The Guardian(39)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

In the fifteen minutes it took to reach Henry’s house, Mike had only grown angrier. They were standing in the front yard. Emma had opened the door once to ask what was going on, but Mike had stopped in midsentence and stared at her, certain that she already knew what Julie had done. Henry raised his hand.

“Just give me a second, will you, Em? Mike’s pretty upset right now.”

Before going back into the house, Emma gave Henry a look that clearly said, I’ll close the door, but I expect a full report later. Henry turned back to his brother.

“She told you that?” Henry asked.

“Yeah, when the police were there. . . .”

“Hold on,” Henry said, “the police were there?”

“They just left.”

“Why were the police there?”

“Because of the locket. Richard put his pictures in there. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Henry tried to follow along but was only getting more and more confused. He finally reached for Mike’s arm.

“Now calm down, Mike. Maybe you better start from the beginning.”

The Guardian

“So how long are you going to keep up the silent treatment?” Pete Gandy asked.

They were cruising slowly through downtown in the squad car, and Jennifer Romanello hadn’t said a word to him since they’d left Julie’s house.

Jennifer turned toward the window at the sound of his voice.

“You still mad about that Mike Harris thing?” he asked. “Because if you are, you gotta learn to get over stuff like that. Our job isn’t always easy.”

Jennifer glanced at him with an expression of distaste. “It might not be easy,” she said, “but you don’t have to be a jerk, either.”

“What are you talking about? I wasn’t being a jerk.”

“No? Then what was with that little comment you made in front of Mike? There was no reason to do that.”

“You mean about Richard staying over?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Even Pete knew that was what was bothering her.

“Why’re you so upset about that? It was true, wasn’t it?”

She decided she absolutely despised this guy.

“But you didn’t have to say it in front of Mike,” she said. “You could have taken Julie aside and asked her about it. Then she could have explained it to Mike.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that you caught both of them off guard, and you probably started a major argument in the process.”

“So? It’s not my business if they’re not honest with each other. I was just trying to get to the bottom of things.”

“Yeah”-Jennifer nodded-“and that’s another thing. Just how did you find out that he’d spent the night? Did you talk to Richard or something?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I did. I bumped into him at the gym. He seems like a nice guy.”

“A nice guy.”

“Yeah,” Pete said, sounding defensive. “He’s not going to press charges, for one thing, and that says something, right? He wants to put the whole thing behind him and forget about it. He’s not going ahead with the civil suit, either.”

“And just when were you going to share this with me?”

“What’s to share? Like I said, the case got dropped, and besides, it’s not your concern. You’re still learning the ropes.”

Jennifer closed her eyes. “The problem is that Richard is stalking Julie and she’s scared to death. Why can’t you see that?”

Pete shook his head. “Look, Richard told me about the locket, okay? He mentioned it in case something like this came up, and he told me that he put the pictures in there when he spent the night with her. And remember, even Julie admitted she hadn’t looked at it since then, so who’s to say he was lying?”

“And you don’t care about anything else she’s mentioned? About him following her? You don’t think all this is a little too coincidental?”

“Hey,” Pete protested, “I’ve talked to the guy a couple of times now-”

He was interrupted by the radio crackling to life. Still glaring at Pete, Jennifer reached for the radio and picked up the mike.

Sylvia, a dispatcher who’d been with the department twenty years and knew just about everyone in town, spoke as though she weren’t sure what to make of things.

“We just got a call in from a trucker heading down the highway. He said he saw something strange in a ditch and thought we might want to send a car over.”

“What did he think it was?”

“He didn’t say. I think he was in a rush and didn’t want to stick around to answer questions. It’s just off Highway 24, about a quarter mile past the Amoco station on the north side of the road.”

“We’ll check it out,” Jennifer responded, thankful for something to make Pete shut up.

The Guardian

Mike had been gone for half an hour, and the house was eerily quiet. Julie went through the house, making sure the windows and doors were locked, then paced around the living room, Singer at her side. Outside, she could hear the sound of crickets chirping and a light breeze moving the leaves.

Julie crossed her arms and looked toward the door. Singer sat beside her, his head resting against her leg. After a moment he whined, and Julie began to pet him. As if knowing what was going on, he hadn’t left her side since Mike had walked out.

She was certain that Richard hadn’t put the photos in the locket on the night he’d stayed over. He’d just come from a funeral, for God’s sake. And was it plausible that he just happened to be carrying two little pictures of himself on the off chance that he’d be able to put them in the locket while she was in the other room sleeping?

Not a chance.

No, he’d been there. Inside her house. Looking around, opening drawers, rummaging through her things. Which meant he knew how to get inside.

And could do so again.

Julie’s throat constricted at the thought, and she hurried into the kitchen, grabbed a chair from the table, and wedged it beneath the front-door knob.

How could Mike have left her? With Andrea missing and Richard stalking her? How on earth could he have left her alone tonight?

So she hadn’t told him about Richard. So what? Nothing happened!

But Mike hadn’t believed her. She was angry with him for that, and hurt as well. But of all the nights to desert someone . . .

Moving toward the couch, Julie began to cry.

The Guardian

“Do you believe her?” Henry asked.

Mike glanced down the street and drew a long breath. “I don’t know.”

Henry stared at him. “Sure you do.”

“No, I don’t,” Mike snapped. “How can I know if I wasn’t even there?”

“Because you know Julie,” Henry offered. “You know her better than anyone.”

After a long moment, Mike’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “No,” he finally said, “I don’t think she slept with him.”

Henry waited a moment before responding.

“Then what’s this all about, then?”

“She lied to me.”

“No, she didn’t. She just didn’t tell you.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No, it’s not. Do you think I tell Emma everything? Especially things that don’t matter?”

“This mattered, Henry.”

“Not to her, Mike.”

“How could it not matter? After all that’s been going on?”

He had a point, Henry thought. She probably should have said something, but there was no reason to argue that now.

“So what are you going to do?”

Mike took a long time before answering. “I don’t know.”

The Guardian

Richard could see Julie’s shadowed image as she sat on the couch. He knew she was crying, and he wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to take her pain away. He brought his finger to his lips, as if trying to hush a small child. Her emotions had become his, and he felt it all: her loneliness and fear, her heartbreak. He’d never been moved by the sight of someone else’s tears before.

He hadn’t felt this way after watching his mother cry in the months following his father’s funeral, he remembered. But then again, by the end, he’d come to hate her.

The Guardian

Mike left Henry’s, heading for home, his head still spinning.

The road was a blur; images he didn’t seem to recognize passed on either side of him.

Julie should have told him, he thought again. Yes, he would have been upset, but he would have gotten over it. He loved her, and what was love without trust or honesty?

He was angry at Henry, too, for skimming over what had happened. Maybe he’d feel differently if Emma had cheated on him, the way Sarah had to him a few years back. Once burned, twice shy, the old saying went.

Except that Julie hadn’t cheated on him. He knew she wasn’t lying about that.

But still, she hadn’t trusted him. That’s what this was really all about, he knew. Trust. He had no doubt she would have told Jim, so why hadn’t she told him?

Was their relationship so different from what she and Jim had shared? Didn’t she trust him in the same way she’d trusted Jim?

Didn’t she love him?

The Guardian

In the tree, Richard continued to think about his mother.

He’d hoped that she would be better, stronger, after his father’s funeral. But instead, she’d begun to drink heavily, and the kitchen was wreathed in a perpetual haze from the cigarettes she chain-smoked. Then she’d become violent, as if choosing to remember her husband by assuming his actions. The first time it happened, he’d been sleeping in his bed when he woke to a staggering pain, as if a match were being held against him.

His mother stood wild-eyed above the bed, his father’s belt dangling from her hand. She’d used the buckle end of the belt against his skin.

“It was your fault!” she screamed at him. “You were always making him angry!”

She swung again and again. He cowered at each strike, pleading with her to stop and trying to cover himself, but she continued to wield the belt until her arms were too exhausted to move.

The following night she’d done it again, but this time he’d expected her and accepted the beatings with the same quiet rage he had in the past with his father. He knew then that he hated her, but that there was nothing he could do to stop her right away. Not with the police suspicious about the way his father had died.

Nine months later, his back and legs scarred, he ground his mother’s sleeping pills and slipped the contents into her vodka. After going to sleep, she never woke up.

In the morning, as he stood over the bed staring at her, he thought about how limited her intelligence had been. Though she’d suspected that he’d had something to do with his father’s death, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the same thing could happen to her. She should have known that he was strong enough to do what he had to do. Julie, too, had been strong enough to change her life. Julie was a fighter.

He admired that about her. He loved that about her.

Of course, it was time for the fighting to end. Richard was certain that Julie would realize this now. Maybe not consciously, but subconsciously. Now that the charade with Mike was over, there was no point in delaying the inevitable.

Slowly, Richard began climbing down from the tree.

The Guardian

Officers Jennifer Romanello and Pete Gandy drove past the Amoco station and pulled the squad car to the side of the highway. After retrieving their flashlights, they emerged from the car.

A short distance away, Jennifer could see the lights from the gas station, saw cars being filled at the pumps. On the highway, cars whizzed past. The side of the road was bathed in swirling blue and red lights, alerting motorists to their presence.

“You go that way,” Pete said, pointing toward the station. “I’ll head this way.”

Jennifer turned on her flashlight and started her search.

The Guardian

Julie was still crying on the couch when she heard the sound of movement outside her door. Singer’s ears went up as he ran toward the window, growling. Her heart hammering, Julie looked around for a weapon.

When Singer barked, she jumped up from the couch with wide eyes, before she realized his tail was wagging.

“Julie?” she heard him call through the door. “It’s me, Mike.”

She moved toward the door and quickly removed the chair, relief surging through her. As soon as she opened it, Mike looked at her before glancing toward the ground.

“I know you didn’t sleep with him,” he said.

Julie nodded. “Thank you.”

“I’d like to talk to you about it, though.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he pushed his hands into his pockets and took a deep breath.

“Would you have told Jim?” he finally asked.

Julie blinked. It wasn’t a question she’d ever considered.

“Yes,” she said. “I would have.”

Mike nodded again. “I thought so.”

“We were married, Mike. You have to understand that.”

“I know.”

“It has nothing to do with the way I feel about you. If you’d asked whether I would have told him while we were dating, the answer would have been no.”

“Really?”

“Really. I didn’t want to hurt you. I love you. And had I known all this would have spiraled out of control the way it has, I would have told you then. I should have told you anyway. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too. For saying what I did.”

Julie stepped forward tentatively, and when Mike didn’t back away, she came closer and leaned into him. She felt his arms wrap around her.

“I’d like to stay tonight,” he said, “if that’s okay.”