A/N: This chapter is an intermission, for lack of a better word.

CHAPTER NINE

Time went by. For a long time she was in a depression so unrelenting and oppressive she wasn't sure if she could take it.

"I can't live like this." she'd think to herself. "Death is preferable to this feeling."

There was sorrow and rage but mostly there was guilt. Of course she knew she hadn't done anything wrong. Jack had made the decision to steal from the mob. She hadn't even known until it was too late. But the guilt still lingered, puzzling and infuriating.

She had called hospitals and morgues, describing Jack and his injuries, all to no avail.

Each and every day she drove by his house, hoping to see his car, hoping to see anything. But nothing changed. His car was never there and the house sat gray and empty in the mangy little lot.

Then, a few weeks after it had all went down, she drove by to see that the house had burned to the ground. Yellow caution tape was threaded through the trees, forming a perimeter around the gutted structure. Thin trails of smoke still snaked upwards into the sky. Samantha yanked her car over on the side of the road and stared.

Had the mob done it? Had he done it? Someone had to have taken the gunpowder and other explosives out, otherwise the entire street would have been leveled.

Hope leapt up within her heart and she promptly pushed it away. If he were alive wouldn't he have called her? Let her know in some way? No, he was dead, either in a ditch along some desolate stretch of road or buried in the woods.

She continued to work at the plant and that was hard. Her hatred of Mr. Patterson was all consuming, the helplessness of her situation maddening. But he had mentioned her mother and she couldn't risk that. No, she'd stick it out. Eventually things would sort themselves out. She told herself that every day and hoped to God it was true.

She grew more and more fond of hydrocodone and other pharmaceuticals. What had once been an occasional thing turned into something more.

Then one Monday morning she got a phone call from a casual friend at the factory.

"Don't worry about coming to work today." her friend had said with a snicker.

"What? How come?" She looked at the clock. 5:48 am. Jesus, why was this person calling her so early?

"Because it burned down last night."

"What??" She sat upright in bed, the last vestiges of sleep gone.

"Yeah. Burned to the ground. I don't know too much other than that but listen, there's rumors.....I'm not sure how true they are so don't repeat this. Ok?"

"Sure. Go ahead."

"I heard they found a body in there. Supposedly it's Patterson. Again I don't know how true that is.....I don't even know why the hell he would have been there on a Sunday night. But that's what I hear. We'll know soon enough I guess."

"Yeah." Samantha said. "We'll see."

After her friend hung up she sat in bed, looking at the wall but not seeing it. Shock paralyzed her, made it hard to think. Her mind went to Jack and again she wondered. But it was wishful thinking. Don Patterson was involved with the mob, there were many people that would have reason to burn the plant down and possibly murder him. She was longing for a ghost.

It turned out that the body was indeed Patterson's. He had been tied to a chair in his office and burned alive with his factory. Free of him and not having to worry about her mother Samantha's depression lifted. She found a new job at a call center and no longer had to work at a place filled with the memories of a dead man.

A few more uneventful years passed and then one day she went to her mother's house only to find her dead. Heart attack the coroner said. She never knew what hit her.

Samantha considered renting the house out or selling it but in the end moved into it. She just couldn't let it go. It was small home but it had been in her family for years and now it was hers. In honor of her mother, and to cope with her own mourning she planted a rose garden in the front yard.

At night she'd lie awake in bed thinking 'I'm alone now. All alone.' and at first it saddened her but as time went on the thought made her feel liberated. She was finally getting back to the way she was before Jack. She still took too many pills but that crushing dread was gone. She reckoned it was a fair trade.

Life went on. Years passed.



A/N: Next chapter will jump to 8 years after the incident with Jack.