The Dandelion

by Michelle Leighton

  I stand and make my way out of the room. When I finally look up, I see Sam. He’s leaning against the wall directly across from where my mother was lying, probably watching me this whole time. I had no idea, so completely was my focus turned inward.

  He pushes away from the yellow-gold concrete wall and comes to take my hand. Together, we walk in silence out of the hospital and across the lot to his truck. Night has fallen and the temperature has cooled. It seems to echo the darkness and the dank chill in my soul.

  Opening the passenger door first, Sam helps me into the truck before walking around to take the wheel. Without a word, he starts the engine and drives us back to interstate.

  After a few miles, I open the plastic bag I’ve been clutching. Momma’s things.

  Her shoes are inside, as well as the sweater she always wore when she got cold. I hold it up to my nose, breathing in the last bit of her scent that’s clinging to the material. Still, my eyes remain dry.

  It isn’t until I get to the very bottom of the bag that I get what I sought—one final word from my mother.

  A cheap plastic bracelet lies curled up in one corner of the bag. I fish it out and hold it up to the bright glow of the navigation screen in the truck. It’s a string of shiny pink beads with flowers interspersed along its length. When I lay the bracelet across my wrist to fasten it, I see that there are letters on the backs of the flowers. There are seven of them, and I flip them all over until I can read what they say.

  Seven letters and two words. That’s what it takes to break through a damn. That’s what it takes to shatter a wall. That’s what it takes to give a desperate heart what it needs—hope.

  HOPE.

  ABI.

  She never knew my name after the accident.

  She never recognized who I was after the accident.

  She never seemed to realize we had a connection after the accident.

  And yet…

  Somewhere deep down, she never forgot me. I was etched onto her heart just as she was onto mine.

  Just as Sam is. And just as I seem to be onto his heart.

  With a strangled sound that signals the last bit of barrier crumbling away, my grief starts to spill over. I drop my face into my hands and I let it come.

  I cry.

  I cry for what I had and what’s been taken. I cry for what was and what will never be. I cry for the love I’ve lost and the love I was lucky enough to have. But most of all, I cry for the woman who, from beyond her death, gave her daughter what she needed tonight more than anything else in the world.

  An answer.

  A direction.

  Some advice.

  Hope.

  Sam is giving me hope.

  And my mother told me to take it.

  I feel the truck slow and I hear the fine crunch of gravel as Sam pulls onto the shoulder. I see the brightness of the interior light snap on and then off just as quickly. Sam gets out and comes around to my side. The light flicks on again before I’m dragged from my seat and crushed against a hard chest.

  Sam says nothing and neither do I. He just holds me and I just let him.

  Minutes tick by. Maybe even hours. I don’t know because time stands still. For once in my life, the inevitable race toward death and loss is postponed. It’s put on hold. For this. For me. For her.

  When I’m hoarse from sobbing and my legs don’t want to hold me, Sam lifts me back into the truck and drives me the rest of the way home. He holds my hand on the seat between us, never once letting it go.

  At the cabin, he carries me inside and straight to the bedroom where he settles me on the mattress and stretches out beside me. I’m exhausted. Mentally, emotionally and, because of that, physically, but I manage to ask, “What about Noelle?”

  “I told Mom I’d be home in the morning. Sleep, Abi.” He kisses the side of my neck and pulls me in tight against the curve of his body. “Sleep.”

  “You should go,” I offer weakly, hoping against hope that he will stubbornly refuse.

  And he does.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”

  I snuggle in to his warmth, feeling whole somehow with him pressed to my back. I drift off to sleep with the beat of his heart tapping at mine through the cage of my ribs, almost like he’s knock, knock, knocking to come inside.

  Little do I know, sometime in the night, I let him in.

  CHAPTER 33

  ABI

  Love Broke Through

  I wake to pain in my foot. It burns so badly it almost takes my breath.

  Only it doesn’t.

  I don’t let it.

  Because, today, the burn feels different.

  Sam is still holding me like he’s afraid I might escape to the lake, his arms wrapped completely around me. The hump of his bicep explains the ache in my side where I was sleeping over it. It cramps and spasms testily when I move, but I don’t care about that either.

  As gently as I can, I disentangle myself from him and get up to hobble out of the bedroom. My foot is angry and red, flames licking up my calf, but I continue on through the living room and out the front door.

  Dawn is breaking, beautiful reds and eye-popping yellows streaking across the sky like greedy fingers grabbing at the day yet to come. I smile. Despite the pain, despite the grief, despite the loss, I smile. Today is a new day, the first one I’ve had in a long time it feels like.

  I limp down the steps and across the yard to the edge of the lake. I forego a chair and simply sit on the grass, the cool of it like a soothing balm to the fevered skin of my leg. I stare out at the water, at the colors reflected on it, at the calmness of its surface, and note that today it looks different. Everything looks different.

  I glance down at the bracelet still circling my wrist.

  Everything is different.

  To my left is a cluster of dandelions, their heads white, puffy clouds awaiting the gust of wind that will tear them apart and send them into graceful flight. I pluck one and hold it close for inspection, or maybe for introspection.

  Behind me, the screen door bangs and I hear one loud and panicked, “Abi!” followed by rapid, heavy footfalls.

  I know the moment Sam spots me. I hear his running stop. I hear him let out his breath. I hear the desperation leave him. I can almost feel it.

  And I smile again.

  He resumes his approach, more slowly this time. His steps grow louder until they stop at my back and transform into the shuffling sound of fabric moving over skin. Seconds later, his legs appear beside mine on the ground and his arms fold around me. He scoots in close, rubbing his rough cheek over mine. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  I don’t ask why. I know why. I didn’t do it on purpose. I just didn’t expect him to wake so early. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you doing out here?” There is suspicion in his voice. I understand it. He’s wondering if I’m planning, if I’m scheming, if I’m setting dates and times that will forever steal me away from him.

  I’m not doing any of those things.

  “I’m having a flare.” He stiffens behind me, and when he starts to move, I stop him with a hand to his arm. “No. Don’t.”

  “But we need to get you inside. Get your foot up, get you calmed down, get you—”

  “I want to feel this one, Sam. Especially this one.”

  Tense seconds tick by, each one filled with more dread than the last. Dread on Sam’s part, not on mine. I can detect it in the way he’s breathing. It’s a tight, labored sound, like he’s bracing himself. “Why?”

  “Because today is a new day. Today, pain means something different than it did yesterday.”

  “What does it mean today?”

  “It means I’m alive.”

  He pauses, taking this in. “What did it mean yesterday?”

  I twirl the dandelion between my fingers, examining the beauty of its form. “Yesterday it meant I was dying. Like this dandelion.”

  I purse my lips and blow, sending half the white h
airs scattering into the light breeze. Sam takes the weed from my fingers.

  I follow it with my eyes until my head is turned and I can see him in my periphery. His expression is light yet pensive.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. This dandelion isn’t dying. It’s finding a way to live.” Sam’s lips purse as he, too, blows on the dandelion, sending the remaining fuzz into the wind. We both watch them fly away. He nods to them as they go. “Every one of those has a seed of life inside it. All they need is a good place to grow. That’s not the end. It’s the beginning.”

  He’s right, of course. Such is the difference between someone who sees through the eyes of hope and someone who has, until now, seen through the eyes of hopelessness. Sam sees something beautiful and life giving. He sees a beginning. Me? For years, I’ve looked at dandelions and seen death, the dwindling of life. I’ve seen an end.

  But today…today I can see what Sam sees.

  I touch my fingers to the bracelet lying warm against my wrist. I see the letters in my head.

  Hope, Abi.

  She didn’t add the comma; I did. When I saw the bracelet last night, that’s how the words read to me. Hope, Abi. A command. An order. A directive.

  Have hope, Abi.

  Find your hope, Abi.

  Embrace hope, Abi.

  Live, Abi.

  Fight, Abi.

  “Do you really love me, Sam?”

  Sam lowers his hand and lets the empty stem fall to the ground before winding his arms back around me. Dropping his forehead to my shoulder, he mumbles, “More than I love my own life.”

  “I love you, too, you know. I’ve loved you for over half my life. I never stopped, not even when I thought I had.”

  “I know, Abs. I know.”

  It’s not a cocky, overconfident thing to say. It’s simply the truth. He knows of my love for him as I know of his for me. It’s in every look and every touch. It runs just beneath the surface of life itself, like a secondary power source that sustains us. We piled lots of other things and people and circumstances on top of it over the years, but we were never able to drown it out. It’s too strong. It’s too vital. It’s too…eternal.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. Not ever.”

  “And I don’t want to hurt you. Not ever. But life happens, Abi. We can’t avoid living because we want to avoid pain. Life without pain is life without living. Like you just said, the pain lets us know we’re alive. Without it, we wouldn’t know pleasure. It helps us to appreciate the good. I’m not asking for you to be healthy every day or be perfect every day. I’m just asking you to say you’ll stay. Say you’ll try. Promise you won’t leave me on purpose. I couldn’t…I couldn’t handle that.”

  I lay my arms along his where they cross my abdomen. “I want to try, Sam. I’m just so scared. I can’t lose anything else. It would break me.”

  “I know you’re scared. I am, too. But I’m more afraid of living the rest of my life without you. I’d take a few years of happy with you over a lifetime of painlessness without you any day of the week.”

  “It won’t be easy, Sam.”

  “Anything worth having never is.”

  “The only time I’ve felt lucky since I left Molly’s Knob was when Sasha was alive. Until today, that is. Today I feel lucky. Even though my body is betraying me and I’ve lost all the family that’s ever mattered to me, I feel lucky. Blessed. You make all the difference to me, Sam. I want you to know that.”

  “You haven’t lost all your family, Abi. Family is who we choose, and I choose you. I chose you two decades ago, and I’m still choosing you. I’ll always choose you. I would like to make the family status more official one of these days, but…”

  I start to lean away. “Are you asking me—”

  “No!” he exclaims, pulling me back against him. “That was in no way a proposal. When a man proposes to the woman he’s loved for half his life, he opts for the grand gesture.” After a short pause, he kisses the side of my neck and I feel the smile on his lips when he adds, “But he might, on occasion, feel the need to put said woman on notice. Just so she knows he’s serious.”

  I grin, the wounds and cuts and breaks in my heart feeling less raw, bleeding less profusely than they have in two years. “Okay. Just checking.”

  “But if that man were to ask prematurely and in the least romantic manner ever documented, how do you think the woman in question would be inclined to answer?”

  I wiggle in Sam’s embrace until I’m half leaning on his left arm, my face tilted toward his. I reach up to trail my fingertips along his jaw, marveling at how light his gray eyes are this morning, how unburdened. And how, after all this time, this man is finally mine. For real. Forever, or as long as both of us shall live.

  “I’m thinking she’d be inclined to say yes to whatever you asked of her.”

  I slide my hand into the hair at Sam’s nape and tug, pulling his face down to mine. Our lips touch tentatively at first and then with a hunger that’s been suppressed for far too long.

  When Sam scoops me into his arms and carries me into the house, I notice that there is only a vague pain in my foot now, as though love and happiness have given me a tolerance that no amount of drugs ever could.

  Sam really is a healer.

  And now he’s healing me.

  CHAPTER 34

  SAM

  Together Again

  I’m driving home to get Noelle while Abi showers. We started to make love, but decided it was too soon. For both of us. She has as much respect for Sara’s memory as I do. Even though I know this was what Sara wanted, it just seems too soon to be getting physical.

  My body, however, wasn’t entirely on board with the decision. Well, actually, it wasn’t on board at all. The evidence of its resistance is still straining painfully against my zipper. I’ve been trying to get rid of it with thoughts of naked old ladies and baseball and fishing, but none of that’s working. All I seem to be able to picture is a beautiful naked Abi staring up at me from her bed. Logistically, we stopped just in the nick of time, but physically, we stopped way too soon. There was a hell of a lot more I wanted to do.

  Still do.

  And I don’t plan to hold off much longer. I don’t even know if I could. It’s been too long, too long since I’ve been able to bury myself in the woman who stole my heart and never gave all of it back.

  I pull into the driveway to see my dad lifting a suitcase into the trunk of his car. That does what nothing else has been able to manage since I left Abi’s. It totally and completely cools my carnal jets.

  I park in front of the garage rather than pulling inside it, and I get out and walk around to his car. “Leaving so soon? You’ve only been here a day.”

  “No, we’re not leaving. Your mother wanted to unpack and put her things in the drawers. She wants to stay for a few weeks, since you offered. Thought I’d put the empty cases in the car, out of the way. That all right with you?” Even now, over something as silly as this, there’s a challenge in his eyes.

  I don’t rise to the bait. I’m too happy, life is too sweet to let the little things bother me. There are a finite amount of minutes left for me. I sure as hell don’t plan to spend them holding onto petty grudges and sulking over old wounds. Like Abi said, today is a new day. A different day.

  A better day.

  “Dad, I’m your son. My house is your house. Make yourself at home. Whatever you want to do is fine with me. You’re welcome here as long as you want, anytime you want to come.”

  He nods, slamming the lid shut. “You said you were with Abi, is that right?”

  My muscles clench with tension. It feels like he’s picking a fight, and I’m trying not to bite, but… Abi is off limits. Period.

  “Yep. You remember Abi, don’t you?”

  “I do. Always knew you’d lose her.”

  I’m able to smile about that now, for one simple reason. “You did say that, didn’t you? You just never said I’d find her again.”

 
; “No, but I always hoped you would. She was good for you. She was just better than you were at the time. I wanted you to grow up and be good for her, too.”

  “I don’t know if I could ever be good enough for anyone else in your eyes, Dad.” I laugh, but there’s an edge to my voice. I can’t seem to keep it out when it comes to my father. We just bring out the worst in each other. We always have.

  “You were when you married Sara. You did right by that girl. She was good for you in a different way, and you stepped up to be a man I was proud of.”

  I frown. “You never told me that.”

  “I shouldn’t have to.”

  “Maybe not, but it would’ve been nice.”

  “You don’t need my approval. You never did. You were plenty strong without it.”

  “I had to be.”

  He nods a few times and then raises a hand to clap me on the shoulder. “Invite Abi over. You’re good with food on the grill.”

  “She won’t be coming over for a while. We’ve decided to see each other and let Noelle see her at her house. Out of respect for Sara and so that Noelle doesn’t feel like her mother’s being replaced. Just for a while.”

  “Probably wise.”

  “But I can grill at her house. You and Mom could come over there. She’s renting a place on the other side of the cove.”

  “Hmmmm,” he says, raising his brows. “Almost like fate was bringing her right back to your door.”

  I think on his words before I respond. I’ve thought on several occasions that the timing of Abi’s return was more than just coincidence. Maybe it all started two years ago, when Sara got sick and Abi lost her daughter. Both of our lives started falling apart at the same time. But maybe they weren’t falling apart at all. Maybe they were falling into place. “Yeah, seems like it.”

  “I’ll talk to your mother, but I’m sure she’d love to. You clear it with Abi and let us know. We can keep Noelle as long as you need.”