The Anniversary (Christian Romance)

by Samantha Jillian Bayarr

  Eleanor’s eyes grew wide. “Please tell me you didn’t do it with Spencer.’

  “No! Of course not! He is a good kisser though—but I regret kissing him, because I am still in love with Sam.”

  The two of them giggled.

  Sadie’s expression turned serious. “When I kissed Spencer it felt like I was cheating on Sam.”

  “Maybe you needed to get it out of your system this time before you married Sam. So now you know you really love him enough to choose him a second time. To me, that sounds like real love. Don’t give it up.”

  Sadie’s face drained of all its color. “What if it’s too late? What if I messed everything up by telling him it was over? In his mind it hasn’t even begun yet. He must think I’m a crazy person.”

  Eleanor waved him off. “The guy just got out of a coma. Tell him he was hallucinating.”

  Sadie burst out with laughter. “I can’t do that to him. But I can use what I already know about him to appeal to him. Maybe that would be the best way to handle it.”

  “Are you sure you want him back?”

  Sadie didn’t have to think about it. Her eyes pooled with happy tears as she nodded at the certainty of her answer.

  ****

  Sam had been eying the talkative brunette nearly all evening. He’d tried several times to inch his way closer to her, hoping if he got close enough he would get up enough nerve to ask her to dance. The night was winding down, and the band was in their last set. Suddenly his luck changed. Her friends invited him and his friends to sit with them during a fast song, and he’d taken advantage of his luck, and grabbed two cups of punch before he sat down next to her. Everyone else had been paired off except the beautiful brunette. Sliding smoothly into the wooden folding chair next to her, he introduced himself as casually as he could—despite the fact he was so nervous he fought for control of his voice.

  She held out a hand and he took it, lingering over her words.

  “I’m Sadie Marie Hall. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Samuel Edward Livingston.”

  Sam gestured toward the cups of pink liquid that he’d placed on the table in front of her. “I brought you some punch. I thought you might be thirsty from dancing.”

  Sadie took the punch and looked it over, deciding against it. Instead, she held out her hand to him once again. “Would you like to dance?”

  Sam smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Whisking her out onto the dance floor, Sam was relieved when the band played a slow tune. Before he realized, he was cradling the girl of his dreams in his arms, and he could feel the warmth of her lips against his cheek…

  Sadie tiptoed into Sam’s hospital room and stood beside the bed, careful not to wake him. She longed to hold him, but decided against it since he didn’t know her. It was awkward, but pleasant to be in his company again. It comforted her to be near him. He was the only thing that was familiar to her since she’d been dumped into this alternate reality. Though she had enjoyed being with her parents and Eleanor, it brought a foreign feeling that she just couldn’t shake. She hoped it was only the result of knowing that they were all dead in her future existence.

  Watching Sam breathe gave her a sense of comfort almost as if she were home with him. She struggled to remember just what it was that they’d fought about all those years. If memory served her, it was more silence than the bickering over insignificant things that had crippled their marriage.

  The more she tried to remember details, the more they seemed to slip away from her. At the moment, all she could see was the man she loved sleeping peacefully. Unable to resist the urge to touch him, she leaned down and kissed his cheek. She lingered momentarily, enjoying the familiar warmth of his skin. Before she could pull away, his eyes fluttered open and he leaned into her, wrapping his arm around her before closing his eyes again.

  She didn’t want to pull away from him, but she didn’t want him waking up confused over why she was in his arms.

  His throat cleared slightly. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Sadie. I was worried you didn’t get my text.”

  Sadie’s heart slammed against her chest wall as she jerked upright. “What did you say?”

  He lay there motionless. She jiggled him.

  “Sam, please wake up. We have to talk.”

  His eyes fluttered again. “I love you Sadie Marie.”

  She struggled to catch her breath. Was it possible that part of him remembered her? It didn’t seem fair that she should remember everything and he remembered nothing. Was it possible that she was the only one that traveled back in time? If that was the case, was there more than one of her here in this time period? Surely not, or she would have noticed by now, or at least her parents or Eleanor might have.

  Since both her parents and Eleanor had noticed a change in her, it was more probable that she was the only version of herself here in 1961. By the text messages she’d received from Sam from 2011, she had to wonder where he really was. Perhaps since he’d just mentioned the text, his mind was floating around in time because of the coma he’d been in. But how could he send the text messages if he was stuck here with her?

  She jiggled him again. “Sam, do you have your cell phone with you?”

  He rubbed at his eyes. “What are you doing back here? I thought you didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  She was rifling through his things and didn’t look up. “I changed my mind. Where’s your phone?”

  He struggled to sit up. “My phone is at my house. I’m sure they have one at the nurse’s station.”

  “I don’t need a land line; I need your cell phone.”

  He scratched the top of his head as though he was deep in thought. “Cell phone? Why does that sound so familiar?”

  Sadie flipped her head up from the drawers she was rummaging through at the bedside table. “Probably because you just told me you sent me a text—the same text message I got on my Blackberry.”

  He tried to right his groggy expression. “Slow down a little Sadie Marie. Wait—why did I call you that? Did you tell me your full name? Wait—of course you did. It’s Sadie Marie Hall.”

  Sadie sighed impatiently and stared him down, hands on hips. “You know my name because we’ve been married for fifty years, Samuel Edward Livingston.”

  He scrunched his brow. “Just because you know my name doesn’t prove anything. But if we’re married, does that mean that we’ve…” he didn’t finish his sentence, but gestured between them, and Sadie knew what he meant.

  Sadie crossed her arms and tipped the corners of her mouth upward. That was all the answer he needed to put a smile on his face. Heat crept up the back of her neck and rested on her cheeks. She was suddenly feeling shy, and she credited it to her teenage state of existence. The very hormones that drove her to marry Sam in the first place were driving her now.

  CHAPTER 16

  Sadie pulled the cell phone from her purse and showed it to Sam. “I don’t understand it, but for some reason, Eleanor was unable to see it for what it is. Like the universe blocked it from her view. When she saw it, she thought it was a toy. You do see a phone don’t you?”

  Sam examined the Blackberry in his hands, turning it over several times and pushing at the buttons. “It seems to be some sort of futuristic toy. Can you really talk to people on this? Is it like a Walkie Talkie? Where’s the antenna?”

  Sadie thought about it for a minute. “It doesn’t use an antenna. You can talk to anyone on it around the world, and you don’t have to be in close range like a Walkie Talkie, because it operates from cell phone towers and satellites.”

  “Satellites? You mean like Sputnik?”

  Sadie moved to the edge of his bed. “Yes, exactly—well, except they’re all over the world!”

  Sam looked between her and the bed, and back to her and winked. “Are you sure you should be sitting on my bed?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” a familiar female voice said sternly.

  Sadie spun around at the sound of her
mother-in-law’s voice, and then shot to her feet so quickly she felt dizzy. “Claudia, so nice to see you again.”

  The woman looked at her scornfully. “Do I know you, young lady?”

  I keep forgetting I’m not in Kansas anymore!

  Sam’s face boasted a full smile. “Mother, you remember my wife Sadie Marie.”

  His mother gasped, holding her white-gloved hand to her mouth in disbelief.

  They hadn’t met before, and Sam knew that. Was he beginning to remember?

  Sadie shot Sam a warning look. “What he meant was…”

  His mother interrupted. “Young lady, if you’re trying to take advantage of my Sam while he’s ill, I will have you removed from this hospital. Do we understand each other?”

  Sadie could feel the anger welling up in her.

  “First of all, Claudia, he’s my Sam, and he has been for the last fifty years. And second, this is between Sam and me.”

  Sadie regretted the tone of her words, but she had wanted to tell the woman to mind her own business for many years. She had meddled in their marriage and tried to control the two of them their entire married life, all because of the family money.

  Sadie could see the confusion in the woman’s eyes, but she also didn’t miss the look of satisfaction on Sam’s face.

  His mother excused herself with a loud sigh, and Sadie knew her time was limited to the amount of time it took the woman to reach the nurse’s desk and demand they remove her from her son’s room.

  She turned to Sam. “Remind me to ask her forgiveness later.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Have they said when they’re going to let you out of here? We really have to finish talking about this.”

  He reached for her hand and she instinctively placed her hand in his. He lifted it to his lips and kissed the back lightly. “I think I’m supposed to be out of here after the doctor gives me the green light. That’s why my mother is here—to pick me up. How about I meet you at the diner for lunch tomorrow at noon.”

  Sadie smiled. “I’ll be there.”

  ****

  When Sadie arrived at the diner, Sam was already waiting for her—in the booth they always shared. It was destiny, or at least it felt like it to her. She couldn’t believe the extreme change of events, and how she nearly destroyed their future with her foolishness. She loved Sam, there was no denying that, but the thought of starting all over with him brought her excitement mixed with a little dread.

  When their eyes met, Sadie’s heart skipped a beat. It was his dimples. They had always gotten to her. Even at the ripe old age of sixty-eight his dimples managed to charm her. But in recent years, he hadn’t done much smiling. She felt partly to blame. Perhaps she could find a way to remedy that for their new future—that is, if Sam agreed.

  She slid into the booth across from him. “I had to admit, I was a little concerned you wouldn’t show up.”

  He smiled, putting his dimples to work full force. “It’s not every day that a guy is lucky enough to have a girl as cute as you tell him they’ve been married for fifty years. I have to admit I’m more than a little curious. I was dreaming about you before you came into my hospital room yesterday, and I remembered the night we met—at least I think I did.”

  Sadie took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. “That’s wonderful. Believe it or not, it’s even tough for me to accept, and I’m the only one that seems to have a full memory intact of our past—or future, or whatever it is.”

  He leaned in across the table. “There were a lot of guys asking you to dance that night. Why me?”

  Sadie’s heart felt like it dropped to her shoes.

  “I fell in love with you the first time I saw you. Over time, I thought it was the foolish notions of a child. Seeing you again as the one I fell in love with all those years ago, made me fear I could lose you all over again when I saw you were hurt. Did you see me at the dance that night?”

  His smile deepened and so did his dimples. “Of course I noticed you. I was trying to get up the nerve to ask you to dance all night, and then the storm hit and that’s the last thing I remembered. Except—I thought I heard an angel crying at my cheek. She sounded a lot like you.”

  Sadie looked down at her hands as she fumbled with the edge of the paper placemat in front of her. She felt like a fool for throwing herself at him that night the way that she did. But how was she to know that he wouldn’t remember her?

  “I’m curious about that cell phone. You said I was talking in my sleep and mentioned sending you a message on the phone. When I left the hospital, I found this in the pocket of the pants I was wearing the night of the dance.”

  Sam pulled his own Blackberry out of his shirt pocket and showed Sadie. “How does it work?”

  Sadie was relieved to see that he had his cell phone, but that still didn’t explain how she got the text messages from him. “Do you remember sending a message to me on that phone in the last few days?”

  “I don’t remember it, but it doesn’t seem to work.”

  “The batteries are dead. Do you still have your ’57 T-Bird?”

  His face went ashen. “You’re going to have to stop doing that. It’s freaking me out a little that you know so much about me.”

  Sadie grabbed his hand and led him out of the diner before the waitress had a chance to greet them. He opened the car door and she slid across the white leather seat to the middle. She’d forgotten how much she loved his car. They’d spent many nights talking about their future under the stars at Grover’s Pointe. Not to mention the making out. Sam had always been such a great kisser, and now, she found herself craving a kiss from him.

  Sam started the car and leaned closer to Sadie.

  “Where to? Grover’s Pointe?”

  Sadie smiled her consent, and Sam placed his arm behind her across the back of the seat.

  It was just like old times.

  CHAPTER 17

  As they pulled into their usual spot from the past at Grover’s Pointe, Sam put the car in park and leaned his head down on the steering wheel.

  Sadie touched the back of his thick hair, resisting the urge to run her fingers through it.

  “What’s wrong, Sam?”

  “I feel kind of dizzy. I think it’s because I get the feeling I’ve been here before—with you.”

  Sadie wanted to hold him, but feared he would reject her boldness. “We used to come here on Saturday nights when we were dating—to this very spot. We would talk for hours about our future, and make plans for the places we wanted to go when we grew older.”

  “Did we do everything we planned?”

  Sadie tilted her head back to get a better look at him. “Some of them. Your job and the kids got in the way a little, but we did alright.”

  Sam’s head shot up from where it rested on the steering wheel. “Kids! We had kids? How many? I’m not ready for kids.”

  Sadie giggled. “Relax. The kids come along several years after we’re married. We adopted both of them.”

  “Why do we adopt?”

  “Well—after several trips to specialists, we discovered you were sterile because you had the mumps when you were younger.”

  “I’m sorry, Sadie. Is that why you wanted to date Spencer? Were you trying to find someone that could give you your own children?”

  Sadie nudged him. “No. I thought I wanted to change my life, but now I realize I can do that with you. Together we can change our future to whatever we want.”

  “How could you be so sure we would be together for a second time?”

  Sadie smiled her most alluring smile. “Because God put us together—we were destined to be together. And…because I love you, and I know you love me.”

  Sam’s face heated.

  Sadie pulled the cell phone and car charger out of her purse. “You want to see this thing work?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She plugged it into the cigarette lighter and waited for it to power up. While she held it in her hand, Sam lea
ned in close to get a better look. Sadie could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck and it made her feel tingly. Sam was fascinated by the face of the Blackberry when it powered on. Sadie was relieved to see it was working.

  She scrolled through and showed him pictures of Ginny and Nate, avoiding the pictures of her older self.

  Sam looked over at the screen. “They’re in color!”

  Sadie giggled.

  “Those are really our kids? They look older than we are!”

  Sadie smiled at him. “Yes, Sam. They are now, but at the time these pictures were taken, we were well into out sixties.”

  “Do you have any pictures in there of us when we’re old?”

  “I do, but I’m not sure you can handle it. I’m not sure I can handle it after being young for the past couple of weeks, I don’t want to be reminded that I’m almost sixty-eight years old.”

  “Well I want to see how I look.”

  Sadie scrolled to the picture she’d taken the night of their anniversary and showed it to Sam.

  Sam stared at his older self for some time before looking at Sadie. His face was pale. “I don’t want to be old. I want to stay here and be young. I don’t even remember anything past this moment. Do you want me to go back there with you? Because I won’t do it.”

  Sadie leaned into him, placing her head on his chest and listened to his racing heart. “I don’t want to go back either. Everyone we love is dead. And for all we know, we’re dead now too—in the past or the future, or whatever it is. You know what I mean…”

  Sam put his arm around her. “I know what you meant. I’m not sure how, but I do. Why do you have memory of being older, but I don’t? Do you think it has something to do with the fact that I hit my head when the power went out?”

  Sadie began to cry. “I don’t know. But I wish I couldn’t remember it either.”

  Sam grabbed the cell phone. “I think we have to destroy this thing. What if it causes us to go back? I don’t want to take that chance, do you?”