I jump in the car. Even though I could probably walk to Sam’s house in half an hour, I don’t want to risk angering the foot any more than my increased anxiety level likely will.
The main road I drove in on when I got back to Molly’s Knob dead ends at Lake Mist. Right brings me here to my cabin. Left would take me to Sam’s. All of Lake Mist wraps around the cove in a gently meandering path. I am at one end of the street. Sam is at the other. Our lake is in between. Something about that seems poetic and tragic all at once.
The sun is dying as I pull up in front of my destination. The little place I’m renting is one of the older structures around the lake. It’s charmingly rustic.
Sam’s, however, is not.
It’s new.
His house is the picture of a tastefully luxurious lake home. Its façade is a mixture of wood and stone, done in all natural hues, making it look as though it sprung from the ground itself. The roofline boasts multiple peaks and I can imagine, with the slope of the yard leading down toward the lake, that the back is mostly glass. Considering the sheer size of the place, I assume that Sam and Sara are planning on having more children. It can hold several more bodies to fill the rooms and a lot more laughter to fill the air.
As I make my way to the front door I squash a pang of envy. It has no place in my heart, in my life. Ruthlessly, I drum up a smile instead.
I check my watch when I ring the bell. 6:58.
The door is answered in a timely manner, the broad, heavy wood pulled open to reveal a casually dressed Sam holding his child on one hip.
His smile seems to falter a bit when his gray eyes quickly rake my frame from head to toe. He snaps them up to my face, almost guiltily, and steps back to wave me inside.
“Come on in, Abi. I’m glad you could make it.”
“Me, too. Me, too,” Noelle chimes happily from her perch like a pretty little songbird. In one of her hands is a doll, whose dress is a few shades lighter than the one I’m wearing. “Your dress is blue!”
“It is indeed.”
Noelle thrusts her doll toward me. “This is Mia. She’s my favorite because her dress is blue. Blue is my favorite color, just like your eyes. See?”
“Ohhhh.” I make the appropriate fuss over the doll, rounding my eyes and lips. “I do see. She’s very pretty, and so is her dress.”
“I told you.”
“Yes, you did.”
Noelle kicks her legs and her father, sensitive to nonverbal cues like any good parent would be, lowers her to the ground. She comes to take my hand and I let her pull me away, happy to have a distraction from Sam.
“Come to my room,” she says, tugging me forward.
“Just show it to her and then come straight back down. Dinner will be ready soon,” Sam warns.
As I’m being whisked away, I ask over my shoulder, “Is there something I can do to help get things ready?”
I’m really regretting not bringing a bottle of wine, but since I know absolutely nothing about this couple, and Sara specifically told me not to bring anything, I am empty-handed.
“Not a thing. I’ve got it all under control.”
I nod and let Noelle lead me from the cozy foyer to a beautiful winding staircase with decorative wrought iron railing. Half of my mind is taking in details of the house, like the attractively distressed hardwoods, the intricately designed ceilings, and the sand-colored walls, while the other half is wondering over Sam’s phrasing. I’ve got it all under control.
Does that mean he does all the cooking, too? It seems like he made the cookies. And he does at least some of the grocery shopping. And he brought food to the community café. And he’s had his daughter with him each time. I can’t help wondering what Sara does with her time.
At the top of the steps, Noelle turns left and then releases my hand to run in to the first room on the left. She jumps expertly onto the bed and then turns to look at me with wide, flashing emerald eyes. “This is my room.”
I walk in to what looks like the boudoir of a princess. The walls are the softest pink with mint green ribbons painted around the room halfway up. Someone, likely Sara, made real satin bows and attached them to the ribbon at regular intervals, bows that match the bows on Noelle’s pink-and-green comforter. A white rocking chair sits in one corner, and the white matching chest, dresser and nightstand are adorned with little pink and green bows painted on the front of each drawer. It’s tasteful and feminine and everything I can imagine a mother wanting her little girl to have. It’s also everything I can imagine a little girl wanting. In short, it’s perfect, nothing less than I would expect from the perfect couple with the perfect family and the perfect life.
I smile. Rather than envy, I only feel joy, happiness that someone who has mattered to me for the better part of my life has gotten everything he could ever want. If anyone deserves perfect, it’s Sam. Sam and this innocent little girl.
“This is the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen.” The words muffle at the end, my throat tight as I think of another little girl’s room that was befitting of a princess. It was different but the same. It just didn’t turn out well for her.
I mentally shake off the thought. I can’t go there.
“Did you have a room like this when you were little?”
“No, but I wanted one. This is like a princess’s room.”
“It is. Daddy says I’m his princess, but I like to be his little bee.”
“You can be both, I bet.”
“Yeah.” Her tone says she’s already bored with the conversation. “Look at my books,” she exclaims, leaping off the bed and giving me heart failure as she lunges toward a white bookshelf set into one corner.
I meet her in front of a collection of Golden Books. “Do you know all these stories?”
“Not yet, but Mommy is going to read me a different one every night until I do.”
“She sounds like a good mommy.”
“Uh-huh,” she agrees, tightening one pigtail, making it sit slightly crooked on her head. “Wanna see my toys?”
“Of course,” I say, just before Sam’s voice calls from the lower level.
“Elizabeth Noelle, your time is up. Dinner’s almost ready.”
Noelle’s eyes round as she turns to me. “That was my daddy. Come on.” And just like that, we are off again, toys forgotten as we make our way back downstairs.
I follow the tiny little blonde through a stunningly appointed dining room and into a chef’s kitchen filled with glass front cabinets, gleaming stainless, and swirling granite. Sara Forrester is seated at a padded pub chair situated along the raised bar portion of the island. She slides off it, coming slowly to a stand as I approach.
“Thank you for coming,” she says kindly, her eyes shining with sincerity.
“Thank you for having me. Your home is gorgeous.”
“Oh, thank you. It took us two years to get it the way we wanted, but we’re pleased. It was worth it, wasn’t it, Sam?”
She aims her gentle smile to her husband, who is tossing a salad with tongs. What looks like four filet mignons rest on a platter to his right. “Totally worth it,” he says without turning around.
I glance around the space, at the family room adjacent to the kitchen, at the wall of windows that separates the indoors from the outdoors and the magnificent lake beyond. As I suspected, the back of the house is mostly glass, capitalizing on the incredible view. Sam’s home is turned cattycorner on the lot so that it faces the main channel. With the house nestled back in the trees that way it is, it gives the sensation of being alone with the lake and nature.
I see the flicker of candlelight in hurricane lamps on top of a table on the patio. I assume we are eating out there, as place mats have already been set out. I don’t see silverware or glassware, though.
“Can I finish setting the table? Just tell me what I can do to help.”
“Sure,” replies Sara. “I was just about to finish.” She moves gingerly to take silverware and napkins from the end
of the bar, and nods to a stack of dinner plates and bread plates. “If you could bring those…”
“Of course.”
I take the plates and grab the salt-and-pepper shakers beside them, assuming they’re to go out as well, and I follow Sara to a part in the wall of glass. She puts a hand in the gap and pushes, and the clear floor-to-ceiling panel parts. It moves silently and easily, folding accordion style to open up the interior living space to the exterior one.
I follow her out into the quiet dusk, and as she places a napkin to the left of each plate, I set a bread plate to the left of that. I make another trip around to set the dinner plates.
When the plates are set, I take the silverware from Sara, smiling as I make my way back around the table, doling out eating utensils. Sara goes back inside and, before I retreat to the kitchen as well, I take a moment to revel in the stunning view. The water is flat and glassy, the darkening sky turning the lake to an inky abyss. It still calms me to look out at it, though. This place and I…we have a connection.
I startle only slightly when Sara speaks from my right shoulder. Her voice is so quiet it seems to be a part of the falling night rather than a disturbance of it. “I know what it is to live with pain, Abi.”
“Pardon me?” I begin to turn toward her, but I’m so caught off guard, I stop. I’m afraid to face her, afraid for her to see. Her words pierce all the way to the core of me, and I don’t want her to see what I might not be able to hide.
“You’re in pain. I can see it. But we have to keep on living,” she continues. “Right up until the end. No matter what.”
Still facing the water, I smile again, but I feel my lips tremble with the effort. I don’t tell her that sometimes living isn’t living at all, but slow motion dying. I don’t tell her that sometimes things happen that steal away our purpose and our hope and leave us with nothing but misery and regret. I don’t tell her because those are my burdens to bear, and I have to bear them alone.
“Maybe we can help each other.”
At that, I finally turn to face Sam’s wife. Her green eyes, so like her daughter’s, seem to glow in the dying light.
“What do you mean?”
Before she can answer, Sam interrupts. “Ladies, dinner is on.”
Sara wraps her cool, thin fingers around my forearm and squeezes, giving me a knowing smile before she turns back toward the table.
“Here, Daddy,” Noelle says, trying to hold out the big bowl of salad she’s cradling in her arms.
Sam takes it from her as he sets the platter of steaks down among the several other bowls that now populate the table’s surface. I don’t know how I missed him bringing out food, but I did. I suppose I was wrapped up in my own thoughts, to the exclusion of everything else.
Everything except the voice of my hostess as she spoke riddles into my ear.
CHAPTER 14
ABI
Dandelions
Music pours softly from the portable radio at my side, making the perfect backdrop for a beautiful day in the sun. I’m digging up weeds. Not the most glamorous activity, but it feels like less drudgery with warmth on my back and harmony in my ears.
I tug at the roots of a flat, ugly thistle weed. Momma called them sticker bushes. I smile when I think of how many times I stepped on them as a child while playing in the yard barefoot. I’d limp to the house, yowling in pain, and my mother would set me up on the counter to patiently pull thin, white thorns from the arch of my foot and from between my toes. We went through that most every summer during my youth. Not once did she complain.
The roots are stubborn, but they finally turn loose, giving up their stake of land, but taking a chunk of dirt with them. I shake the soil off the roots and back into the hole, hoping it will make the cavity less noticeable.
Lawn maintenance was not part of my rental agreement to stay here, but I needed something to do, something to at least keep my hands busy. Being outside in the sunshine, beside the lake, digging in the dirt seemed like a good choice to me. Luckily, there were tools in the partially hidden shed that sits behind the cabin. Gloves, too, for which I’m particularly thankful as I toss the prickly weed into my steadily increasing pile.
For the hundredth time, I glance up at the wedge of beautifully manicured lawn across the cove. I can’t see Sam’s house from here, but I can see a portion of the yard. I don’t need to see it for it to wreak havoc on my mind, though. After last night I know what his house looks like, so now, when I imagine his perfect life, I can do it in Technicolor, with great detail.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
I shouldn’t be thinking of Sam at all, of course, but I can’t get him and his wife off my mind. What she said last night has haunted me. Those words have rattled around in my head like the chains of a ghost locked in the attic.
I know what it is to live with pain, Abi.
But we have to keep on living.
Right until the end. No matter what.
Although everything she said bothers me, what plagues me most are the words she spoke right before we were interrupted. Maybe we can help each other.
How could she possibly know what I need? How could she help me? And what help could she require of me?
My mind has raced from one end of the spectrum of possibility all the way to the other, and back again. I’m trying to put pieces of a puzzle together without knowing a thing about the overall picture. Things that could be related might not be related at all. So while, yes, my pondering is futile, it’s therapeutic in its own way. I tell myself that’s why I indulge the wondering. Therapy.
I sit back and survey the progress I’ve made. After a minute, I realize I haven’t thought about my own dismal circumstances in hours. I’ve thought about other people’s problems, and words, and lives.
See? Therapy.
As I’m bending back to my mission of eradicating weeds, a lone dandelion standing just behind the mound of lawn scruff catches my eye. Its puffy white head sways gently in the breeze, a nod to the force of Mother Nature. As I watch, a few bits of fluff are torn away. My eyes trail the pods as they float away, and only then does my predicament come back in a rush.
I crawl over and snap the weed low on the stalk, near the ground, then hold it up for closer inspection. Delicately, I brush my finger over the fuzzy head. As with us, the tiny white hairs are a symbol of age, of dying. Of death. They are an indication that the end is near.
I consider the similarities between a dandelion and a human. Between a dandelion and me. My life started out bright and beautiful, like the wide, yellow head of a young dandelion, face held to the sky, the future an exciting and mysterious expanse that stretched as far and wide as the horizon. But like this weed that I hold, the beautiful part of my life has past. Withering has set in, prematurely, considering my age (a scant thirty-five years).
But there’s a reason.
Tragedy struck.
Again and again and again.
It stole the brilliant, vibrant future of the girl I once was. Now all that’s left is a fragile collection of parts that the stiff wind of time will one day blow through and dismantle, and carry into oblivion. Then I will be no more.
That’s the consequence of living—dying. Life leads to death. It’s unavoidable. It’s an inarguable fact.
From the moment we are born, we are dying. Little by little, day by day. We have limited minutes and hours and days and choices within that short span. Depending on how we spend those minutes, how we make those choices, we can live in the bright sun, with our vivid yellow faces tilted boldly toward it, laughing and happy, or we can make bad choice after wrong step and end up like the dandelion in its last days—withered, frail, and waiting to die.
Tears pool in my eyes and the dandelion swims for a few seconds. I inhale as deeply as my lungs will allow. With one sharp push, I blow out a stream of air that scatters the delicate downy of the plant and it’s quickly carried away by the wind, never to be seen again. Everything that once made it b
eautiful is just…gone.
I’m holding the naked stem between my fingers, my lips still pursed in a kiss, wishing I could drift away, too, when movement catches my eye.
It’s Sam.
He and Noelle are standing on the shore across the cove, watching me, watching me fall apart bit by bit. I wonder if they can see that from over there. I wonder if they know that, as they smile across the lake at me, the broken and splintered shards of my heart are drifting away on the breeze. I wonder if they can see that I, too, am a gust of wind away from disappearing.
Sam is holding Noelle’s hand and she’s waving her other arm as big and as fast as she can wave. Even from this distance, I can see the happiness on both their faces. They’re the yellow dandelions, vibrant and full of life. They haven’t withered yet. They aren’t holding on to dirt and memories, waiting for time to pass and death to find them.
Just seeing them makes me feel both overwhelmingly happy and overwhelmingly sad.
Noelle continues to wave as vigorously as she can, so I raise a hand to wave back, tears streaming down my face. Still watching me, she takes her father’s other hand and begins to pull and tug on them, a puppeteer forcing her puppet to dance. Obligingly, he moves, pausing to twirl her around a couple of times. I listen closely for the sounds of her giggle. I can just barely hear them. They’re carried to my ears on the same wind that’s taking the dandelion fluff away. Life trickling in to fill the spaces death leaves.
As I watch, other sounds reach my ears as well, and I realize that my own music has died. The only music I hear now, penetrating the absolute silence all around me, is coming from across the cove.
The only music I hear is coming from Sam’s.
CHAPTER 15
ABI
A Man with Pain of His Own
I’m sitting in yet another chair, this one situated under a huge maple tree that caps a small knoll overlooking the lake. This spot might be my favorite so far. The breeze is blowing over my cheeks, the sun is visible through the filigree leaves of the tree, and the water shimmers like liquid gold as it laps at the bank. Not too shabby for a woman whose life is in ruins.
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