by Kylie Walker
“Get out!” Derek had heard more than enough. “You do what you have to do and we will do what we have to do and keep Chloe safe. You raised an animal…a monster…he did things to her that would be low by animal standards. She shouldn’t have to suffer through your tirade as well…get out!”
“Derek’s right. You can be as loud as you want about this, Vince…but this isn’t your jurisdiction, thank God. The D.A. here is impartial and he could easily see who the aggressor here was. Now do as Derek said, Vince and leave. At least you can walk out of here with a little bit of dignity. Otherwise, we’ll have security show you the door.” Kevin walked over and opened the door. Vince was still glaring at Chloe. Trevor stepped in between him and his daughter and said,
“You’ve been told what to do, now do it.”
Vince left and after he was gone Derek turned to Chloe and said, “You don’t believe any of that crap, right?”
Chloe reached out and took his hand and said, “No. It took me a long time to get past the lies that I was spoon fed my entire life…but I got there. I’m getting even better with all of you. Thank you…all of you.”
Derek smiled and said, “Now can I tell them our news?”
She smiled back, “Definitely, I think we could all use some good news.”
Derek looked like he was about to burst as he turned to face the little family and said, “Chloe and I are going to have a baby!”
There was a collective celebration. Samantha and Trevor were in tears. They had been given a second chance with the daughter they thought they’d never know, and now a second chance at the grandchildren they thought they would never have.
Chloe was discharged the following day with all of her follow-up appointments with the surgeon that worked on her arm and the plastic surgeon who will consult on the scarring issue once it had healed. Jake got permission from the authorities in Rhode Island for her to go back to New York while the investigation was technically still pending. He told her that the D.A. assured him once more that no matter how much noise Vince Donavan made, he didn’t plan on filing charges. He was sure to point out that this was not Vince Donavan’s jurisdiction.
Derek arranged for his helicopter to pick them up at the private airport not far from the hospital so that she didn’t have to endure the long car ride back to New York. She was feeling quite spoiled as they left the hospital. It took the staff several trips to retrieve all of her flowers, balloons, cards and stuffed animals…Lexi and Brock had sent her a large, stuffed bear and a note that said,
“I was so shocked to hear what happened but I am so glad that you’re okay. Roxi told us about the baby. I can’t even begin to tell you in a note how happy I am for you that things are finally going so well. You deserve it more than anyone I know. I will be home soon and I can’t wait to see you! Congratulations to you and Derek both! Love you.”
Roxi came to see her off and while the men were loading her things into the car that would take them to the airport, Chloe said, “I never got a chance to tell you how sorry I am about the damage to the condo.”
Roxi shook her head. “You’re too much, you know that? I wouldn’t have even given the “mess” a second thought yet if not for your boyfriend.”
“What do you mean?”
“He apparently called a service that his company uses yesterday. Once the police were finished with it, they went to work. I went by there this morning…it looks brand new. I am just so relieved that you’re okay, although you still need your ass kicked for taking that kind of risk.”
Chloe smiled and squeezed her friend’s hand. Roxi wasn’t one to show her feelings in a “normal” way, but she had been there every step of the way and that spoke volumes to Chloe. Once again, she had to take stock of how lucky she was. She looked back over at Derek. Even after all he’d been through himself, he was still thinking of everyone else. She watched him and Jake who she was also feeling grateful for as they talked and laughed near the car. She loved Derek’s smile…it still took her breath away but his gorgeous looks were just a bonus for the man he was inside. Every day…sometimes every hour, he did something to prove once again what an amazing person he is. It was so surreal to her to think about how much her life had changed almost overnight. She would be forever indebted to her friends and her new family, and even to the man she never met who snapped her photo that day in the club and showed it to Derek.
CHAPTER SIX
Samantha had a whole spread set out for them by the time they arrived home. She had apparently been in the kitchen all day cooking.
“You shouldn’t have done all of this,” Chloe told her.
Sam just waved her palm at her and went back out to the kitchen. When she was gone, Trevor looked at Chloe and said, “This is how she deals with stress, she either works, or cooks. She wasn’t going to go in to the office since she knew you were coming home today, so she cooked…all day long.”
“The poor thing. I feel so bad that I’ve brought so much stress on to her…on to all of you.”
“She’ll be fine,” Trevor said, “We all will. She’s just still processing how close we came to losing you again.”
Chloe nodded. The next time Samantha came into the dining room and tried to bustle back out Chloe said, “Samantha sit with me, please.”
Samantha looked reluctant, but she took the seat next to Chloe at the table. Chloe looked at her with soft eyes and said, “I appreciate everything you’re doing, and everything you’ve done…but it’s time for you to relax now. I’m safe…I’m home. We’re going to have a baby!”
Samantha’s face brightened automatically. She was silent for a few minutes and then she swallowed hard and said, “I’m so happy! I really am. I just can’t seem to shake this anxiety. It’s clinging to me even though I know that everyone is okay.”
Chloe nodded and turning her chair towards her mother, she took her hand. “I know that feeling and I hate knowing that you’re experiencing it. It’s like you jump out of your own skin at the slightest sound because you’re just waiting around for something else to happen. I wish I could tell you that was never going to be the case…but I’ve learned the hard way…and I’m sure you have to, that life doesn’t work that way. There’s no “fair share” as we as humans like to believe…if there was, everyone in this room would be exempt from anything bad ever happening again. So, in my humble opinion…and bear with me, I’m new at this…We need to concentrate on the positives. We found each other. We’re all alive and well, getting stronger every day…and guess what?”
“What?”
“You’re going to be a grandmother!”
Sam squealed. “I know! I’m having such a hard time believing that’s true!”
Derek laughed and said, “I am too. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m going to be a father.”
Sam had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling through them.
“My friend Carol told me once that being a grandparent is our reward for getting old. It’s called a reward because technically, you don’t have to work for it or even deserve it. You just have to “Be.” I’ve been so envious of all of my friends for the past few years. It seems like I’m the only one without snapshots to show off or little anecdotes to toss out…” The tears were flowing rapidly down her cheeks now. “One of my best friends has seven granddaughters! She hardly makes it to lunch anymore.” Her silent tears turned into a sob and Chloe leaned over and wrapped her arms around her, bandages and all. “I’m so sorry,” Samantha said when she was able to compose herself. “I don’t know what happened.”
Chloe smiled at her again softly and said, “It’s been a pretty overwhelming couple of months. You don’t have to apologize. What you need to do is start planning on what you want your gorgeous grandchild to call you.”
“I think you look like a Nana,” Derek said with a grin.
“I’d go with Grandmamma,” Trevor said with a wink.
Samantha smiled and said, “What am I, the Queen of England? No, I know
exactly what I want him or her to call me. I want to be a “Granny” like my granny was to me and my mother was to Sarah. In my family, being bestowed with the honor of being called “Granny” meant you’d finally made it to the top of the family tree.” Her eyes filled with tears again and she said, “I wish she could have met you.”
“Me too,” Chloe said. “Granny, it is. But since we’re on the subject of family, I’d love to hear more about ours. I don’t even know my own nationality.”
“My family came over from England in the early nineteen hundreds,” Trevor said. “I did one of those genealogy searches one time on Ancestry.com. We were Welsh and I don’t want anyone to bow to me or anything, but I found out that we were descended directly from Llewelyn II.” They laughed and he said, “After Edward I invaded Wales, my family ended up in England. We weren’t treated very well. We worked as servants for a few hundred years. Somehow, one of my ancestors was able to become a goldsmith and from then on, the family did well. They came to America in 1908 before the wars broke out on both continents. After that, the blood started mixing. We have some Italian and some Puerto-Rican in us which explains the brown eyes I suppose.”
“And maybe the temper,” Derek said with a grin.
“My family has been in America since the early 1800’s,” Samantha said. They came from Norway. Oh! I have a letter from my great-great-great-great-grandfather to one of his brothers. I’ll get it out and let you see it. It tells all about his life here and talks about each family member. I was so happy when I found it in an old trunk my grandmother had. That’s one of the reasons I encouraged Sarah to keep a written diary. I know they say that technology is preserving things forever…but who really knows yet if that’s true?”
“I would love to see the letter,” Chloe said, excited. It felt good to finally know where she came from. “I’d also love to take a look at those journals now too. I think I’m in a better place and I’d really like to get to know Sarah.”
“Of course,” Samantha told her. “Anytime. I’ll find the letter for you after lunch and also let you look through a trunk of your grandmother’s things if you’d like? There are a lot of old photos and birth certificates, things like that in there.”
“That sounds great,” Chloe told her, honestly. She was so looking forward to the fact that she could finally relax and do something without having her mind drift to where Jesse was, what he was doing or when he was coming for her.
They finished their meal and Samantha ushered Chloe into the den to “rest.” She got the box of Sarah’s journals out for her and while Derek and Trevor helped Samantha clean up lunch. Chloe took out one of the journals and held it in her hands. She closed her eyes and wished that for just a second real life could be like a movie and she could channel her sister through the book that was so lovingly worn. She lifted it to her nose and smelled it, and then she opened her eyes and opened it up to the first page.
July 3, 2002
Dear Diary,
I am going to start middle school in a few weeks. I’m nervous, so Mom bought me this book to write my thoughts down in. I’m nervous because where we live a lot of the kids I went to grade school with will have to go to a different middle school. I’m upset because most of my friends are going to Jackson Middle…and I have to go to Washington. I’ll have to start all over making friends. Since you’re new I will tell you quickly about me. I’m Sarah. I have a mom named Samantha and a dad named Trevor. I’m an only child…kind of. On my twelfth birthday my parents told me that I’d been born a twin. I wondered why they waited so long to tell me…but then they said my twin died and I understood. I wouldn’t have understood about death when I was ten. Anyways, sometimes I think about her now. Her name was Sophia and Mom says they never let her see her, but they told her we were identical. That makes it easier for me to imagine her because I know what she would have looked like. I love my mom and dad…a lot. But sometimes I miss having a sister so bad. It’s weird to miss what you never had, but that’s how I feel…like I miss her. I wish she was here to start seventh grade with me…and then to turn thirteen with me so in case I don’t make any new friends at school…I could at least know that my sister would be there with me.
Chloe had to stop there for a few minutes and make herself breathe. For a second, her mind tried to flash back to when she started middle school, but she stopped it. Now was her time to bond with her sister, not to wallow in the grief that was her childhood. She gathered herself and opened the book back up. She read on:
I have been thinking about doing track. I love to run. Running makes me feel free, although I have no idea why I wouldn’t feel that way all the time. I have a good life, but it seems like sometimes I can’t breathe…so I run. I usually run with my dad. We’ve been running together since I was a baby. When I was too small to run, he would carry me in a papoose on his chest first and then his back as I grew. I don’t remember any of that; it’s what Mom told me. My whole life I’ve ran every morning, rain or shine. I wonder if my sister were here, if she would have liked to run with me.
Chloe wiped a tear off her cheek and read on.
Maybe I’ll join the track team. I guess that would be a good way to make friends with people who like the same things as me. Well, I better sign off now, Mom is calling me for dinner. I guess she might be right…as usual. It helped me feel a little better to write all of this down. We’ll see how I’m feeling when it’s time to actually start school.
Sarah drew a round face with its eyes crossed and a tongue sticking out. Chloe laughed and wiped another tear away. She heard someone come in and she looked up and saw Derek there.
“Are you okay?”
She smiled and nodded. “She used to think about me and wonder what I would be like.”
He came over to sit next to her. He put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. Kissing her on top of the head he said, “She thought about you a lot. She used to talk to me a lot about it. She told me she liked to imagine the kind of trouble the two of you could have stirred up together. I thought that was really funny because she really wasn’t the trouble-maker type.”
Chloe laughed and said, “Maybe it was a twins thing and she knew I would be.”
Derek laughed too and Chloe laid her head over against his shoulder and they sat like that for a long time. Chloe’s heart was finally at peace.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next few weeks between some mild morning sickness, her follow-up appointments with her surgery and O.B. doctors and beginning physical therapy, Chloe read through her sisters’ journals. She noticed that at least once a week next to one of her entries, she would draw or color something on the blank page next to it. She enjoyed looking at Sarah’s art work as much as she did reading her posts. Chloe was no artist, but even she could see how talented her sister had been. Her sketches improved rapidly over the years and by the time she made it to high school, she could draw a face that looked like a portrait.
She read every post in chronological order, feeling like she was getting to know her sister a little better every day. She also found out that in spite of not sharing an interest in art, they really did have a lot in common. They both hated carrots, they both loved the beach, and they both lay awake at night and dreamed of who they would marry and how many kids they would have. Sarah was interested in history and she hated math. Chloe was in awe of how much they were alike even though they’d lived such different lives with such different people.
She got to know Trevor and Samantha better not only by visiting with them, but by reading the journals. Sarah talked a lot about her parents in her writings. She had the same angst in her early teen years that other girls had:
“Daddy says I can’t date until I’m sixteen! That’s two years away! Ryan will totally find another girl to like by then!” or about Samantha she had written, “Mom doesn’t see that I’m almost a woman. She wants to buy me little girl clothes and then I feel like I have to wear them so that I don’t hurt her feel
ings. I’ve started taken an extra shirt in my backpack on those days and I only pray she doesn’t have to pick me up early one day and I forget to change.”
She drew a picture of Ryan. He looked like a cute kid to Chloe.
As Chloe read on she had to wonder if both she and Sarah had subconsciously been compelled to keep the journals as a way to communicate with each other. Some of the passages she wrote seemed to be written just for her. On one of the pages where Sarah talked about going to a school dance and winning a track meet, she had written,
“Stay strong, things will get better. It might me stormy now, but the rain won’t last forever.”
It didn’t seem like Sarah had any problems at the time, but it was written when they were fifteen and Chloe remembered that being a particularly bad year for her at home. She was getting older than the old man liked his girls; so thankfully, he had cut back on the sexual abuse. But, the physical abuse grew ten-fold and that summer Marg and Daphne had gone out of town for two weeks and left her alone with him. It had been two weeks that Chloe was sure would even cause people in Hell to shudder.
She read about Sarah’s first date with a boy named Nick:
September 29, 2005
Dear Diary,
“Well as of yesterday, I am finally sixteen. Nick Statler has been asking me out for almost a year now, but Daddy wouldn’t give in. He did take us to the mall a few times and the roller rink and bowling…but he never took his eyes off of us. It wasn’t that we were going to do anything. Nick is a nice boy and he wouldn’t try anything like that…but it’s still a little bit uncomfortable. I can’t believe Nick waited around this whole time. He says it’s because he likes me so much that he couldn’t walk away.
