Three
Two weeks had passed since Kinga and Griff’s initial flurry of email-based arguments about the set list and publicity. Despite reaching out via emails, text messages and leaving messages on his voice mail, Kinga hadn’t heard a squeak out of him in over ten days.
She needed to talk to the man. She needed to discuss the ball, press releases, interviews...
She also wanted to know whether she’d seen sadness flicker across his face or simply imagined the sexual interest she saw in his eyes.
She couldn’t stop thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, whom he was with...
Kinga shook her head, surprised at the fast, hot flame of jealousy travelling across her skin. She’d met him once—one time!—and he had her acting like an idiot.
God knew what would happen if she spent more time with him.
Sitting in the corner of her comfortable couch, Kinga closed the report she’d been reading and moved her machine from her lap to the coffee table in front of her. She pulled her feet up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around her knees, her eyes invariably drifting toward the heavy silver frame on the mantel of her fireplace.
The photo was taken a week or two before Jas died. They’d spent a weekend skiing Saddleback Mountain and they’d asked a cute ski instructor to take their photograph. Their noses were pink from the cold, their eyes sparkling, their smiles boldly declaring that they were young, beautiful and invincible.
Jasmine had been a ray of sunshine, could make friends with a lamppost and, within a day of reaching the ski resort, knew a dozen people by name. She was the eternal optimist, a free spirit, someone thoroughly in love with life. The daughter of a prominent senator and his equally charismatic wife, Jas had been born with confidence, ebullience and the ability to persuade a rock to crumble. They’d met in kindergarten, bonded immediately and, with them both attending the same exclusive private school, forged an unbreakable friendship.
Determined, intensely bright and vivacious, Jas pulled Kinga, reserved and a little shy, out of her shell, and it was because of Jas that she had a social life.
Jas made her braver and bolder.
Then Jas died...
Kinga wished she could remember Jas without having to recall the soul-destroying events that occurred a decade before. But that was impossible and her mind wandered down that all too familiar, dark path.
It’s all good, Kingaroo, I’ll be fine.
Kinga sighed at the sound of Jas’s voice in her head. It hadn’t been good and nothing was fine.
The memories were as vivid today as they’d ever been. Kinga could still recall the fear in Jas’s mom’s voice when she called on the first day of the new year. She’d asked whether Jas had slept over at her house, because she hadn’t returned home that night. She remembered rushing to the Garwood house and screaming at the police officers, trying to get them to believe Jas wasn’t a runaway, that she hadn’t left home for places unknown. Walking Cousin’s Island, paralyzed with fear as she papered windows, poles and cars with missing-person flyers.
Stopping now and again to cry and pray her heart out for Jas’s swift return. Wishing she’d never left Jas at that party...
A few days later they found her body, lying under snow in a ditch on the side of the road. The police determined it was a hit-and-run and the culprit had never been identified.
Jas’s on-off boyfriend, Mick Pritchard—the boy who grew up next door to Kinga and whom she’d known even longer than she’d known Jas—told her, and anybody who would listen, that she was to blame for Jas’s death.
He was right.
Kinga placed her face in her hands, desperately wishing she’d hung around and given Jas a lift home as she’d promised she would. That instead of leaving with some long forgotten boy, she’d stayed, seeing in the new year with her best friend.
Kinga reached for her wine, draining the last inch in one long swallow.
She was still close to Jas’s parents but the loss of their daughter had changed them in ways that were almost impossible to understand. Her father, Seth, still served as Maine’s senator but, to Kinga, it was like the light within him had dimmed. Viola, Jas’s mom, rarely left their sprawling estate.
Kinga missed Jas but she also missed the loving, fun people who’d once been Jas’s parents. But thankfully, they’d never blamed her for what happened that night.
Unlike Mick, who was relentless in his attacks. He’d confronted her after the funeral and, over the past ten years, on each anniversary of Jas’s death, he sent her either a text message, a voice message or an email, sometimes all three, reminding her that Jas would be alive if it weren’t for her actions. And he always, always sent her the link to the sales video on his company website...
“When I was twenty, I lost the love of my life, Jas Garwood, Senator Garwood’s only daughter, in a hit-and-run accident. Her best friend, Kinga Ryder-White, was supposed to see her home from a New Year’s party and failed to do so. Jas chose to walk and, in the mist and rain, was hit by a vehicle. I have chosen to dedicate my life to helping others by providing security services.”
She didn’t need Mick’s reminders. She lived with the consequences of her actions every single day. She had not only lost her best friend, but she was the reason the Garwoods had lost their only child.
Jas’s death had changed Kinga, too. She never, ever allowed herself to act rashly, seldom made new friends or dated. She analyzed every decision she made, overthought everything.
And she’d vowed she would never voluntarily love someone so much again.