Shaking my head, I brush past him to pick up my jacket. I’m not going to let him do this to me again, so he can just walk away when he’s finished. Instead, I do the mature thing and ignore him.

“Are we going?” I ask pointedly.

His eyes run over me as he nods. “Lead on, Miss Harris,” he replies and moves to the open door. Making my way past him with my head held high, I cringe when he whispers, “and I’ll keep my eyes on the rear.”

* * *

Phillipe keeps a close eye on Gemma as she practically runs down the stairs to the front door. When she gets there, she wrenches it open and goes outside. She has left her hair out this evening, and as he moves closer, he can see the foyer lights shining off it, making it look like spun gold. Her hair appears so rich and luxurious that he wants to reach out and run his fingers through it. Considering the rigid way she’s standing with the determined look on her face, he should take the opportunity to do so, just to see her reaction.

When he reaches her on the front step, he looks down at her annoyed expression and suggests, “Let’s walk.”

Moving forward and passing her, he buttons his dark coat up the center of his body.

The wind is howling tonight, so he pulls up the collar on his coat and slides his hands into the pockets, looking over to Gemma as she zips up her jacket.

“Where are we going?” she asks again, following behind him.

Looking over his shoulder, he tells her, “To the river.”

* * *

“I didn’t even know there was a river here,” Chantel told him, smiling, as she held his hand tightly.

Today, he decided to take her down there to have lunch. Running down the back of his property, the secluded area was always so peaceful.

“Well, now you know. It’s just a little bit of a walk. You don’t mind, do you?”

 She gripped the crook of his arm. “You’ll guide me?”

Reaching around with his free hand to touch her bottom lip, he told her, “Every step of the way.”

* * *

He’s taking me down to the river. The river. That’s all I can think as I follow silently, the darkness now mocking my uncertainty and me. I don’t know what I’m feeling as I watch him stride along the dirt path between the rows of grapes.

I know all about this river and about what happened here, and eventually, I know that I would need to ask him questions regarding it. The one thing I don’t count on is him taking me down to it, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

“You’re very quiet back there. Are you okay?” His voice cuts through the cool night air.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, trying to show bravery in the face of complete consternation.

He stops on the path, just a few feet ahead of me, and turns around. In the inky blackness that’s surrounding me, I can’t make out his details exactly, but I know his eyes are fixated on mine. As I draw closer toward him, I try to appear much more courageous than I am.

“Are you sure? Because usually you are much more chatty.”

That makes bravery a little easier because all I feel at that statement is annoyance. “I’m a journalist, remember? It’s my job to be chatty and ask questions.”

I finally stop in front of him. As I look up into his perceptive eyes, his mouth pulls into a grim line. The wind is whipping around us, and I can feel my hair ruffling in the breeze as his shifts and falls down over his eyes.

“Yet you haven’t asked me one.”

I blink, trying to push everything I have heard, read, and been told out from my mind, so I can start fresh. I need to start blank and let him tell me the story, but first, I find myself asking something I do not expect. “Do you still feel her here?”

The silence that follows my question is so discernible that I can almost reach out and touch it. I hear his feet shift as he bends slowly, lowering his face to within inches of mine. His tormented expression comes into sharp focus through the night.

Quietly, he asks, “Do you?”

Licking my lips, I nod once. “Yes, I feel like she’s here.”

“Right now?”

He is still staring at me, revealing his curiosity. Did he think he was the only one?

“No, earlier,” I admit as the wind wraps around me before it wails through the vines.

“But not now.” He agrees before he instructs, “Close your eyes.”

I swallow deeply and do as he’s asked.

“Listen to the wind, Gemma.”

I hear it whistle as it shuffles the leaves on the ground.

“What do you hear?” he questions in a whisper.

I can tell he’s moving. I keep my eyes shut and listen as the wind gusts again. This time, it seems to be an almost mournful sound as it blows through the branches, filtering into my mind.

“What do you hear?”

Insistently, his hypnotic voice slides over me. As the question is repeated, directly in my ear this time, I flinch at his proximity. “I hear the wind.”

His warm lips press against the lobe of my ear. “And how does it sound?”

How did it sound? I don’t know. I listen closely as it whips up once more, resembling a scream through the air. The sound is as chilling as it is heart wrenching, and it leaves me with goose bumps on my flesh. I’m unsure if those are from him at my ear or from what I’m feeling. “Sad. It sounds sad.”

Without warning, his mouth is gone. Moving around me, he starts walking again. I follow after him as he murmurs, “She’s here.”

* * *

“Tell me what’s here,” Chantel asked softly.

“Why are you whispering?” he questioned.

He let go of her hand and moved toward the mossy bank.

“I don’t know. It feels like I should.”

Chuckling, he turned toward her. “Well, it is peaceful. I’ll give you that.”

“Yes,” she whispered, stepping toward him. “All I can hear is the water. Maybe the water and the birds? Is that what’s moving around above me?”

He looked up into the tree branches above her head and spotted the little yellowhammers chirping as they jumped from branch to branch.

“Yes, it’s those little yellow birds I told you about.”

As she reached out toward him, he met her hand halfway, entwining their fingers.

“Are they happy? They seem happy.”

Pulling her into his embrace, he wrapped her arms around him behind his back. She tilted her face up toward him. As the fading sunlight touched her cheeks, he thought she looked like an angel.

“Yes, they’re happy.”

A smile tipped her ripe red lips as she admitted, “Good, so am I.”

* * *

Phillipe can hear the leaves crunching beneath Gemma’s feet as she gets closer. He has just made it through the clearing and is now down by the rapid water. He can’t quite bring himself to look at the river, but just hearing it flow over the snagged branches and large boulders brings him peace that he doesn’t yet understand.

“Is this where—”

“Yes,” he answers before she can finish her question.

They both know what she was going to say. Voicing it merely acts like a knife in an already painful and gaping wound. Any noise from leaves underfoot disappear, and he knows that she has come to a standstill. He waits patiently, knowing that anything that needs to be said has to begin with her. He’s too raw to initiate anything.

“Did it happen at night?” she asks, her voice quiet but steady behind the difficult question.

“Not at first,” he replies. “It was a beautiful day. It was the best we’d had for months,” he explains, turning to look back at Gemma. He can barely make her out, but what he can see is that she has her arms wrapped around her waist as though she is holding herself together.

“How?” she finally whispers.

That’s when he moves. Making his way toward her, he notices she’s cautiously monitoring his every step. He wonders about what she’s thinking. Does she want to run? Is she scared?

How ironic is it that the last woman he brought down here was completely at ease with him. She trusted him with her very life and trusted him not to fail. And yet, fail her, he had.

However, right now, standing before him is a woman who let him inside of her body and trusted him with her care, yet she looks like she’s ready to bolt at the first wrong move he might make.

Walking around her, he notices she does everything but physically dig her heels into the grass to keep from moving. When he stops behind her, he places his palms on her shoulders, feeling her stiffen.

“I thought you knew how, Gemma,” he rasps into her ear. “You read the papers. You watch the television. What do they say happened?”

* * *

I take a deep breath as I focus on the water that is moving at a startling pace before me. It’s only a few feet from us, but as his hands firmly hold my shoulders, I can’t help but think he can easily make me—

No, that’s ridiculous! I remind myself.

This man has held me, touched me, and been inside my body. He would never do something like that, yet that is exactly what everyone is determined to sell to the world. Could this man, Phillipe, really have done what the stories claim?

I’m so busy thinking about all the frightening and very real possibilities behind the statements I have read regarding this man that I don’t realize his mouth is by my ear again.

“What do they say happened, Gemma?”

I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to voice the terrible things I have read, and somewhere in the fearful part of my mind, maybe I don’t want to give him ideas.

“Tell me,” he demands, more forceful this time.

“They say you were involved,” I divulge, shying away from the details.

“Gemma, Gemma, Gemma,” he admonishes. “That’s not all they say. You know it, and I know it.”

Tightly gripping my own waist, I tell him the truth he is tenaciously searching for. It’s ugly when it slips past my lips. “They say you brought her down here. They say it was your fault.”

His fingers tense on my shoulders and on an anguished rush of air, he answers, “They were right.”

* * *

“Phillipe!Really? Here?”

Chantel giggled as he started to undo the buttons on her shirt.

“Why not here? It’s quiet and peaceful. You’re here. I’m here.”

“Kiss me.”

Laughing, she grasped his hands, tugging him closer.

Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth to hers. “Always.”

* * *

Phillipe turns his nose into Gemma’s hair and takes a deep breath. She smells sweet and spicy. As he grips her shoulders, listening to her breathing accelerate, he knows she is scared.

He isn’t sure what she’s scared of, but he knows fear is starting to trickle through her veins, making its way up her spine.

“Nothing is as beautiful or peaceful as watching the purity of an untainted soul leave the world,” he murmurs, placing his lips against Gemma’s cool cheek. “She looked right at me, right at me. Do you know what she told me?”

Gemma turns her head, and her eyes meet his. She mouths, “No.”

“She told me she saw lights.” He closes his eyes, releasing Gemma’s shoulders. “She was blind, and even she was seeing the fucking lights. I told her not to look at them, Gemma,” he explains, feeling the desperation behind every word leaving his mouth. “I told her, but she didn’t listen to me.”

Jamming his hands back into his pockets, he moves around her and makes his way back to the edge of the water. This time, he makes himself look at the swirling current.

“The first day we ever came down here, we had a picnic. It was beautiful—a perfect moment and a perfect day. So, of course, I wanted to come back. I wanted to paint her here, but the second time we came back, things changed.”

Leaves crunch, and then she is beside him. Gemma reaches out and takes his hand with hers. The wind picks up and ruffles through their hair. Phillipe closes his eyes as he pictures her beside him instead.

“I wanted to paint you. You told me I could, so I brought you back here. That was the day you went away.”

* * *

I hold Phillipe’s hand, trying to extend my sympathies. I try to show that he can trust me as he stands beside me, talking to a woman who is no longer here. In that moment, as the wind picks up and swirls around us both, I look out across the water to the opposite bank. I stop and focus on a shadow. No, maybe it’s a figure. It stands there, looking back at us. It’s quietly judging, quietly watching.