The years passed faster than I’d ever imagined possible. Before I knew it, I was in the hospital, giving birth. The pregnancy went smoothly. Lacey stayed with me during the labor. Grant, Forrester and Grady crowded into the delivery room as soon as the baby was born.
They were his uncles. All three were named godfathers. Lacey was my emergency contact. We lied and said she was my sister so she could stay with me throughout the procedure. At the christening, Grady told me to call the baby Sam, after Jackson’s father, and I did.
At first, when I’d finally come to terms with Jackson’s death, when I’d at last realized he was never coming back, I was grief-stricken. However, two months after Wolf’s death, a third Lobo was found dead in his bed. His throat was slit in the night and none of the guards heard a thing. That gave me my first glimpse of hope.
Maybe Jackson wasn’t dead.
Maybe he was finishing the job he’d started, and would come back to me when he was done.
On the day of Sam’s birth, I received a letter. It was only a few words.
*
I’M KEEPING MY PROMISE TO YOU. When I’m done, I’ll come back to you.
*
I KEPT IT TO MYSELF, but a few months later another Lobo turned up dead and I knew Jackson was keeping his promise. It was going to take him longer than he’d thought, but he was alive, and that’s all that mattered.
But the passing time was so difficult.
I was always painfully aware of his absence. My baby’s father was missing. He missed the first birthday, and the second, and the third. Every year I counted on my fingers the number of Lobos left alive, but it was always too many.
Every day that passed was only half the life it was supposed to be. Half the happiness.
I had Sam, but the other half, Jackson, wasn’t there.
And as the years stretched on, I eventually stopped counting the days till Jackson came back. I settled into my life, cherished the beautiful gift Jackson had given me, and put all my efforts into raising my son, giving him the best childhood possible, and making myself the best person I could.
I went back to school and learned all about wine. I learned how the grapes were grown, how the wine was made, and how the world’s best restaurants selected the wines to accompany the food they served. I started my own business as a wine buyer, discovering the best local vintages from the farms in the valley and bringing them to the finest restaurants in San Francisco and along the coast, where they could be discovered and enjoyed by the whole world.
On the night of the tenth anniversary of my meeting Jackson, I decided I’d waited long enough. I had no idea how may Lobos were still alive. So much time had passed that I no longer feared them coming to look for me. They must have known someone was hunting them down and killing them one by one, but they didn’t know who it was or why he was doing what he was doing.
They’d forgotten Wolf, and the night Jackson had started his blood feud, and so would I.
On that tenth anniversary, I got Lacey to babysit Sam, and I went back to the Motel on the highway near Reno. I borrowed Grant’s bike for the ride, and I rode out in the white dress I’d been wearing the night Jackson found me. I still had it.
On the way to the motel, it started raining and I couldn’t believe it. It never rained in those parts. The rain soaked me to the skin, and by the time I got to the motel my makeup was running down my face, just the way it had that night ten years before.
I walked into the bar and my eyes went immediately to the spot where Jackson had been sitting the first time I entered. The spot was vacant now, and it pained my heart to see it. Even though I hadn’t expected Jackson to be there, even though all logic told me there was no way on earth he’d be there, I somehow had held out a hope that he might be sitting there, waiting for me, like he had last time.
But of course he wasn’t.
One thing was the same though, the bartender.
“Bartender,” I said, “a beer.”
The bartender’s eyes widened when he saw me. “Miss, are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You look—”
“What?” I said, my eye steady.
He shrugged, and got me a beer. When he came back with it he said, “Miss, this is going to sound very strange, but something about you makes me feel like I’m looking at a ghost.”
I smiled at him. “I get that feeling all the time,” I said. “Every time I look in the mirror.”
“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”
I looked him in the eye. “In another lifetime.”
He left me to serve another customer, shaking his head as he left. I finished my beer and when I was done, I asked him if he rented the rooms. He said he did and I asked if room three was available. It was and I took it.
I held my breath as I entered the room. It was as if I was walking back into a night from my own past, ten years earlier. Everything that had happened between me and Jackson was as fresh in my mind as if it had just happened the day before. We’d had such a short time together that I could account for literally every second of it.