storm had ended, she wanted proof. Quietly she slipped on a muumuu. Without bothering to put on shoes, she tiptoed out of the bedroom and closed the door behind her. The house was dark and still, and she felt her way to a window to open the curtains. Only Dillon and Gray’s handiwork greeted her. She had forgotten that most of the windows had been covered with plywood.
A large glass door leading to a backyard lanai had been impossible to protect with anything more substantial than masking tape. Julianna found her way there and slid the door open, stepping out and closing the door behind her. When she turned back to gaze out into the darkness, she found she wasn’t alone.
“Did the silence wake you, too?” Gray leaned against the railing, his arms crossed against his chest.
Julianna had spent most of yesterday avoiding Gray. Now, she had forced this encounter.
“I wanted to be sure I wasn’t imagining the storm was over,” she answered, moving to the opposite end of the lanai. “I didn’t know anyone else was up.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” His words were traced with bitterness.
“Do you know whether this is just a respite, or has the storm moved away?”
“Eve’s an unpredictable, disorganized lady. Maybe she’s going off on a little Pacific cruise.”
“Bon voyage.” Julianna put both hands on the railing and leaned against it, shutting her eyes. She wanted to go back inside, but she knew Gray would see it as a retreat. Instead she drew a deep breath. “Smell that air. The rain pours down hard enough to crush life from the flowers, but all it does is release their perfume.”
“Too bad there isn’t a parallel for humans.”
Julie Ann might have told him that there was, but Julianna couldn’t. She had found there were some things that even the most courageous couldn’t rise above.
“When I first came here, I lived in a one room apartment above an old warehouse. I’d lived in some pretty awful places, but that was one of the worst. No matter how bad the apartment was, though, I could walk outside any time of the day or night, and there would be something beautiful to experience.” She stopped, realizing she had almost forgotten it was Gray she was speaking to.
“And that healed you?” Gray’s voice was cynical.
“Would you believe me if I said yes?”
Silence was his answer.
“No, it didn’t heal me,” she went on. “But it helped.”
“Why did you come here?”
“Why not?”
“You don’t have anything to hide anymore, Julianna. You don’t have to keep your past a secret. Indulge my curiosity.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re married?”
She faced him, crossing her arms as he had. “That doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Don’t you think so? Then you have a funny idea of what marriage is.” He moved closer, and she felt suddenly vulnerable. “I married you for better or worse—”
“And it was worse than you could ever have imagined, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes, much worse.” He stopped inches away. “And you know what was worst of all? Watching you learn to hate me.”
She tried to avert her eyes, but he grasped her arms. “You learned to hate me long before Ellie died. That’s why we went to the beach house that day. I wanted to get everything out in the open so we’d have a chance to make our marriage work. It was hanging by a thread.”
“By then we had no marriage.”
“Because you’d given up on it.”
Her voice soared, despite her desire to remain calm. “I didn’t give up, Gray. There was nothing I could have given up on, even if I’d wanted to. You didn’t want me. You didn’t want our child. And lucky you. You got rid of both of us!”
He shook her in his fury, releasing her only when he realized what he was doing. “You’ve been poisoned by all that hatred you carry inside,” he said, his hands now clenched at his sides.
She was stricken with remorse. How could she have said anything so unconscionably cruel? In the worst ramblings of her imagination, she had never believed that Gray had been glad to have his own child die. She closed her eyes to shut out the rage in his and slumped against the railing for support.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Oh, Gray, I’m so sorry. You might not have wanted Ellie, but I know you didn’t want her to die, either.”
She was surprised seconds later to feel his hands on her arms again. “Open your eyes.”
She did, blinking back the tears she had never let herself cry.
“We almost destroyed you, didn’t we? My father, my mother... me.”
“We can both see I’m not the person I was.”
“You are,” he said softly. “You’ve survived this the only way you could, by keeping your hatred alive. But now it’s time to find out how deep it goes.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“We have to talk about that day at the beach house.”
“I don’t want to”
“That’s too bad, Julianna. Because we’re going to.”
“What good is this going to do?”
“It’s called draining the wound.” He released her, but the expression in his eyes made it clear that he wouldn’t let her move away.
“What am I supposed to say? That I forgive you for leaving me alone to give birth to our child?”
“I don’t want forgiveness.”
“Then what do you want?”
“When you get on that plane to go back to Kauai, we’re both going to understand what happened at Granger Inlet, and why. You can keep hating me if you want, but you’re going to understand, and so am I.”
“I already understand.”
“I don’t.”
She turned back toward the darkness, and she felt him move closer. “Don’t make me do this.” Her voice broke.
“It’s way past time, Julie Ann.”
She wanted to tell him again that Julie Ann wasn’t her name, but even as she started to say the words, she knew they wouldn’t be true. Ten years fell away, leaving a young woman: frightened, desolate and alone. And the memories that had been frozen inside her began, slowly, to melt into decade-old tears.