They Call It Paradise

Part 2

 

Rebecca could feel Jarod's arms around her before she was even properly awake and she leaned in against him, opening her eyes to see him watching her.

 

“Hi.”

 

He gently kissed her forehead. “How did you sleep?”

 

”Better than any other night since I got here.”

 

He smiled, gently running his fingers through her hair. “I haven’t slept that well in a long time either.”

 

”No nightmares?”

 

”You promised, Rebecca.”

 

”I know.” She looked sadly up at him. “But I can’t always keep my promises. Not here, anyway. You know that.”

 

“Nor can you blame yourself for my decisions.” He stroked her cheek with a loving hand. “And, if I choose to feel pain, surely that’s my decision.”

 

She stood in the garden and watched him, her eyes sad as she saw that he was in pain. His placed one hand on his chest as he got up from his knees, walking slowly and gingerly into the house, making his way up the stairs and into his bedroom. She followed him inside. His movements sluggish, he eased his jacket off his shoulders and slipped it over the back of the chair that stood in front of his desk. Gently, he lay down on the bed and she watched, waiting for what she knew would come. The moment when they would be together again…

 

She glanced over towards the window and then slid out of bed.

 

“Where are you going?” Jarod asked, leaning back luxuriously against the pillows.

 

”We,” she stressed the word, “are going to look at something.”

 

Taking his hand, she led him onto the balcony. He sat down on the sofa and she nestled into his lap, pulling a thick blanket that sat there over them both. Gently she rested her head against his chest, both of them watching in silence as the sun slowly rose over the mountains in front of them, filling the sky with first a red and then orange light that slowly brightened to the normal hues of day. Sighing, she looked up to find him watching her.

 

“Where are we, exactly?”

 

She smiled. “When I was young – after I was released from the Centre – the people that Jacob had given me to brought me to a house in the mountains one year for a holiday. I loved the place and, when I finally made a home of my own here, this is what I wanted it to be. So it is.”

 

He looked up at the mountains around them. “It’s beautiful.”

 

She smiled. “I think so, too.”

 

“Almost as beautiful as you.”

 

Turning her face up to his, she kissed him gently and he wrapped his arms more tightly around her, staving off the chill of the early morning. They sat in silence for several minutes, Jarod drinking in the view and Rebecca loving, and a little disbelieving of, the situation she was in.

 

“Why did you come to me?” he suddenly murmured.

 

“Because I wanted to see you again,” Rebecca responded quietly. “I wanted to see you when you could see me and remember that it was me. Of all the dreams you had about me, I don’t think you remembered one.”

 

He stroked her hair with one hand, the other holding her close “That’s only partly true, Rebecca. I could remember having dreamed about you. I just couldn’t remember all the details.”

 

She nodded. “If I had thought you would have remembered, I wouldn’t have tried to…be there. To come back into the world.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

“I couldn’t just accidentally appear there, Jarod.” She turned her face up to his. “I had to really want to. I could hear your voice when I was asleep at night, but to see you, to feel you, I had to actually make the effort to be there.”

 

He paused. “Remember what you said to me, about seeing people?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“How do I look to you?”

 

“The way you did the second time we met, during those days at the hotel. Tall, handsome and distinguished.” She smiled and kissed him again.

 

His eyes took on a sad expression. “I was in pain there.”

 

“I know.” She picked up his hand and gently stroked it, holding it to her cheek for a moment. “But not all the time.” She looked up. “And how do I look to you?”

 

“You hardly ever changed.”

 

“I grew up!” She made an effort to look indignant, but had to smile at the tenderness in his eyes.

 

“But, afterwards, I only ever thought of you in one way – the same way you think of me, from the same time.”

 

Rebecca smiled. “Why did you ask?”

 

He grinned. “I just wanted to make definitely sure you weren’t seeing me as a six-year-old.”

 

She giggled. “That could make life interesting, if I was.”

 

He laughed, leaned down and kissed her for several moments before pulling away and looking at her, one eyebrow raised. “Could a six-year-old do that?”

 

“That depends.” She smiled. “You were pretty advanced at six.”

 

~*~*~

 

“How often have you sat here before?”

 

“Like this?” Her face became sad and she stared out over the mountains and into the rising sun. “Almost every day.”

 

“And alone?”

 

She nodded speechlessly.

 

He turned her face up to his with a gentle touch. ”And what were you thinking about, Rebecca?”

 

“I think you know, Jarod.”

 

The two of them looked around to find Sydney standing in the doorway. “I went to your house, but your father said you didn’t come home at all last night, so I took a gamble.”

 

“They’re missing me?” Jarod smiled.

 

“They’ve only just got you back and they probably feel that they’ve lost you again already.” Rebecca laughed. “I feel terrible.”

 

“Yes.” Sydney gave her a mock frown as he sat down opposite them. “I can see how guilty that makes you feel.”

 

She disconnected the call and remained still for a moment, looking down at the body of the unconscious man on the floor in front of her. Gently she rolled him over so that his head rested on her legs and she ran a finger down the side of his face, looking at his closed eyelids and white cheeks. Slowly she lowered her face so that her mouth touched his and then quickly pulled back, gently brushing his lips with her finger, as if trying to wipe away what she’d just done. Her voice, when she spoke, was tender.

 

“Hi, Jarod. It’s good to see you again.”

 

He moaned softly and his eyelids flickered but she placed one hand on his cheek and felt him relax at her touch.

 

“It’s all right, Jarod. Just sleep now. You can face it all later.”

 

His head rolled slightly to one side and his lips parted, color beginning to come back into his face. After several moments she lifted his head from her knees and stood up, glancing from him to the bed.

 

Rebecca glanced up to see Jarod throw his arms around Thomas and hug him, the other man returning the gesture. A gentle smile on her face, she turned to see Miss Parker standing at the bottom of the flight of stairs that led up to the large front veranda on which she and Sydney were now sitting.

 

“Is everything sorted, Parker?”

 

“Not everything, Sydney.” She laughed. “Give us time.” The woman came and sat down one of the two sofas, opposite him, as Rebecca pulled herself up to sit on the veranda railing.

 

“But you’re happy now, Miss Parker.”

 

“Is that a question?”

 

”No,” Rebecca smiled. “More a statement of fact.”

 

The brunette laughed. “And are you happy too?”

 

“Jacob asked me the same thing.”

 

“And what did you say?”

 

“There was only one answer I could give. The same as you would have, had you be asked and not told.”

 

Miss Parker glanced out over the mountains before looking back. “Did you ever talk to Thomas about me?”

 

“No.” Rebecca sighed sadly. “I never even saw Thomas until just now. I didn’t want to. And I don’t think he wanted to see me either.”

 

”Why?”

 

“Because of what I was trying to make happen between you and Jarod. I knew that, if you’d fallen in love with him, Thomas would have blamed me for it. And rightly so.”

 

Sydney raised an eyebrow. “So you admit that you did influence him?”

 

“I told Jacob that, not you.”

 

“We talked.”

 

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.”

 

The other woman’s expression was confused. “You…wanted us to? Why?”

 

She smiled sadly. “I wanted him – wanted both of you to be happy and I knew that, while Jarod remembered me in the way he did, you couldn’t be.”

 

”What about the way I remembered Thomas?”

 

“I never factored that into the equation.” Rebecca looked up with a small smile on her face. “I guess I should have.”

 

“It might have helped.” The three looked up to see that Jacob had come up onto the veranda. “It probably would have saved a lot of emotion later.”

 

“Don’t start.” Rebecca leaned against the arm he wrapped around her shoulders and looked up at him. “We went through all this yesterday.”

 

“Not all, Rebecca.”

 

She narrowed her eyes at the man on the sofa. “What do you mean, Sydney?”

 

“You.”

 

“No.” She instantly pulled backwards as though trying to escape. “No, I don’t want…”

 

“You didn’t want to talk about Jarod, either, and that was what you needed.”

 

”I don’t need this. And you don’t need to know it either. The people who do know have enough of a burden to carry already.”

 

“Sharing burdens makes them easier,” another new voice stated.

 

“Angelo, please.” She turned as both he and Catherine appeared. “No.”

 

“Yes, Rebecca. They want to know.”

 

She shook her head. “They think they want to know. Once they do know, they’ll only wish they didn’t. Besides, it wouldn’t help them, to know that.”

 

He came over and stood in front of her, their eyes on a level, as Catherine sat down beside her daughter, sliding an arm around her waist.

 

“It will help you.”

 

“No. No, it won’t.” A tear gently slipped down her cheek. “It couldn’t possibly help me. Last night was bad enough.”

 

“Last night was the easy part.”

 

“I know.” The whisper was almost inaudible.

 

“And last night was for their benefit, not yours.” He took her hands in his. “You’ve never done anything for your own benefit. Your life was lived for other people and ever since your death you’ve gone on only doing things for other people. Now do this for yourself.”

 

“I can’t, Angelo.” A stream of tears had followed the first and she looked up at him. “I don’t know how. I wouldn’t even know where to start. How to do it.”

 

“How do I do it? How do I make him forget something like that? Whenever he’s awake, he asks for her.”

 

Jacob looked over at Sydney. “I know. Catherine said that her daughter is having the same problem.”

 

“Should we have done it differently?”

 

“How, Sydney?” Jacob got up and began to pace the room. “If she had been seen to be still alive, we would never had got her out of the Centre. And if we hadn’t got her out of there, somebody might have done worse things to her.”

 

“How is she?”

 

“They said that her legs were healing well, but that…” He stopped.

 

“She’s missing you, isn’t she?”

 

Jacob nodded. “Probably about as much as I…” He turned away without another word.

 

“But that wasn’t what…”

 

”What, Jacob?” She looked up at him.

 

“What happened that changed your whole perspective – your whole way of living, of thinking, of acting. Sydney told you, in those last days, what I’d said to him, about you being bitter. And it was true. Something did happen. But you never told me what.”

 

“That…” She paused and looked down. “Jacob, this is hard.”

 

“I know.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. “But try.”

 

She nodded. “That was the start, I think. Or a least a catalyst. When I ‘died’ and you took me to them, I kept you in my mind the whole time after you left.”

 

“I always thought you would have.”

 

“And I dreamed about you every night for weeks – months after,” she corrected herself. “I dreamed about you until finally I had to see you. So I ran away.”

 

“You what?” He pulled away and looked down at her, wide-eyed.

 

“I knew something was going to happen and so I left. I crept out of the house one night and either hitched lifts or walked until I got to Blue Cove.” Her eyes filled as she looked up at him. “But I was too late.”

 

She came around the corner, running as though her life depended on it and knowing that his did. The night was dark and the rain blinded her but she never stopped, the pain in her legs and side growing but still bearable. Finally she saw the lights coming towards her – headlights that brightened with every second – and she could see her shadow lengthened by those coming in the other direction. She screamed aloud, her voice lost in the sound of crunching metal as the car skidded off the road, finally landing in the long grass. She froze, unable to move, until she finally heard him pull himself free and begin calling for his brother.

 

“It took me five days to get there. It shouldn’t have taken that long.”

 

”Rebecca, you were only seven.”

 

“But I did one thing wrong.” She sobbed and looked up at him out of eyes that streamed with tears. “My legs hurt so badly one day that I lay down and, before I realized what I’d done, I was asleep. I woke up several hours later, knowing that I’d just made the one mistake that I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for; that you were going to be injured because I’d submitted to my own needs. After that,” her chin lifted, despite the tears that still poured down her face, “I decided I would never be selfish again, that I would try to make up for what I’d done by never thinking about myself anymore.” She looked up at Angelo, who had seated himself on the sofa beside Sydney. “You were right. I did live for other people. But only after that day, not before it. Before then, I did think of myself, sometimes.”

 

~*~*~

 

“How many times did you come back to the Centre?”

 

Rebecca shook her head in answer to Miss Parker's question. “I lost count. A lot, though, especially after I moved out of home and lived on my own.”

 

“And why?”

 

She smiled faintly. “The reasons varied. But most of them had to do with Jarod – and you, until you were no longer there.”

 

“And did you know that he was going to escape?”

 

Rebecca raised an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth lifting. “Miss Parker, what was I? What was it about me that you envied?”

 

As Miss Parker laughed and nodded, Sydney glanced over at Rebecca. “And what was it about her that you envied?”

 

“You’re incorrigible. You know that, don’t you?”

 

Sydney smiled. “I believe I’ve been told that once or twice before, yes.” He leaned forward. “Well?”

 

She sighed and leaned back slightly, feeling as Jacob put an arm around her back and he looked down at her, amusement in his eyes. “Oh, no you don’t. No ‘falling’ back off the railing and disappearing.”

 

“As if I would!”

 

“You would and you know it. You’ve done it before.” He smiled. “Just answer the question.”

 

She dropped the bags onto the bed in her apartment and glanced around at the bare walls, suppressing a shudder. The room seemed bare and unwelcoming after what she was used to, at the only home she had ever really had and which she had left because it didn’t feel the way she knew it was meant to. They tried to love her, but they were too afraid of her knowledge to allow themselves to get close to her. So she had moved out. Walking over to the window, she opened the Venetian blinds and looked out towards the large, cream-colored building that loomed in the distance.

 

 “You lived near the Centre?”

 

“About half a mile away. It seemed like the easiest thing to do. Besides, they weren’t looking for me, so I was perfectly safe.” She shuddered. “I just never felt it.”

 

“And…why?”

 

Rebecca looked up and met Miss Parker's eye. “I’d been too late once. I figured that, by living that close, I could never be too late again.” She smiled. “Besides, it meant that I could have a visitor and nobody would know.”

 

 “Who?”

 

After putting the last book on the shelf, she looked around. It was only a slight improvement and she would just have to get used to it. With a smile, she turned to the door in time to hear the knock on it.

 

“Come in, Angelo.”

 

He peeped inside. “Surprise!”

 

“No,” she laughed. “Not really. But I know you were trying.”

 

Pushing the door closed behind him, he came across and sat down on her bed.

 

“Sad.”

 

“Just a little, Angelo.”

 

“Homesick.”

 

She laughed, a short but light sound. “For what? I don’t have a real home and neither do you. Nor will Jarod or Miss Parker for a long time.”

 

“Jacob.”

 

Rebecca glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yes, Angelo. Perhaps.”

 

“Go visit.”

 

“Not now. Not while Sydney's there. But maybe later.”

 

“Angelo!” the younger brunette exploded.

 

“Miss Parker.” He looked over, a hint of a smile on his face. “You didn’t expect me to stay there when I could get in and out so easily, did you? And especially when I could go to Rebecca and at least get a decent meal.”

 

“Instead of those wonderful alternatives they liked giving us.” She looked over and laughed. “I can’t say it did of us much good – at least not in terms of growth.” She focused on the two male figures she could see approaching the house. “Of course, some people are exceptions to that.”

 

She heard Angelo’s laugh as he continued. “It also meant that I could spend the night somewhere that wasn’t dark and draughty.”

 

“And they never found out…?”

 

Rebecca interrupted. “I could tell him when to go back, so that they wouldn’t miss him. No, they never did. Nobody ever found out.”

 

“Not even Jarod?”

 

“How could he? He didn’t even remember who I was.” She shrugged and turned her face away.

 

“And yet he dreamed about you, Rebecca,” Sydney said quietly. “He was still dreaming about you up to the last days before he left the Centre.”

 

“And afterwards.”

 

They looked over to find Jarod and Thomas coming up the stairs. “I still dreamed about her for a long time afterwards.”

 

“You didn’t even know who you were dreaming about.” She leaned back against him as he came over to stand beside her and he laughed.

 

“I think that’s a fair enough statement.” He kissed her. “It didn’t stop me though.”

 

She smiled faintly. “And yet you told me that all your dreams…”

 

“I didn’t have to tell you, Rebecca. You already knew without me having to say it.”

 

Nodding, she rested her head against his chest, watching as Jacob moved to sit down beside Sydney and Thomas sat down beside Miss Parker, slipping his arms around her shoulders as she leaned against him.

 

“But,” the Pretender went on, “you were never like you are now, when I used to dream about you.”

 

“Oh, really?” Thankful for the change of subject, she looked up, one eyebrow raised. “How was I?”

 

“After the second meeting, the way I remembered you changed somewhat.”

 

”Is that so surprising?”

 

“Not really.” Jacob interrupted the conversation. “Not considering how much you changed, Rebecca.”

 

“I had to change, Jacob. I grew up. I couldn’t have stayed the way I was when I was six.”

 

“Why?”

 

She closed her eyes briefly before looking at him. “Why what, Jacob?”

 

“Why did you change?”

 

Rebecca looked from Sydney to his brother. “You’re just as bad as each other!”

 

“Answer the question, Rebecca,” Sydney said firmly.

 

She stared at the floor of the veranda for a moment, before glancing up to meet Catherine’s eyes. The older woman nodded slightly and Rebecca sighed.

 

“This…this isn’t easy. It won’t be easy for you to hear and it isn’t easy for me to tell. I’ve never had to tell anybody before. Of the other two people who do know, one was already dead at the time and the other knows everything about me and always has.”

 

Rebecca swallowed painfully and felt Jarod's arms tighten around her.

 

“Last night, I called myself a coward and that point was immediately disputed. I have to admit that perhaps I used the wrong word. But, if I ever was a coward, then it was caused by somebody else.” She sighed and looked at Jacob. “You were right in what you said to Sydney, all those years ago. If I had become bitter – and I think perhaps I had – then it was caused by a specific event. Two events, actually. But they’re inseparable and, although they happened several months apart, I count them as one.”

 

A tear slipped out of her eye and she wiped it away, her eyes focused once more on the floor of the veranda and her voice still a dull, emotionless monotone.

 

“The first of the two events happened in October 1995, about a week before the experiments when Sydney was in Europe.” She felt Jarod shudder and squeezed his hand, wondering if he would still consider that as a comfort, once he knew.

 

She left the nursing home and made her way back to the hotel where she’d been staying, feeling sick at the thought of what was coming. Going into the room, she found him there, waiting for her.

 

“You don’t look surprised to see me, Rebecca. But then, I guess you wouldn’t be, would you?”

She stood with her back against the closed door, watching him and waiting for him to come towards her. For a moment she thought about screaming, about trying to change what would happen, but she knew there was no point. There was nobody who could help her, nobody who would. She watched as he turned towards her, his eyes alight with greed and power, as he slowly began to walk across the room, narrowing the space between them.

 

“Who?”

 

Rebecca looked up to meet Miss Parker's eyes and saw the pain in Catherine’s face, knowing that it was reflected in her own. She felt her lips tremble, aware of the impact that her next words would have on everybody who didn’t already know what she was going to say.

 

“Your brother. Mr. Lyle.”

 

She felt Jarod stiffen behind her and fixed her eyes back on the ground.

 

“How did he…?” Jacob began softly.

 

“He’d read about me in the Centre’s files and we had met once, years after the files said I was dead.” She closed her eyes briefly. “He found out where Jacob was and knew that I would come there, so he waited for me.”

 

“But…how did the Centre still believe you were dead?”

 

”He didn’t tell them.” She looked up to meet Sydney's eye. “He wanted to waltz back into the Centre with me, so that he would instantly be given anything he wanted. He thought that, if he told anyone else, that would lessen his chances and give him competition in the hunt for me.”

 

“And…when he found you?”

 

She involuntarily nodded, feeling the bile rise in the back of her throat.

 

She mentally screamed as he picked her up and threw her on to the bed, feeling his strength as he tied her down, finally covering her mouth with the cloth he’d brought with him. Closing her eyes, she tried to come up with some way, any way, to get out of the situation but nothing she knew, no power she had, could help her to escape from him. Roughly she felt her body jerk as he tore away her clothes and stared down at her.

 

“They won’t give me the chance for this once we get back to the Centre, so we’ll have to do it now.”

 

Closing her eyes, she commanded herself to show no emotion, not even to show the pain that she knew he would cause.

 

Then she felt the mattress bend under his weight…

 

“He…no, Rebecca – ” Jacob’s voice broke.

 

“I said,” she paused to swallow her tears as she looked over at the man who had been like a father to her, “I said you wouldn’t want to know. But you insisted.”

 

“But why…didn’t he…?”

 

She looked over at Miss Parker as the woman asked the unfinished question. “I suppose you mean, ‘why didn’t he take me back to the Centre?’.”

 

The dark-haired woman nodded and Rebecca continued.

 

“You have to understand, I went there every year, so the people who lived there knew me well. The hotel-owner’s wife came up, as she did every evening, to find out how Jacob was. When she saw the brighter than normal light coming from under my door, she got suspicious and knocked. Lyle…had already finished and was getting ready to take me with him but, at the sound, he disappeared through the window. She came into the room to find me on the bed.”

 

“Rebecca?”

 

She heard the gasp as the woman’s gaze took in the bloodstained sheets and the ropes that bound her to the bed, as well as the rag across her mouth.

 

“What on earth…?” Reaching over, she pulled down the cloth, watching as the woman gasped for air, before beginning to undo the ties that bound her wrists to the iron bed head. “Who…?”

 

“It…it doesn’t matter.”

 

“What? Are you…?”

 

“No, it doesn’t.” She closed her eyes, trying to block out what had just happened, and then looked up again. “But I need help. Medical help.”

 

The older woman went to the door and called for her husband, then reached over to pick up the phone on the bedside table.

 

“What…it’s…?”

 

“He cut the line.” Her voice was weak. “There’s a phone in my bag. Use that.”

 

As the man came into the room, his wife handed him the phone and pulled a blanket out of the cupboard, wrapping the slender woman in it to try and stop her shivering. As her ankles were also released, Rebecca curled herself up on the bed and felt the woman put gentle arms around her.

 

“I always knew he would never take me back to the Centre…but I always hoped that something would happen before it went that far.” Tears dimmed her eyes and she wiped them away. “It didn’t.”

 

Rebecca felt that Jarod was trembling slightly and she waited for him to pull away from her, to walk away in disgust, but he only held her more tightly and she could feel the tears falling from his face into her hair.

 

“They took me to a hospital nearby and then transferred me to one further away, at my insistence. They managed to stop the bleeding and I spent the next few days in that hospital. Finally they let me out, believing me when I said that I had somewhere to go where I would be looked after.”

 

“And…where did you go?”

 

“My apartment in Blue Cove.”

 

“Were you insane?” She looked over as the question seemed to explode out of Sydney's mouth and shook her head sadly.

 

“I knew about the experiments that Lyle and Raines were going to do to Jarod and I had to be there for that.”

 

“But…he knew…”

 

”He never told anyone that he knew. When he finally did think about it again, he imagined I’d probably have bled to death by the time I got help. He’d cut all of the phone lines from the building and didn’t expect me to get to a doctor as quickly as I did.” Her mouth twisted. “Because I hadn’t made a sound…as he did it, his other thought was that maybe I’d died during it.” She closed her eyes, stopping the tears from spilling out of them. “But I had to come back to the Centre. I couldn’t leave Jarod alone – not with what I knew was coming.”

 

She sat on the floor in the corner of her apartment, rocking herself gently as she watched the hands on the clock slowly move around. Finally they reached the time that she knew she had to leave and, very gradually, she pulled herself to her feet and opened the door. It took a long time for her to get down the stairs and the short distance seemed like an eternity as she moved across it, staying in the shadows until she arrived at the cover of the air vent. Her entrance was as silent as ever and she passed along the passages, finally arriving beside the room with large, silver chamber. It was only when she heard the yells that the emotion finally began to ebb back into her and she felt herself straighten up, eyes fixed on the door.

 

“So you…came back – for me?” the Pretender choked.

 

She turned and looked up into his face. “I had to, Jarod. I knew what it would do to you – what they would do to you. I couldn’t let you go through it alone, even if you didn’t know that I would be there.”

 

“Despite the fact that, if Lyle had seen you…”

 

”I was in no more danger from the Centre then than I was at any other time in my life. I always knew how dangerous it was for me to be there – but I had to.”

 

“But…Angelo…”

 

Rebecca glanced over at the other man. “Yes, he was there. I knew that. But I couldn’t feel comfortable unless I was there too.”

 

”Besides, Jarod,” the empath said softly, “she needed me after that.”

 

“In what way?”

 

Angelo looked over as Miss Parker asked the question. “Rebecca wouldn’t have made it back to her room that night if I hadn’t helped her.”

 

“So you knew…?”

 

”I knew enough.” His face became sad. “More than enough.”

 

“I tried to hide it from you, Angelo,” the psychic choked.

 

”You couldn’t have, even if you’d wanted to.” He smiled. “But you didn’t want to. It was a relief to you to know that I knew – and that you didn’t have to tell me.”

 

Rebecca nodded silently and then glanced across at Catherine. “When we came back to my room that night, were you already there?”

 

The other woman nodded. “I’d been there all along, from the moment you came back to your hotel room after visiting Jacob.”

 

“I thought so at the time. I never felt like I was alone.”

 

“But…you weren’t…”

 

“No, Jarod.” Rebecca looked up at him. “I didn’t know for certain that she was there.” She smiled faintly. “But I always felt that there was a source of comfort I could never understand. One night I dreamed about Catherine and, after that, always felt like it was her, that she was there, looking after me.”

 

Jarod looked over at the older woman, his eyes full of unshed tears, and he tried to smile. His words were a faint whisper. “Thank you.”

 

She lay on her bed, arms wrapped around her body, trembling as the memory of that day came flooding in on her again. She heard the window softly open and turned her face towards it, watching as the small figure crept across to the bed and slipped his hand into hers, brushing her hair away from her face.

 

“Took too long. Sorry.”

 

“No, Angelo.” She tried to smile. “You didn’t take too long at all.”

 

“Jarod – better.”

 

“Good. I’ll come and see him tomorrow.”

 

“Sick.”

 

“Yes, Angelo.” She swallowed, closing her eyes briefly. “I am sick.”

 

“Tomorrow.”

 

“Maybe I’ll still be sick tomorrow. But even so, I’ll come.”

 

“No.”

 

She glanced up and tried to smile. “Who’s the psychic one here – you or me? I said I’ll be there tomorrow, and I will, no matter what.”

 

“Why were you sick, Rebecca?”

 

She glanced up to meet the man’s questioning eye and sighed sadly. “I think that you already know the answer, Jacob.”

 

“You were – pregnant?”

 

Rebecca felt Jarod's arms tighten around her again and set her lips to stop them from trembling as she nodded silently.

 

“And…the baby?”

 

She closed her eyes at the tone of his voice, trying to push away her tears. “No, Jacob. I lost the baby.”

 

”How?”

 

She let out a shaky breath, her voice drained of emotion again. “That was the second event that I told you about. As I said earlier, they’re linked, inextricably.”

 

“When?”

 

Hearing the pain-filled whisper from above her head, she turned to see Jarod's face. The color had faded from it, apart from a line of red on his bottom lip where he had obviously bitten it to stop himself from speaking or crying out. Not wanting to see his expression at what she had to say in answer to his question, Rebecca turned away as she spoke.

 

“The next day.”

 

“You…went to the Centre?” he choked out. “To see…?”

 

Her hands were shaking by the time she pulled herself up out of the vents and she had closed her mind to what she knew was going to come next, not wanting to see it more often than just once, when she would have to live through the pain of it. Slowly she made her way to her apartment building, beginning to walk up the stairs to her room, her legs trembling from the effort and feeling sicker than ever as the world began to spin around her. Her face and hands were bathed in sweat and, as she reached up for the banister, her damp hand slipped on the polished wood and she began to fall. Her back slammed against the stairs and she felt the pain shoot through her, even as her head banged on a lower step and the world went dark.

 

She shut her eyes and felt the tears ease out from beneath her eyelids as others fell onto her head from above. As memory flooded back, she felt herself sway but his arms held her upright and close to him. Finally she opened her eyes, a sad gaze fixed on the face of the man opposite, watching as Jacob silently wept.

 

“I woke up in the hospital at Blue Cove…two days later…in intensive care. I knew that I’d lost the baby and that was the hardest part because, despite the fact that the situation in which it had been conceived was horrendous, I’d still made the mistake of starting to love it.”

 

“Mistake?” Rebecca glanced over at Miss Parker, seeing the tears on her face and the ferocity in her eyes. “How could it be a mistake to love your own child?”

 

”Because I knew that I was going to lose it,” she responded softly. “I’d known that from the day it was conceived, and earlier, and I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t get attached to it – but I couldn’t help myself.” She smiled faintly. “Besides, in some way I’d begun to associate it with Jarod, and that was just one more thing that reminded me of him.”

 

“But…how could you…?”

 

She looked over at Sydney. ”I was seeing Jarod every day during the time that the child was growing, and so it had a link of some sort to him. Call it what you like, it was the only way I could reconcile myself to what happened.” Rebecca blinked away the tears in her eyes. “Do you remember what you said about life being painful, that day in the hotel room?”

 

Sydney nodded. “And you said that, if you felt the same way…” He looked up at her sharply, the tears gone. “You tried it, didn’t you?”

 

”No, but I thought about it. I felt that life was just too agonizing…” She broke off and inhaled deeply. “But one night, a few days before Jarod escaped from the Centre, I dreamed about that time in the hotel and knew that I had to keep going – just for that.” She gave a satisfied smile. “And so I did.”

 

“But that was…” Sydney rapidly calculated, “five years away! How on earth could you possibly manage to wait for something that long?”

 

“I’d already waited thirty, Sydney.” Rebecca spoke softly. “What was another five years, after thirty?”

 

“So that was…what made you…”

 

”No.” Rebecca looked over at Jacob as he raised his eyes to hers. “That – those two events weren’t what changed me. It was the fact that I knew it was going to happen, and that I saw it all over and over in my mind, both before and after it occurred. And the fact that I couldn’t do anything, ever, to stop them. That was what gradually made me become bitter.”

 

“But you kept living – despite it all – just waiting for that short time?”

 

She glanced over as the woman spoke. “I kept living, yes, but not just for that. I still had a life. It didn’t just stop, in between those few days, thirty-five years apart. I still had friends, too, and they helped a lot.” She smiled gently at Angelo before continuing. “It sounds almost unbelievable but the knowledge of those coming days was actually what I needed. If I hadn’t known that there were still things to do, I may not have been able to force myself to keep going once it had all happened.” She smiled sadly. “You – the two of you – gave me my best reason to continue living.”

 

Gently she reached up and covered Jarod's hand with hers, tears glittering in her eyes. “And I also knew that, once you were reunited, I could finally let go. I didn’t know what it would be like – if there would be anything afterwards – but it didn’t seem to matter much, except when I wrote that letter. Then I tried to work out what it might be, so I could leave the two of you some kind of comfort.”

 

She opened her eyes to see the man standing beside the bed and her eyes grew wide as she stared up at him.

 

“Jacob?” The word was a whisper and he sat down, wrapping both arms around her and holding her close.

 

“Hi, Rebecca.”

 

“So I was right?”

 

“Yes, sweetheart.” He brushed away the traces of that single tear. “Of course you were. You were always right.”

 

“And…Sydney?”

 

“Yes, Rebecca. I’m here.”

 

She turned to see him sitting on the other bed and smiled at him briefly before looking back up at the man who had been like a father to her for so long.

 

“I was so glad that you didn’t know about it, Jacob.” She looked up, her breath still catching. “I couldn’t bear the thought, later, that we might have had to go through it on that day.” She paused. “I just wish that you hadn’t had to learn about it now.”

 

He got up from the sofa, coming over, and raised her face to his, wiping the tears away from her cheeks and smoothing her hair as he shook his head. “I don’t wish that, Rebecca. I only wish I’d known all along, so that I could have provided you with the comfort you needed.” He glanced up at the silent man who still stood with both arms still wrapped around her. “But, now that we know, we’ll be there for you whenever you need it. I promise you that we will.”

 

Jarod nodded speechlessly, knowing himself to be included in Jacob’s statement, and, feeling her body tense in his arms as he moved, lowered his head so that he could kiss the top of hers. At the gentle touch, she covered her face with her hands, turning her face his chest, as she began to sob. He wrapped his arms more firmly around her, resting his chin down on her head, and watched as Thomas and Miss Parker got up and silently left, followed by Angelo. Catherine moved over to sit beside Sydney, placing one hand gently on his for a moment before they, too, left the veranda. Jacob would have gone, likewise, but for the expression on Jarod's face that begged him to stay.

 

Jarod reached down and picked her up in his arms, carrying her over to the sofa and sitting down. Jacob sat opposite him, both pain and understanding growing on his face, as he watched the two of them.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me, Rebecca?” Jarod gently stroked the back of her head as she kept her face turned to his neck. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”

 

Her voice was muffled by her tears and by the fact that her face was still buried in her hands, but both men could still make out the words. “Jarod, you couldn’t have done anything to help me. You had enough problems of your own without having to know about mine.”

 

“I could have helped you, Rebecca. I still will, if you’ll let me.” He gently removed her hands and placed his on the sides of her face before pulling back slightly and looking down at her, his voice soft. “What is it that you’re really scared of?”

 

Jacob waited for a moment before he spoke. “She’s scared that you won’t want anything more to do with her, now that you know, Jarod. She’s terrified that you won’t love her anymore. That’s what she’s always been most afraid of; that you’ll reject her, because of what happened.”

 

The younger man glanced up to see the tears in Jacob’s eyes as he spoke, and then looked back down, his own eyes glittering.

 

“Do you really think that, Rebecca? Do you think that, because of the fact that he was the one who hurt you, I wouldn’t want to try and make it better?” He reached down and gently kissed her forehead. “You said that we had infinity, Rebecca, and I want to spend all that time with you. No matter what happened when you were alive, that was then. This is now. If it still hurts, we’ll mend the hurt. But we won’t let it ruin the time that we finally have together, not after all the pain we had to go through to get to this point.” He gently stroked her hair, holding her close. “Sydney once told me that, after you die, you go to paradise. It won’t be paradise to me unless I can spend it with you.”

 

She looked up at him, the pain in her eyes similar to that which she had seen so often in his. He lowered his face, one hand supporting her head and the other resting on her cheek. Gently, tenderly, he touched his lips to hers, feeling her shrink back, away from him. He gathered her closer, trying to show, in the only way he could think of, that his feelings for her hadn’t changed, despite what he now knew had happened. Finally, slowly she responded, the tears slipping down her face again as she relaxed in his arms, her lips pressed to his and her eyes closed. As the kiss ended, he pulled back slightly. Brushing away the shining drops from her cheeks, he smiled down at her, their faces still almost touching.

 

“I still love you, Rebecca. I always will, even more so, because now I know how much you put up with – what you lived through – for me.”

 

“You’ll…feel guilty.”

 

”No, Rebecca.” He shook his head, smiling. “No, I won’t. I’m not going to waste my time here on emotions like that. Not when there are so many other wonderful things that you’re helping me to feel.”

 

“Me?” She shrank back. “How could I…?”

 

”I know you love me, Rebecca, and that gives me the courage to love you, even though I know that I don’t – that I couldn’t ever – deserve someone as good as you.” He ran the fingers of one hand gently down the side of her face. “I just feel so lucky that you’ve given me this chance.”

 

Jacob softly got up off the sofa, knowing that they wouldn’t see him leave, and walked down the stairs. At the gate, he turned back, feeling his brother and Catherine come up on either side of him.

 

“It’s taken a long time.”

 

“It has.” He turned to Catherine. “Is that…all?”

 

”Isn’t it enough?”

 

”More than enough.” He sighed deeply. “But I just wanted to make sure…”

 

”No, Jacob.” She gently placed one hand on his arm. “There’s nothing else, no more that she hasn’t told you. You know about the rest.”

 

He nodded. “If only I’d known about that…”

 

“What would you have done, Jacob?” Sydney looked over at him. “I confess that I could have tried to do something, had I know, but I don’t know exactly what you think you could have done for her. Not considering the way you were then.”

 

Sighing, he turned. “I know. But she went through so much…”

 

”And now she gets her reward.” Sydney watched as Rebecca placed her arms around Jarod's neck and, their faces still close, he carried her into the house. “And he does too, for everything that he went through.”

 

Jacob looked up at the expression on his brother’s face. “I guess we both have a lot of our own nightmares to overcome.”

 

“Take their advice. Don’t waste your time, feeling like that. You know that they forgave you a long time ago. Why let it go on damaging you now?” Catherine smiled. “You know they’ll be happy, so be happy for them and enjoy what you have here. They both know you well enough to realize if you’re hiding things from them, so the only way that you can make sure they don’t see it is to let go of all that and put it behind you. Then you can both really, finally be happy. As you should be. After all,” she laughed, “this is Paradise, right?”
 

The End

 

Series Index

 

Home