by Nancy Adams
This sudden resolve settled Sam a little and he was able to eat a little more and smile at Jenna every now and then. Once they’d finished their meals, Jenna and Jess began chatting about things and Sam felt joy in watching them. They were so cordial with each other, his daughter opening up to Jenna in a way that had happened all too rarely over the last five-and-a-half years. What kind of fate do I own? he asked himself. One that gifts me the light of love and then snatches it away. First Marya. Then Claire. And now it shows me how callous I am. Shows me how good Jenna can be, and how wretched I am. Did I ever love her? I think so. Just not like that. Not the light. I loved her for what she is—her loyalty and commitment to us—and for the love she shows me. But there was never any meeting of the light. No convergence of the souls. Do I remain stuck here like this for the rest of my life?
“Daddy,” Jess said from across the table, breaking him out of his thoughts.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“I was just saying to Jenna that we should visit the Cliff Face and go camping in the woods some time. Jenna was telling me about some beautiful places I’ve never seen.”
“That would be nice,” he said blankly.
Jenna was looking at him then. In fact, she’d been studying him all the way through dinner. He’d been so distant, only a vague image of himself. She initially put it down to the day’s dramas. But there was something else too. Some other thought that had been strangling Sam not just since today, but for weeks, perhaps months now. It had been these thoughts that had consumed Jenna the night she’d called Sam and declared that she would try. She felt him slipping away from her and when she had considered them parting, her heart had instantly screamed out in pain. She realized then that she loved him with all of that swollen heart and would do anything to be the woman he needed. Then, as he had been flying to New York, she had perceived suddenly with a feeling of regret that she had no right to place such an ultimatum upon his head as to expect him to send his daughter away. If she was to keep him, she would have to engage herself with Jess more.
That night, after she’d called him, Jenna went to see Jess and the two had had a heart to heart. They agreed that they each loved Sam and that they had no right to burden him with their arguments. After a few tears and some heartfelt words, the two made a pact to be better toward one another.
“Remember when we walked out through the field of bluebells?” Jenna asked Sam at the dinner table.
“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “There’s some beautiful places out there in Colorado. Remember the creek we found about four hours north of the house?”
“How could I forget,” Jenna exclaimed gently, before turning to Jess and continuing excitedly, “Me and your father had walked out for about two hours through forests, going up all the time. Then we walked along a ridge of rock for about an hour, sometimes only a few feet of rock to walk along. We ended up making it over a slight peak, and when we did, we found a bowl in the rock, probably a meteor crater, all covered in trees and plants that shaded it from above. It took us an hour to make it down there, having to slide on our butts and hold each other.”
As she told the story, Sam closed his eyes and brought himself back to that point in time. He had been so proud of her that day. It had been her idea to climb down into the creek. Sam had thought it too risky without ropes, but she’d insisted, daring him on. In the end, they had been rightfully rewarded for their endeavor.
“So when we reach the bottom,” Jenna went on, “we find that there’s running water there, as well as this beautiful lagoon, all the waterways worn into the rocks over centuries, and all those trees and bushes grown over it over the same length of time. We wondered whether another human being had ever been down there.”
“So what did you do?” Jess asked, her face full of wonder.
Jenna grinned, showing off her white teeth, and said, “We went for a swim. It was very cold water, but it felt good to swim somewhere that had probably never been swum.”
“Can you take me there?”
“We’ll have to see. It was hard enough for us to get down there and then back up. Exhausting in fact. I’m not sure that a ten-year-old has enough strength.”
“I bet I do.”
Sam smiled at his daughter’s eagerness.
“I think it’d be better,” he said to Jess, “if we lay off risking your life for a while. Especially after what happened today. Is that a deal?”
“It’s a deal,” Jess let out unenthusiastically.
“You know, thinking about it,” Jenna said, looking at Jess with a smile, “I reckon you’d easily make it to that creek.”
This last remark had the result of making Jess’s mouth yawn open into a massive smile.
“I could,” the girl affirmed.
After dinner, Jess went up to bed early as she was still feeling dizzy and the pills she’d been given in the hospital made her drowsy. Once she was in bed, Jenna and Sam walked out into the garden toward the vineyard. It was early evening and the spring sun was disappearing underneath the horizon, casting the picturesque gardens in twilight, the lines of poplar trees, the manicured lawns and stone paths that weaved through them and the neatly cut bushes. When they reached the wine shed, they ducked inside and poured themselves each a glass of red wine straight from a tap in one of the wooden casks.
They then left the large shed and began walking between the rows of red grapes that hung in bunches, sipping their wines as they strolled along in silence. When they reached the center of the vineyard, they stopped and looked out toward the last slice of sun as it sunk itself into the middle of the horizon that spread out in rolling hills before them. Jenna moved herself into his flank and Sam instinctively placed his arm around her hip.
“It’s so beautiful how red that last blade of sun gets before the whole thing disappears,” she remarked.
“Yes,” Sam answered blankly.
She sighed and as the air escaped her lips, she felt terribly hollow.
“Where are you, Sam Burgess?” she suddenly put to him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, turning to her from the sun.
When he saw her eyes, he cringed. They were so sad, so despondent, and he felt fully responsible for that fact. Once more, he was the cause of misery.
“You’ve been so absent these last months,” she went on. “I thought it was perhaps my behavior that was doing it. But I think it’s something else.”
Sam sighed deeply, before saying, “I don’t know, Jenna. I can never find balance in anything. I had it once, but then it went. Now I live in opposing realities all the time. The company is working, but then I come home and that’s not.”
“But we can make it work,” Jenna said in a despairing voice, grabbing ahold of his arm as she did. “I know that I’ve been so off lately. I was lost. But I realize now that I need to do something. You tried to tell me that, but like a spoiled child I refused to listen. I know now that I have to start living once again for myself before I can start living for other people. I want to start living for myself. I want to start living for you. For Jess. Today I felt a light slowly going out inside of me at the thought of her death. After all our arguments and all the things she’s said to me and done to me, I still found the prospect of her death terrifyingly unbearable. I feel something for you and her and I have to fight for that.”
Her speech, so full of heart, only aggravated his feelings of remorse even more and his heart sank further.
“I just don’t know where I am,” he said softly to her. “I need to get away for a while. Get my head straight.”
Jenna shivered and let out a feeble whimper.
“I understand,” she said sniffing. “I think it will do us both good. I’ll get busy writing and you can get your head straight. Plus, Maud comes back next week, so Jess will be looked after. You should go and—”
At that moment, Sam’s phone rang in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the screen. It was a number that he’d never seen before and his hear
t almost stopped when he realized that it could be her.
Turning back to Jenna, he said with a reddened face, “I have to get this. It’s John Calloway.”
With a sad face full of tears, Jenna nodded and said that he should.
With a thumping heart, Sam walked along the row of grapes all the way back to the wine shed, praying all the time that it didn’t ring off. When he reached the inside of the shed, he took a seat on a small wooden bench and gazed at the phone for a second, unable to think what to do. He pressed green on his phone, brought it up to his ear and stuttered, “Hi.”
For a moment there was nothing but the sound of jaded breathing on the other end. As Sam waited for the sound of her voice with bated breath, he could hear his own heartbeat drumming in his head. The longer she said nothing, the louder it drummed, until she replied in a despondent tone, “Hey, Sam.”
The moment he heard her voice, he felt very heavy and sank into the bench. He felt a mass of light explode in his soul and it was so strong that it wearied him. He momentarily forgot where he was or who was waiting out in the vineyard for him.
“It’s so good to hear your voice,” he said softly, a smile pursed on his lips.
Again she sighed on the other end.
“I don’t even know why I’m calling,” she said.
“Because you want to speak to me. Isn’t it obvious?”
“But do I? Or should I? I mean, why call me backstage like that? If you were so desperate to see me after all this time, then why not come find me?”
“You told me not to come looking. You said it was over and I believed you.”
“Then why did you give me your number?”
“Because seeing you there the other night opened up something inside of me that I haven’t felt since I last saw you, Claire. I realized that everything I’ve done these past years has been a substitute for you. I threw myself into Techsoft because I didn’t think of you so much while I worked. I got with Jenna because I didn’t think of you so much while I was with her. But in all of that, I was only lying to myself and—”
“STOP!” she cried down the phone.
He instantly did as she said, his heart racing once more in his chest.
“You can’t go and break into other people’s lives like that,” she said tearfully. “I was happy. I have a boyfriend. We live together. We plan to have a family. We plan to become doctors together. Everything is planned. Just like everything was planned last time and you had to come along.”
“But I left you alone, Claire. You carried on with your life. Went to college. I had to stay behind. Bury my wife. See to my daughter. See to my company. All the time with the ghost of you hanging over me. I felt sunk then.”
“You have no clue as to how much you hurt me, Sam. No clue.”
She said this last part with obvious scorn in her voice and it made him shudder. He had heard that same scorn the last time they had met in that darkened hospital room all those years ago. That scorn had turned him away from her once before and it was threatening to again.
However, he sensed that he’d held her heart then. And he sensed that he also held it now.
“I’m sorry for everything I did to you back then,” he said softly. “I never had a chance to apologize before and I want to now. You must believe me, Claire. I never wanted to hurt you in any way or be a hindrance in your life. I don’t want to be now. If you wish it, I’ll put the phone down and never call you again. Is that what you want?”
There was a pause, which only lasted a few seconds, but to Sam it felt like it lasted for days, his rapid heartbeat slowing to a brisk thump as he waited for her reply.
“What do you want from me?” she eventually asked.
“To meet,” he quickly replied. “To meet and to talk. To speak with each other and to share a little space for however long each of us is comfortable with. I want no pressure on us. All I want is to have a little of your time. We meet and if you don’t want to again—like I said—I’ll leave you alone.”
Claire sighed once more, clearly deliberating it all.
“Okay,” she replied curtly. “But you’re never to call this number, do you hear?”
“Yes.”
“I will text you with a time and a location for us to meet. It will be very discreet and out of the way. If you can’t make it just text me ‘no,’ nothing else. I will then arrange another time. You are never to text anything other than ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and never are you to text me unless I require an answer. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll text you in a day or two.”
With that, she put the phone down on him and Sam instinctively held it to his chest, against his rapid heart. Even though the sun was almost gone beneath the horizon, the inside of the shed was so illuminated then, everything appearing to glow when seen through his fevered eyes. He sensed that something was happening in his life, something special and that after spending so long asleep, he was finally waking up.
It was then that he noticed Jenna’s sad face at the door.
Feeling instantly guilty, he went red, but quickly controlled himself, the light in the room going faint as he stood up from the bench.
“How’s Johnny?” she asked as she came inside.
“He’s good. He was just calling about the Joy-Box beta launch. There’s a couple of niggles with some of the online software that need correcting. He was just updating me on the progress.”
“Oh!” she let out as she came over to him.
When she was in front of him, she gazed into his eyes and said, “I think you should go and get your head straight for a week or so, Sam.”
He gave her a half-smile and nodded his head.
After that, they hugged and walked back to the house.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When she put the phone down, Claire instantly burst into tears. She was sitting in the middle of Central Park by the lake. She’d ridden the Metro all the way there for the single purpose of calling Sam. She felt ashamed to call him anywhere near her apartment, as if it was somehow worse to do it on the streets that she walked with Paul.
Now, as she felt the after effects of speaking to Sam for the first time in so long, Claire was certain that she still loved him and always had. Hearing his voice had filled her with such a warm feeling and it had taken all her restraint not to confess her heart to him there and then. She knew she couldn’t let her feelings run away with her, but it was hard to be so stern with him. She had felt herself cast back to that time she had spent with him. Those early days when everything was innocent and they hadn’t even kissed yet. It was all but a dream to her then and she’d never believed that it would become a reality. She had allowed herself to love him fully, expecting it to be proven as folly. But their conversations had become more intense, more open, and they’d drifted off together as they’d talked. He’d told her so much then; of his family, his feelings of alienation, Marya, her illness and the despair that he felt. Claire, in turn, had confessed herself to him too and slowly within the darkness they had found each other.
It appeared now, that after so long, they were once again discovering each other in that darkness.
Wiping her eyes, Claire stood up from the bench and began walking out of the park. It was evening time and the place was pretty empty. Once she was out, she crossed the street and went downstairs into the subway. As she walked down the stone steps, her heels echoing on each one, her mind whirred with everything. Sam’s words recoiled in her head over and over, and she rejoiced in their sound. His voice was just as she always remembered it, just as it always had been when she’d hear it every now and then when her mind slipped into reverie. When she would, his voice would come to her carried along the breeze and into her ears, reminding her of him once again. In truth, he’d not been more than a week from her thoughts at any time these last five-and-a-half years. She’d get six or seven days along without thinking about him and then all of a sudden she’d see him in her mind o
r hear an echo of his voice.
He was never far away from her.
Of course, she’d dismissed it, pushed it to the side and faced Paul with a smile. But no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she changed the channel when it was about him, ignored a news stand because there was a front cover of him in the rack, been curt with someone because they’d mentioned him, made sure that none of his products were in her home, no matter how much she did these things, Sam was always there somewhere, like a ghost. He was always standing over her in everything she did.
She stepped onto the train and sat down in the empty carriage. She felt very heavy and leaned wearily back against the seat, feeling herself dragged into it. Such overcast thoughts troubled her now and had been troubling her all week. So many times had she sat on her own holding the ominous napkin in her trembling hands as she gazed down at it that the ink had become smeared by her perpetual grasping of it. She had become obsessed and she was drunk with the thought of him. It had taken all her concentration on the wards to pay attention to the doctors and stay alert for the patients. If Sam Burgess had attacked her mind once a week before, he was inflicting countless strikes every hour now.
Around Paul she had been a ghost of herself. She’d done her best to put on a brave face and avert her feelings for Sam. She’d even thrown the napkin out three times in the week. Twice she’d retrieved it before the trash had been emptied, but once she’d had to physically climb into her apartment’s large refuse container and physically root through the garbage to get it back. She didn’t even need to retrieve it, she’d already memorized the number, and the only reason Claire had felt so relieved when she’d pulled it out of the garbage was because it was a piece of him. On it was an example of him: his handwriting.
