The ring. The ring. What was it about the ring that was bothering me—-had been bothering me—-so much?
“So I guess . . .” Mark had drifted toward the balcony. The temperature had already begun to rise, warming the night air. “I can just move on now, like you said.”
“Well,” I said, following him, gratified that Jesse hadn’t released me. I was lucky, he never would. “If there’s nothing holding you back. I’m pretty sure Zack’s not going to be putting any more flowers on Jasmin’s grave, that’s for sure. That prosecutor seemed to hate his guts, so I’m guessing he’s probably going to charge him with everything in the book. What will probably happen is—-”
“Mark?”
The voice, sweet as nectar, seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
And then I saw her—-just an amorphous glow, at first, like mist rising from the sea. Then she became more solid, the mist shifting into the shape of a beautiful slender girl—-a girl I recognized, because I’d been looking at pictures of her all night.
Jasmin.
“Mark?” she said again, and smiled when she saw him. “Oh, Mark, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
It didn’t matter that she was floating twenty feet in the air, just off Zakaria Farhat’s balcony. It didn’t matter to Mark, anyway.
When she lifted her slender hand toward him, he raced to take it, floating as lightly as she was. You’d never think he was the same guy who, a few hours before, had very nearly killed me, first by unleashing a meteorological nightmare on me, then by swearing to kill his murderer, and causing that murderer to turn on me.
Well, I’d caused Zack to turn on me, I guess. But it had been for a good cause.
Now Mark was in Jasmin’s arms, softly murmuring her name, as she crooned his back. A moment later, there was a celestial burst of light—-their two souls joining as one—-and they both disappeared, together forever, into the afterlife.
“God,” I said, when I was sure they were gone—-and equally sure the tremble in my voice wouldn’t betray the fact that I’d been weeping a little as I watched them. “I hate Valentine’s Day.”
“I know you do, querida.” Jesse took my hand firmly in his own. If he suspected I’d been crying, it didn’t show. “Let’s go home.”
We were driving past the beach—-the one where he’d planned on proposing to me—-when I finally realized what it was that had been bothering me about the ring.
“Stop the car!” I commanded.
He slammed on the brakes. “What is it? A cat? Did I hit it?”
“No, you didn’t hit a cat. Pull over.”
“Susannah, I can’t pull over. Can’t you see? It says no parking here. We’ll get a ticket.”
“Jesse, it’s nearly midnight on the night of one of the biggest storms of the century. No one is around. We’re not going to get a ticket. Just pull over.”
He parked illegally, then followed me as I leaped from the car and ran to the steps that led down to the beach. “Susannah, I don’t think this is a good idea. The tide is very high, and there’s no moon. It’s—-”
“You have a penlight. Come on.”
“How do you know I have a penlight?” He sounded bemused.
“Because you’re a medical student. Hurry.”
He was right about it being dark, of course, and about the tide being high. The waves were still agitated from Mark’s storm, though the surf was dying down a little.
Still, there was only the tiniest slice of beach on which to stand, and even then, the wind from the sea was more biting than bracing. There was no possible way to make a bonfire, because all of the driftwood was soaking wet from the rain, and of course we had no picnic basket, because we’d left it—-and the sparkling wine—-back in my dorm room at the Virgin Vault.
But we had privacy. There was no one else anywhere on the beach, because no one else was stupid enough to come near the bay in weather like this, in the middle of the night.
“Susannah,” Jesse said, wrapping his arms around me as the wind whipped my long hair against us both. “What are we doing here? It was much warmer in the car.”
“Aren’t you glad you can feel cold, though?” I asked, hugging him back. “You used to not be able to. You used to not be able to feel cold, or hot, or anything.”
“I could still feel, Susannah,” he said, holding me closer. “Just emotions. Not the weather. Which actually there was something to be said for.”
“Where did you get the ring?” I asked.
“What?”
“Where did you get the ring?” I shouted so that he could hear me above the pound of the surf. “Really? I know you said it was your mother’s, and before that, it was your grandmother’s. But Jesse, I know you came here with nothing. Nothing except the clothes on your back. I was with you. So where did you get the ring?”
He pushed me away from him—-but not because he was angry, which was my first concern, but so that he could look down into my face in what meager light shone onto the beach from the streetlamps on Scenic Drive so high above our heads.