Lucky Stars (Ghosts and Reincarnation #5)(63)
Author: Kristen Ashley

This settled in her heart then it settled in her soul and, finally, it settled in her mind and Belle relaxed.

She relaxed so much, she shared, “She likes your hands.”

“Pardon?” Jack asked.

“Gram. She likes your hands.”

Belle could swear she saw the white of his teeth through the shadows before he muttered. “Well, that’s something.”

“Mom likes your behind,” Belle blurted, caught up in a moment of relaxed sharing, she didn’t think to censor her words and she felt the heat hit her cheeks, glad, for once, that Jack couldn’t see it.

“I think I could have died without learning that information,” Jack returned and Belle instantly wished for magical powers to turn back time but Jack’s legs pressed against hers for a moment before they relaxed. He went on in his low and rumbly tone, “Even so, my love, there’s never anything you can’t share with me, no matter if I don’t want to hear it.”

Belle swallowed and looked out the window.

“Belle,” he called. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” she told the window.

If this was true (and, considering he’d used his low and rumbly voice, it had to be), she could tell him about Calvin and she could tell him about her desire to help Myrtle and Lewis.

It would be a risk but she had to learn to take them no matter how much they frightened her.

Not only for herself but also for their child and finally, she suspected, for Jack.

She turned to face him and announced, “I’m worried about Myrtle and Lewis.”

She felt his eyes on her, the trill went up her spine straight to her scalp but he didn’t speak for a moment.

Finally, he did.

“I guessed that would happen.”

“You did?”

“Poppet, you dove into the freezing sea to save a busload of school children. It isn’t a fantastic leap to guess you’d want to release two child ghosts to heaven,” he replied.

“It’s not the same,” she returned.

“It’s not?” he asked.

“No,” Belle answered.

“How is it not the same?”

She shook her head and looked back to the storm. “It’s just not. That day, with the school bus, I didn’t think. It wasn’t like I watched it happen and I thought, ‘Here I come to save the day.’ I didn’t think at all. If I did, I would never have done it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and for some reason she kept sharing, “I don’t even remember most of it.”

She hadn’t spoken of this to anyone save her Mom and Gram, of course, and the counsellor she had to see when she’d stopped sleeping.

Other than that, she hadn’t spoken of it to anyone.

Not once.

Even though lots of people had asked, she’d never uttered a word.

His voice had gentled considerably when he asked, “You don’t remember it?”

Belle shook her head again and kept her gaze at the window.

“I remember stopping, getting out of the car and climbing over the railing, standing at the side of the bridge, staring into the sea, watching the bus sink.” She felt his body go still and the air in the room went instantly thick but she just kept talking, “Then I remember diving in like it was a swimming pool not the November sea. It was freezing cold, instantly chilled to the bone cold and I felt bits in the sea hitting my body as I swam down. I don’t even know what those bits were but I do know they scared the heck out of me.”

She gave a shudder and his legs pressed hers again and, still, she kept going, thinking bizarrely that Jack needed to know this. In fact, or some reason, she thought he deserved to know it.

“I had to open my eyes and it was dark, murky. I could see the bus. The water was somewhat shallow so it wasn’t that far. Far enough to submerge the bus, though, and fast, weirdly fast. It had fallen on its side, the wrong side. The door was against the sea floor, the back doors wedged against a rock. There was air in the bus, I saw the kids banging on the windows, the bus driver frantically trying to open them.” Her voice dropped to a horrified whisper, “It was hideous, the sea felt like it was saturated with their fear.”

At this, Jack apparently had enough of giving her space.

He leaned forward, put his hands to her waist and pulled her to him, twisting her and dropping his knees so she was cradled in his lap, his arms tight around her.

When he’d settled her, she felt his heat warm her and looked up at him.

“I don’t remember anything else, Jack. Not one second of it. The kids come and see me at the shop, sometimes at my cottage. Their parents bring them. They act like I’m some kind of superhero. They bring me gifts, some of it silly stuff, like stickers. Sometimes it’s cakes their mums make. In the beginning, I didn’t remember a single face. It was like someone else had done it and I was impersonating her.” Belle stopped talking and when Jack didn’t reply, she continued, “Now, of course, I know them, all of them.”

“Post-traumatic stress, poppet,” he murmured, giving her a squeeze.

Belle tucked her forehead into his neck. “That’s what the counsellor said.” She moved so she could wrap her arms around his middle and then whispered, “The bus driver told me,” she stopped and added, “his name is Bob, by the way, and he comes to visit me too.”

“I bet he does,” Jack muttered and Belle went on as if he didn’t speak.

“Bob told me that the bus was filled with water at the end. He was the last live person I pulled out. The window he’d opened to get the kids out had filled the bus with water. He knew I was getting tired. I was too cold. I was slowing down. He was injured in the crash, dislocated his shoulder. So were some of the kids, bouncing around in that bus. Two of them were trapped. He couldn’t get them loose before I got him out. Though he tried. Nearly drowned doing it. He didn’t want me to keep going back knowing the bus had been filled, knowing those kids were trapped.” She stopped and swallowed. “But I did. I don’t remember it. I don’t know how I did it but I pulled out the dead kids.” Belle took in a shattered breath and said in a trembling voice, “Davey and Penny, they were called.”

Jack’s arms got so tight, they took her breath and he ordered, “Stop talking, Belle. Just stop.”

She squeezed her eyes tight, pushed closer to Jack’s warmth and breathed, “I don’t want to remember, Jack. Never. I never ever want to remember.”