Chapter Four
With every event that had not been predicted or foreseen, the fact that it would rain should have been the one certainty. After all, it was England and statistically the British Island received more rain per year than nearly any other place. But Sam hadn't been expecting it and when it began when the first few drops hit the shattered windshield before her. She wasn't thinking about statistics or norms for that matter, she was thinking about Stephen, exposed to the elements, unable to move enough to find cover and how the weather might complicate things for him.
"It's just a little rain," he told her. "Actually, it feels pretty good."
"Yeah well, it won't in about ten minutes when it stops and you are laying there soaked." She chided him, momentarily distracted from her thoughts by the sound of him laughing.
"You sound like my mum now." He explained. "Don't go out in the rain without rubbers on," he went on to say in a high pitched mock rendition of his mother she supposed. "Always carry a slicker, eat your peas, don't run with scissors, always…always wear your seatbelt."
His voice drifted off at this, yet as it faded she was certain she heard a catch, and even more certain that that catch meant his guilt had got the better of him again and he was once more crying.
"All moms are the same Stephen, no matter what country they come from." She quickly assured him, talking now not because she truly had something to say, but simply because she wanted to distract him, to draw him out of his sadness before he reached the point where giving in to it seemed far easier than dealing with it head on.
"Yeah, I suppose," she heard him mumble softly over the sound of the falling rain.
"My mom didn't want me to come on this trip you know," she stated and without needing to see him do so she felt his attention turn ever so slightly in her direction. "She…she said it was a fool's venture, that I was better off just letting the lawyers hammer everything out with my Grandfather's inheritance and simply remaining at home."
"You think she knew, or at least had some sort of intuition that something bad was going to happen?" He asked and in spite of herself Sam smiled, helpless but to wonder if before the moment of their meeting had Stephen put any stock in intuition of precognition at all.
"Nah, I think it was more along the lines of her wanting to keep me where she could see me, call me everyday, drop by and make sure I was as fine as I kept telling her I was. My Mother is a bit of a worrier."
"Not that she had anything to worry about when it came to you, right?' He was teasing her a little which in her mind was a good sign. "So I gather she tried to talk you out of this whole journey then huh."
"She tried talking, guilt, all the tricks in a mother's arsenal."
"And yet you still came, why?"
For a long time Sam remained silent, mulling this over, trying to recall in retrospect the precise reason she had come. The details were a little fuzzy at the moment, but she didn't need them anyway, she knew in truth what had prompted her to defy her mother's tactics and make the trip nonetheless.
"I haven't dated since Carl." she stated softly, giving birth to these words before she even had a clear idea of where it was she was going with this particular line of conversation. "I had chances, a few of them at least. I'd like to say there were lots and lots of chances, but…."
She had in fact been asked out on three separate occasions, twice by the same determined guy who after being shot down the second time decided that was more than enough rejection for him. It wasn't that he or the one other guy who had worked up the nerve to invite her out were not good looking or in anyway unpersonable, it just wasn't something she felt up to any more, the whole dating thing.
"I guess I just got lazy if you want to know the truth," she admitted aloud and admitted was the right word as until that moment she hadn't even come close to revealing this truth to herself let alone anyone else.
"Lazy, or scared?' It was Stephen's turn to try his hand at being intuitive and a smile crossed her lips that faded all too quickly as she was forced to make yet another realization, she had indeed been scared as well.
"How do you say kiss my ass in proper English?" She questioned hearing him chuckle at this but remain silent. "I guess I was scared as well," suddenly Sam found herself hesitating in her words, not wanting to delve deeper and examine them closer. "It's a scary thing when you get to be 38 and you're all alone, and everyone you have cared about, or so it seems at times, has left you in one way or another."
"Do you….blame yourself Sam, for Carl…for Sabrina?"
It would have been much easier to just ignore the question all together, and the instant it was posed Sam thought about doing just that, skimming over it the way Stephen had skimmed over some of her more probing questions. But something wouldn't allow her to do that, not then, not in that moment, and with a sigh that she immediately regretted, she closed her eyes for a moment and thought about her daughter, thought about Carl, even found herself musing a little about Dan though she wasn't entirely certain as to why that was.
"Medically I know there was nothing I could have done for my daughter," she began to speak, opening her eyes once more and focusing her attention on the lines of rain water making broken paths across the windshield. "I mean, even had I…even had I spent every moment, of every day, sitting in the emergency room prepared for what happened, there is a better than likely chance she still could not have been saved, that's…that's how quickly she was taken."
"But you blame yourself nonetheless." He continued to prod her and a burst of pent up grief exploded from her lips, along with but one word, one word that said entirely too much.
"Yes."
She had held her daughter, so tiny, so frail, the moment she had entered the world, the instant she had drawn her first breath and opened her eyes to the possibilities that surrounded her. It was a moment she would never forget, an instant forever tattooed in her memories. Right next to it, or perhaps superimposed over it, was the instant that Sabrina had been taken away from that same world, those same possibilities. Sam had been holding her then as well, holding her tight, begging God, Jesus, anyone who would listen to just give her for a little more time, just a little more time to share the life of the precious angel before her.
"No one listened," she whispered shakily, brushing at her eyes with hands that had begun to tremble, not from the cold, not from the shock of her injuries, but from the aching, open wound that she had been certain had begun to heal, but still felt as raw and festering as ever.
"How did Carl…I mean…how did he…?"
"He slit his wrists." She said bluntly, drawing away from thoughts of Sabrina for a moment and gratefully doing so. At some point, Sam knew the entire story would come out, every heartbreaking moment of what it was like to watch her child die in her arms, but she was reprieved briefly from having to put it into words and suddenly in comparison, talking about Carl was a lot easier.
Thankfully, she hadn't been the one to find him. She had in fact been at work the day it happened or at least the day his body had been discovered by the super of his apartment building.
"He did it in a tub of running water, by the time anyone noticed the leaking, he was long gone."
"Did he…leave a note, bother to explain at all?'
"He did leave a note, but I didn't get it until three days later. He...mailed it to me."
"Oh my God." She heard Stephen whisper, obviously able to imagine how it might have felt for her to receive this message just when the reality of the entire situation had begun to sink in.
"He apologized, several times in fact. Told me his demons had just gotten too strong for him to wrestle with any longer, and then…he thanked me."
"For giving me a few moments of happiness in a life that has been anything but happy." Those were his exact words, memorized in the many times that Sam had read and reread his final message in the days following his death.
"So after him, I just…accepted that I was gonna be alone, destined to be alone or so it seemed."
"Until Madame Zoltar told you otherwise."
"Let me clarify something here for you Stephen," Sam stated softly. "Madame Zoltar never said anything about love or hope, or the possibility of finding my happy ever after, all she said was my destiny awaited me elsewhere…and I guess, after finding and losing it several times over, I decided it was time to meet it head on."
The instant she said this, the instant her own words registered inside of her mind Sam began to laugh, not just a chuckle, but a full blown laugh that she couldn't control or stop though she wanted very much to do both. It wasn't until she paused long enough to catch her breath that she heard Stephen laughing as well, hoarsely, not quite as deeply, but laughing nonetheless.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, the instant she managed to quell her humor and this happened only because at some point Stephen had gone from laughing to coughing and each wheeze had come to sound wet, loose and painful.
"It's alright," he assured her sounding a little breathless and whole lot weaker. "I'm gonna close my eyes for a moment, don't…don't panic over it."
His moment turned out to be thirty minutes, and this she knew only because she counted each second off in her head, fearful that he wouldn't come back this time, that his injuries would get the better of him and he'd slip away leaving her to face her own mortality aloe.
"Did I miss anything?"
"The Queen dropped by while you were out, said she'd come back later," Sam heard herself joking when what was really going through her mind was an overwhelming sense of relief at the sound of his voice.
"You know, I am really looking forward to the moment you and I stand face to face. I can't wait to put an image with those bad jokes."
"Bad, they aren't bad; you are just suffering from poor British humor." She was crying, not certain why, but crying nonetheless.
"Tell me something else about you Sam, not something sad, not something depressing, a good memory. Do you…have any?"
"I have a few," she retorted, surprised to find it was much easier to come up with sad and depressing than it was to recall moments of joy.
"I had a puppy once, his name was Gabe…oh but he got hit by a car six months after I got him, so…."
"You said before you were Sam to everyone else but Dan…what did you mean by that?" She was momentarily thrilled that not only had he been listening to her speak, truly listening, but that her words had endured through several bouts of unconsciousness and the coming of the rain, which had yet to depart.
"I used to be a tomboy growing up."
"What's that mean, a tomboy?"
"Well let's just say if I had been given the choice of taking ballet lessons or playing little league baseball, I would have chosen baseball and in fact did."
"Oh, I get it now." He stated softly.
"Anyway that was me, a tom boy in every sense of the word."
Her father had wanted a boy, she wasn't sure when it was in her life she had heard this, but it had stuck itself inside of her mind, the notion that in spite of his love for her, in spite of his devotion and as far as Father's went he was both extremely loving and devoted, that some part of him regretted that he had never had a son. Not so much regretted her, but regretted that she had been the only child that he had helped to create.
"All fathers yearn for sons; it's just part of their genetic need to pass on the line."
"Yeah, that's true I suppose." Sam responded to Stephen's interruption, sensing that he was talking as a need to contribute to the conversation but simply to make her aware that he was still awake.
"Anyway, I was what he got, like it or not, and as my mother puts it, right from the word go I became the son my father could never and would never have in nearly every possibly conceivable way."
Little league was actually only part of the whole tomboy phase that Sam went through. She had refused to wear dresses, refused to have her hair in anyway other than short and unstyled.
"It lasted right up until the time I entered high school, and by then dressing down and hanging with the boys had become so much a part of who I was that I had no idea of how to be any other way."
"Until Carl."
"Until Carl, "she echoed his words in response, nodding her head slightly though it seemed a little dumb to do so as he couldn't see her. "I met him, officially met him as in introductions and such when I was sixteen, but the truth is, I knew Carl a long time before then, three years in fact."
Carl Damon Scott was the first boy Sam ever fell for. Before him there had been no one, not even a crush and in the time since she had come to realize that was probably why letting him go, even after the loss of Sabrina, had been so hard for her.
"Some people have this long list of all the times they gave they heart away, to them falling in love is as natural as breathing, but for me…for me it was a little like drowning. I mean, some part of me knew I was being pulled under, could feel the current, the rush of impending demise, but I seemed to recognize fighting it was impossible and eventually just gave into it."
He never noticed her, and in truth she couldn't blame him for this as she went out of her away to remain hidden, never calling attention to herself for any reason, never doing anything that might make her stand out in a crowd.
"You spent three years pining for him?" Stephen asked though it seemed less like a question and more like an expression of pity.
"Oh no,no,no,no…you don't get to comment on that Mr. jump-off-the-dorm-roof-for-the-hell-of-it." She responded and he immediately made a noise of derision but fell silent. "I was just a kid remember, a kid who had spent her entire life trying to be someone she never could be, so…I at least have some sort of excuse for my actions. You have none except that you were drunk."
But there was more to it than that, somehow Sam sensed it, had felt it when Stephen was talking about it. It would come out, eventually, much like her tale about Sabrina, but for the moment she let it slide turning her thoughts back once more to the story she was telling.
"Anyway by the time I turned sixteen I was pretty much fed up with the whole being one of the guy's thing. You probably don't realize it, being a man yourself, but most males are egotistical, self centered, sex obsessed pigs at times."
"I plead the fifth on that," he quipped and she chuckled a little at this.
"I guess I knew by then that I was ever gonna really be the son my father wanted and the truth be told at that point it seemed I was the only one who really cared any more. My father loved me, me, not the me I tried to be, but the me I was. It just took me longer to figure that out then it did him."
"Your father…he's still…"
"Alive? Yes he is, and even to this day when I visit him and my mom I sometimes revert to old habits and he and I will sneak out to the backyard and toss a baseball around. Now it's become something of a tradition, a way for us to have a private moment so we can talk." He didn't comment on this, and in his silence she could almost feel a sense of longing for something. She thought to ask him about his own parents, but decided to leave it alone for the moment.
"So, there I was sixteen, fully blossomed, if you get my meaning, totally in love with a guy who didn't even know I existed, and completely at a loss as to what to do about any of these things."
"You didn't have any girlfriends?" He questioned her and again she sighed, wishing once more she hadn't as an ache had begun in her side, down deep, not really a pain more like a cramping sensation and every deep breath seemed to make it all the more intense.
"Yeah, I had a couple…sort of."
"What do you mean sort of?" Sam could scarcely focus on his words for a moment as the ache had become a full blown stabbing sensation radiating from the depths of her being and sending chills throughout her entire body. "Sam?"
"Wait, just wait." She urged him to silence, closing her eyes and riding the wave of pain, grateful when it finally began to ebb off leaving her shaking and sweating in spite of the chill of the night.
"What…what was that?"
"It was nothing, just…just a little flare of pain is all."
"A little, sounded more like you were giving birth to an elephant." She hadn't even realized she had been making any noise, had been certain she was silent in her pain. "Sam, I need to know the extent of your injuries. IS it…is it serious?"
"Honestly…" Thus far she had pretty much kept the details of her state a secret, dealing with the hurt, the constant blood, the odd twitches and flares, not because she had wanted to, but because some part of her knew if she told Stephen how bad off she truly was, he would do something extreme, perhaps a little too extreme, and considering his own damage that was the last thing she wanted. "I don't know Stephen.." she finally whispered, knowing this was the closest she was going to come for the time being to telling him the truth.
"I have a cell phone somewhere in my car, if I could…"
"Stephen, don't alright. I'm fine for right now I think, don't…don't forget you're wounded too."
For several long moments neither of them spoke and in that silence, broken only by the continuing sound of the rain and the occasional gust of wind, Sam found herself thinking for the first time since she woke to discover herself upside down in her rental car, that maybe, just maybe this would be her moment, the instance of her own mortality.
Dying seemed as much a part of her world as living did sometimes. Everywhere she turned the traces of that forever darkness touched some part of her existence, and yet giving in to it herself, truly facing it, had never really been something she dwelled on for long, until right then and there.
"I had one friend if you want to know the truth," she began to speak once more, not because she wanted to, but because she needed to in order to pull herself back, to drag her thoughts away from what might yet be inevitable. "Her name was Cindy, she was a year older than me and one of those girls who always seemed to know the right thing to say, the right look, the right gesture to make any and every boy around them simply melt."
"I'm not gonna let you die," Stephen vowed, interrupting her though she ignored his words, ignored the sound of tears in his voice.
"Cindy and I grew up together, spent our whole lives living like two houses away from one another, and the year I turned sixteen she decided to make me her sort of…pet project is the only way I can really explain it."
"Sam…" There was so much in that one word, so much emotion, so much expression, far more than Sam wanted to hear or could bring herself to address in that instant.
"Shut up Stephen…just…shut up, please." It took everything in her to hold back her own tears, to suppress them, bury them deep. If she cried, gave in to the tears, she wouldn't stop this time, wouldn't be able to regain control of herself once more.
"There…there was this dance, sort of an informal formal kind of thing, the girls wore dresses, the guys wore slacks and ties, nothing too fancy. Anyway Cindy decided that would be the night of my big transformation, kind of like a coming out party."
"It'll be great, we'll get you a dress, some heels, do your hair and makeup. Once I'm done with you, Dan won't be able to keep his eyes off you, or his hands for that matter." Cindy had vowed, and though Sam had been beside herself with nervous trepidation, she had gone along with the whole thing, allowing Cindy to drag her to the mall, pick out her dress, her shoes, the whole nine yards.
"So the night of the dance Cindy comes over, does her whole little magic trick, and I gotta tell you, in spite of being sick to my stomach with fear, I couldn't help but think she did a great job. I mean I wasn't a super model or anything, not drop dead gorgeous, but…I looked nice, nicer than I ever imagined I could possibly look."
"What did your dad say?" Stephen asked softly, that tone was still there, buried beneath his words, the same tone he had used moments earlier when he had spoken her name, but he was doing his best to mask it, and for that she was grateful.
"My dad cried."
Sam had never once seen her father shed a tear. He was a tough guy, a real man's man as he liked to call himself, and yet that night as she made her big entrance down the staircase he looked up at her with eyes glistening and pride so evident that she was a little startled by the fact that she had never noticed it before.
"Like I said, my father loved me for me, I was just a little slow to realize that."
She wouldn't see her father like this again, not until the day they laid Sabrina to rest, only then the break in him would be so brutal and so violent that it would hurt her almost as badly as the loss of her child had.
"I ended up playing third wheel that night. Cindy's date picked the both of us up and by the time we actually made it to the dance, it was about halfway over. Trevor, Cindy's boyfriend had this real piece of shit car, it stalled out every time we stopped for a red light, so we spent nearly an hour driving six blocks."
"Sounds like the car I had in high school," Stephen said with a small laugh.
" So we walk in, the place is packed, music blaring, people dancing. I wasn't expecting it to be one of those movie moments, you know the kind where everyone stops , the entire place gets silent and as a one all eyes turn in the direction of the leading lady. Good thing too, because that's now how it went down, though I did get a few looks, a couple of open jaw expressions."
"What about Dan, was he there?"
"Oh he was there alright. He had come with Allison Parker, head cheerleader, dumb blonde extraordinaire, knock out body, nothing upstairs."
"I know the type…vividly know the type," this time the laugh that followed was low and a little on the evil side and in spite of herself Sam chuckled as well.
"Yeah, all guys know that type. It's what they look for in a woman until they realize spending forever with a set of talking tits who's idea of deep conversation revolves around the underwear type of their favorite supermodel is not the kind of life they truly want."
"Ouch, yet another dig at my fellow man."
"Dan never even noticed I was there," she said next, pausing to remember the heartbreak of that night. At sixteen it felt as if her entire world had come crashing in around her. She wanted to die, but not in the true sense of the word, die in the way only a sixteen year old girl with a broken heart could.
"But I thought you said you actually met him, with introductions and all."
"I did."
While Sam had been sulking, fighting the urge to cry, Cindy had been stewing, not just because her friend was hurt, but also because she had put everything into Sam's makeover and in the end it hadn't been enough or so it seemed.
"Oh no, it ain't gonna end like this," Cindy had told her as the final song of the night began to play. There'd been no fighting her, no pulling herself free as the girl had grabbed Sam by her wrist and all but dragged her across the dance floor, pushing aside love struck couples , ignoring their comments and glares.
"Dan Scott, this is Samantha Reynolds, Samantha Reynolds Dan Scott."
"It was the single most embarrassing moment of my life up until that point," Sam stated aloud, surprised to find herself smiling fondly at the memory, though at the time she had been certain she would never, in a million years reach the point where she would look back and laugh at her own humiliation.
"So, was it love at first sight for him?"
"Is it ever?" She responded, still smiling.
"No…I don't suppose it is."
"It wasn't love at first sight, and by the time Cindy and Trevor dropped me off back at my house I was ready to pack my stuff and disappear forever. The idea of going to school on Monday and having to face Dan again…well let's just say I spent the entire weekend praying for an earthquake or a tornado, even a blizzard, anything that would delay that moment fro ever coming to be."
But Monday came, a bright beautiful Monday that made Sam a little sick at first sight of the sun shining and the birds singing.
"I went to school though I tried to feign being sick. My mom could smell bullshit from a mile away and wasn't buying my sore throat story. So off I went, pre dance Sam, hoping to find the little slice of oblivion I had once detested and now suddenly longed for."
It was third period, gym class when she finally saw Dan for the first time though he didn't appear to notice her, didn't even so much as look in her direction. By the time the class was over Sam was beginning to hope that all would be forgotten, that she had successfully slipped back into the shadows and would be again overlooked as before.
"I didn't get the chance to tell you how nice you looked."
But it hadn't happened like that. Dan had been waiting outside the girl's locker room when she emerged and the instant he said these words, she burst into tears and ran away from him.
"That explains how you know so much about running," Stephen quipped lightly.
"Yeah, but there's a difference you see. When a guy runs, he does it out of fear, when a girl runs, she does it because…"
"She wants the guy to chase her," he said with a smile in his voice.
"Exactly."
"So did it work, did he chase you?"
He did chase her, but not that day, that day she hid herself inside the girl's bathroom, remaining there until the final bell at which time she skulked home, hid herself away in her room, refusing dinner, refusing to talk even when her mom came poking around to check on her.
"It was like two weeks later when Dan finally approached me again. Only that time, I didn't run."
She had been in art class, hunched over a crappy painting that would have made Carl faint at the sight of it. She was never gonna be a Van Gogh, something she accepted at an early age and wasn't in the least depressed abut.
"So…like I said, I never got the chance to tell you that night of the dance how nice you looked." Sam had frozen at the sound of Dan's voice, all the more so as he seated himself across from her. For several, long, excruciating minutes she had stared down at the watercolor she was working on trying to think of something clever to say, some look or gesture or response that Cindy might have given, but nothing would come and the end she merely lifted her eyes to him.
"Thanks."
"So how come it took so long for the two of us to meet?"
"What are you talking about?" She had asked him, a little surprised by his question, even more surprised as he suddenly smiled in her direction, not past her, not at someone else, but a smile for her and her alone.
"Well we've gone to school together since we were in kindergarten, we played little league five years together, we have like three classes together just this year and yet this is the first time we have ever really spoken, why is that?"
"Well…I guess that's because guys like you don't notice girls like me."
"You did not say that to him," Stephen interjected and Sam shook her head a little helpless but to smile once more.
"I did."
"And how did he react?"
"Honestly, not at all the way I had expected him to."
Dan had in fact gotten a little angry when she said this.
"What do you mean guys like me?" He'd asked in response to this.
"I mean guys like you, popular, good looking, football players, you know…guys like you."
"Brutal." Stephen stated. "You might just as well have called him a shallow, egotistical sexist pig."
"Shut up, I was sixteen remember, and as far as I was concerned all guys were shallow, egotistical, sexist pigs and that opinion was based on years of being part of their groups rather than an outsider."
"Fair enough," he acquiesced. "So there you were, hunched over your crappy painting, you had just completely insulted the guy you had been crushing on since forever, what happened next?"
"He…kissed me."
It was funny in a way, but of the million times Sam had been kissed since that moment, half of which were from Dan and were far more passionate and loving, that was the kiss she remembered with the most fondness, that first awkward stumbling moment that there lips had met..
"I know Stephen, how you felt with Cecily, that moment when you realized that was how you wanted to spend the rest of your life, with her, because that's how I felt with Dan that day, like forever belonged to us."
"I don't think….I put it quite so eloquently however."
"He never called me Sam though. It was always Samantha, not because he needed to differentiate himself from everyone else in my life, simply because he wanted me to know that no matter how I dressed or acted or walked or talked, I was always…I was always going to hold a special place in his heart."
"Does he still call you that?"
"I haven't really spoken to Dan in a little while, like I said, he remarried, has a whole new life that doesn't include me."
It wasn't the truth, at least not entirely the truth, but there were some things that she could not, would not bring herself to share even with Stephen who had very quickly gone from a faceless stranger to the confidante she had never had and never realized she needed.
The true truth was, she had seen Dan not more than two days before she had left for London. It had been a chance encounter, unplanned, unexpected, and at first unwanted as well.
"I hear you're going on vacation." As always, when two people meet years and painful moments away from their first encounter, they exchanged the cursory small talk. He told her about Allison and the kids, she told him about her upcoming trip, they sipped coffee and pretended for a time that they hadn't shared a marriage and the life and death of their daughter. But it was there between them, not just the painful obvious truths, but the hidden, special ones as well, truths that time simply wouldn't allow them to erase.
"I…I almost called you a few weeks back." He had told her, his second cup of Arabica going cold as he leaned his elbows on the table and fixed her with that same warm look he used to give her over breakfast when the two of them had first been married. Then it had made her feel all soft inside, now it simply served to remind her of all the twists and turns on life's highway, ones she never would have predicted and was unable to avoid.
"Why?"
"I was…going through some boxes, stuff that I never unpacked when Alison and I bought the house. Most of them were old clothes, knick knacks from my apartment, shit like that." He was struggling, she could see it, struggling to remember that they were separate people, leading separate lives. "Anyway I found some pictures, snaps we took that first year we were together, or the first year we were married rather. I…I almost forgot what a dump our apartment was back then you remember."
"I remember."
Somehow, though in retrospect she could never quite figure it out, they ended up back at her place and for what seemed like an eternity, they stopped being the people they had become and went back to the people they had been, the people they should have been, could have been had tragedy never robbed them of those identities.
Sam let the memories of that day fade, simply let them slip away little by little, returning to the present, to the sound of falling rain, the grinding pain in her side, the numbness in her legs and the sense of impending doom that now seemed a constant rather than a momentary intrusion.
"You…alright Sam?" Stephen asked, drawing her even further from her thoughts and she turned toward the sound of his voice.
"Yeah, right as rain," she whispered.
