Chapter 10
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Three and a half weeks after her near-death experience, Amanda debated driving again.
Her replacement SUV had been parked in the driveway, tempting her for a week.
She was standing at the back door of the kitchen looking at it. Thinking.
Sam said he didn't park it there to tempt her. He did it because she needed a safe vehicle.
She knew better.
He'd parked that SUV there to tempt her. He could have put it inside the garage, but he didn't. Why? Because she'd made the mistake of telling him she was a little afraid to get behind the wheel again.
"I understand, Manda," he'd said in a completely soothing tone of voice. "It's natural. It wouldn't be normal if you didn't feel that way. I'll take you where you want to go, and when you're ready to drive again, you'll know and you'll be fine."
It was annoying when he was so rational.
So reasonable.
So kind.
So caring.
So thoughtful.
Maybe she just hadn't adjusted to the fact that he hadn't left her side since he brought her home from the hospital.
Was this too much togetherness?
It might be.
Ooohmp.
Or this might be too much togetherness. She put both hands across her belly and her incredibly active infant soccer player who, when his father put his hands on her belly, calmed. Sam always smiled when that happened. Amanda always frowned because when she put her hands there nothing changed, not the knee bending, elbow pushing or foot races.
She wondered if her attitude might be related to pregnancy more than anything else. This boy was far more active than she remembered Sam being. Of course, she might have forgotten a thing or two, or maybe a lot, about being pregnant in the past 34 years. It was very different, observing Zoe's pregnancies, from living her own.
Fifty-two. Good grief, what had she been thinking?
That was the problem. She hadn't been thinking.
What she'd been thinking left no room to consider the possibility she could get pregnant. She was thinking it had been so long, so very, very long since she had been able to show him she loved him, and so she did . . . and now she was living that.
It seemed, since the accident, she'd blossomed into a very, very pregnant woman in the last month. In another three and a half months she'd have a baby.
Sometimes, when she caught sight of herself in a mirror, she had to stop and absorb it all.
Sometimes she could hardly believe this turn in her life.
Sometimes it made her smile.
Sometimes it made her sad.
And sometimes, she'd catch Sam watching her, and when she did, he'd smile at her and it was always the same— missing something she didn't understand.
Like other things she didn't want to think about, she pushed them off to the side. Later. She'd deal with those things later, because there was always later, when she'd be by herself again. She'd think about those things then.
Maybe, despite togetherness with Sam, she had been too isolated. A good portion of her current self-induced seclusion had to do with privacy and her need for it.
She had always been an intensely private person. Her circle of friends and family was small and comfortable. Beyond their safety and loyalty, she found other relationships less pleasant.
Her privacy began eroding when Sam arrived, looking just like her son's father. More slipped away each time he'd invaded the feminine confines and formerly safe haven of Rosey's Spa. When it became a question of was she or was she not pregnant, she lost another page of personal life to public scrutiny. But it was the spectacular accident she'd survived that drew back the curtain on her private life. The newspaper headline read: Pregnant woman survives crash.
There was a dramatic half page color photo of her truck as it was pulled up from the cliff next to semi-truck trailer on its side, and another full page of images that appeared in the morning newspaper the day after the crash.
The story was informative and accurate—regrettably informative and accurate for an intensely private woman. If they didn't know it before, it was now preserved in print. She was a 52-year old pregnant grandma. She wasn't sorry about that; she was sorry reporters were such blabbermouths.
She hadn't been aware of the photos or the newspaper story until Zoe brought the paper to her one day last week. She'd left the boys and baby with her and Sam while she finished baking the last of the layers for the largest wedding cake order they had to date.
At first Amanda thought the reason for Zoe's discomfort was telling her that her namesake granddaughter would now be called Abby, a family decision encouraged by Jacob and Noah who had decided their sister needed her own name since their grandma was using her name.
Amanda had been charmed by the serious nature of the conversation with the boys, and Sam had watched the exchange from the doorway. "Gwandma," Noah said so sweetly, "she needs her own name but me and Jacob think Abwee Ella is hard. We call her Abby. Is that okay with you?"
Jacob then requested that whatever name she and Grandpa Sam picked for their new baby should not be Sam. All was well when Amanda assured him they wouldn't do that.
When Zoe pulled out a newspaper from her diaper bag and laid it on the table, Amanda watched Sam turn away. She caught their brief exchange and realized there a discussion preceded this moment.
"You'll want to know about this, Manda," Zoe said, as she handed her the newspaper. Obviously, Sam knew the story existed.
Zoe also filled her in on the status of her truck, another situation which Sam obviously knew about.
"You should know the dealer just swapped your new truck for the old one. They really, really wanted it. Now, they've got that ugly, mangled mess sitting on top of some kind of decking and they're using it to sell SUVs. Safest vehicle on the road, they're saying. It's obnoxious," she explained.
Amanda stopped, glanced at the newspaper then took a moment to read it and turn to the pages inside with more photos.
So much for privacy. So much for living her life under the radar.
She and Sam had avoided conversation about anything related to the newspaper story or the SUV until after Zoe collected her sweet baby girl and her boys. When they finally did talk, the conversation was too brief.
He said he hadn't told her about it because he didn't want her to worry or relive it. She realized he really didn't understand her concerns.
He wasn't aware of the same things she was. Trips to her doctor's office and the grocery store told her they'd become the focus of too many eyes. The only privacy she had was at home, with her family. Talk about déjà vu all over again.
She would deal with this now the same way she did after Sam left. The first step was to live, and the second step was to ignore innuendo.
She could do this. She knew she could.
Sam had left first thing this morning to help with a project Sam was working on at the warehouse.
Which left Amanda still looking at that new SUV, holding the keys to it and making a decision. Grabbing her cell phone from the charger on the counter where Sam left it, she stuck it in her purse, checked her hair and dabbed on lipstick. Most of her facial bruises were gone, so at least she wouldn't frighten children now.
She needed a pedicure.
She wanted to see Zoe's cake support now that it was ready.
She needed to talk to David in person.
The pavement was dry. The sun was shining.
She started the truck and put it in reverse then depressed the audio button when James Taylor started singing some sweet love song. She didn't need a radio to distract her. Not today.
She was doing something familiar.
She had driven on that road so many times in her life she couldn't even count. She knew every bend, bump, crooked spot, wiggle, wobble, low spot or high spot on the pavement in daylight or darkness. When it was resurfaced, she learned the new ones. She'd had near misses from other drivers who edged too close to the center line, but until the accident, she'd never even had a fender bender.
When her body stopped hurting and her bruises started fading, her memory of the accident returned piece by piece, scene by scene, until she put it together. One night she told Sam what she remembered, and when she finished, he'd taken her in his arms and held her for a long, long time.
It happened ten minutes after she'd driven away in the new SUV. In the slow motion of memory, the accident took much longer than the mere seconds in which it actually occurred.
She remembered driving up the wide hill before hitting the flatter section of pavement that would take her past her own driveway when she saw the semi come around the corner, hugging the wall. The driver wasn't speeding, but she could she he was in trouble between the rain, the 45 degree incline, slick pavement, and whatever was rolling around inside the trailer.
She could see the instant the load shifted inside when rear wheels lifted off pavement. Horrified, she watched as the trailer turned and slid toward her. She'd slowed, hoping to give the driver a chance to correct, but the trailer was coming at her, faster and faster.
There was no place to go.
To her left, a guardrail and a drop-off. To her right, she'd be directly in front of the tractor and, at its rate of speed, she would have been shoved under the truck or into rammed into the steep granite wall that rose a hundred feet in the air. In less than a heartbeat, she heard his brakes, saw his face and then the trailer's movement slapped her vehicle through the guardrail, right over the edge.
First came the ugly thumping sound, then she saw sky, then trees, then sky, then trees, then nothing again until that kid who went to school with Sam slashed through an airbag and started yelling at her and everyone around him. She felt his hands under her arms, and then nothing until she remembered Sam talking to her, holding her hand.
Amanda slowly inhaled and exhaled. It was an awful accident, and she'd survived.
Once before, she had struggled to not let fear control her life and she wasn't going to give in to it now. She glanced out the side windows of her new SUV and watched for traffic, then pulled out. It was time to take care of her life.
Pedicure first.
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Driving a bit under the speed limit, she was fine. She parked in front of Rosalee's and realized her good fortune to be here so early. It was the least busy time of the day. Rosalee was putting a plastic mitt over Dee's hand encased in paraffin, a softening treatment, when Amanda opened the door and walked in.
"I sure missed the smell of acetone," she said.
"You've come to the right place. I figured I would see you when you were ready to rejoin the world. Come on back. Your favorite chair is empty."
Amanda greeted Dee and guessed what the reason she was here. "That looks like you have work to do. Where are you going this time?"
"Just New York. David hasn't been feeling well, and I don't want to be gone long, but I couldn't turn it down."
Amanda raised a brow.
"It was a lovely offer of payment for photographing my cheekbones. A truly obscene amount of money, so I took it."
"I love knowing my work's going to be photographed for Vogue. Show her that ugly color, Dee."
Dee waved her mitts in the air and laughed.
"Ooops. Here, Manda. It's the hot new neutral, soon to be seen in women's magazines everywhere. Want to try it?" Rosalee passed a bottle of pale brownish pink polish to Amanda before measuring mineral salts into the foot spa for her.
"I don't understand when they say new and neutral. Are they kidding us?"
Dee laughed. "That's how you sell fashion magazines and fashions."
"Did Sam bring you or did you drive?" Dee glanced at Amanda as she sunk her feet into warm, mechanically swirling water and sighed with pleasure.
"I got brave and drove. Of course I still have to go back home, but I think I'll be okay."
"You'll be fine," Rosalee assured her. "Drive while you can before your doctor tells you to stop driving, and that looks like it'll be soon. Don't mind me, but are you having twins?"
Amanda laughed. "The sonogram says it's just one, but this baby has gotten really big, really fast."
"Was your first pregnancy like this?" Dee wondered.
"I suppose so. But this baby is so active. I don't remember that with Sam."
"Was there a circus around your red truck when you came by?" Rosalee asked.
"A few cars were there. It's strange to see it on display." Amanda frowned. "I don't understand that."
"It's just small town mania. It's the most excitement we've had here since the Guard came home. Or your husband finally showed up. Don't worry, this won't last much longer," Rosalee predicted.
"You'll be yesterday's news before you know it. We've all been there," Dee said with a smile.
Rosalee laughed. "True." She removed the paraffin encompassing Dee's perfectly pedicured feet and then admired her work on Dee's toes.
These two women were Amanda's dearest friends and had been for years. They kept each other's secrets, applauded each other's victories and mourned their losses. When they met, Amanda had been freshly-branded as a cheating wife who was earning money by baking cakes. Dee had one child and was expecting her second and remained not married to David, but she hadn't given up proposing to him. Rosalee's husband had left town with the Methodist minster's wife, leaving her with two children and a stack of bills five miles high.
They'd met at the small surprise party David's parents arranged following his graduation from law school. Amanda made the cake.
Dee had been pushed away by her family, and the final shove came when she became pregnant with David's second child without marriage. But she had been welcomed with open arms by David's parents who treasured their grandson, and often helped Dee until she could help herself. Many of her financial worries ended when a modeling scout traveling through the area saw her with her oldest son. The rest had been history. Rosalee had been helping David's mother with housekeeping, and she had insisted she take a night off from the two jobs she held to attend the party. Grudgingly, she did.
Before the met, they each knew each other's public stories; until that night at David's party, they didn't know the private anguish each lived. Their friendships formed quickly, set solidly and endured. They helped each other, trusted each other and relied on each other.
Having both of them together here, was exactly what Amanda needed today.
"I was going to stop and see you and David before I go home. Are you going to be there or . . .?"
"David will. One of the boys needs drive me to High Point to catch my flight."
"You have such good sons. How long will you be gone?"
"Not long, just 48 hours."
Rosalee removed the paraffin gloves encasing Dee's hands.
Dee slid her feet into white socks and canvas shoes before she handed Rosalee an envelope.
It was Sam who held open the door for Dee as she left the shop. They spoke briefly and then he walked straight to where Amanda was sitting and held out his hand, palm up.
"What?"
"Your phone?"
She reached into her purse and handed it to him. "It's not on? I unplugged it and put it in my purse."
"My fault then. Leave it on, okay? Miss Rosalee," he added, nodding.
He leaned down and kissed Amanda's lips quickly and handed her the phone. "See you at home?"
Rosalee watched as he left and held the door for two of her technicians who were coming to work. "Are you two still good?" she wondered.
"Yeah, we are."
And they were, at least for the next hour.
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Amanda's new pedicure featured sparkly pink polish on her toes, after which she checked in to see that all was well at The Cakery. Later this week she and Zoe would be completing their largest wedding cake project to date.
It was seven tiers high; each tier was comprised of three layers, 7 inches deep with cake and another inch with icing. Each cake tier was separated by a tier of roses.
As each layer of cake was served, the base it sat on slid flat onto the base below it, and when all of the cake was consumed, what would be left was a tiered concoction of white rosebuds with the final, smallest top tier of cake to be saved and frozen for a first wedding anniversary.
It was ethereal, it was gorgeous. It required hiring contractors: a mechanical engineer, a carpenter, a tool and die maker, and a grad student who wrote the software to control the pneumatics. Following assembly in the grand ballroom of a Greensboro hotel, it would require photography.
In some parts of the wedding industry, it was a $75,000 cake that Amanda and Zoe had figured out how to make for $8,000 and that included their profit.
The father of the bride was deliriously happy about that.
They'd been perfecting plans for almost a year. Now the telescoping structure for the tiers and roses was completed, and Amanda wanted to see it in person. After she examined it, she called Zoe at home. The retired mechanical engineer and carpenter who constructed it deserved no less than an award for their technical expertise, she told her. "I can't wait for the telescoping demonstration."
After she left The Cakery, she drove around CrossAxe and parked next to David's van in front of his office.
She wanted to follow up with him in person about the gift she wanted sent to the semi-truck driver who had lost his job because of the accident that had been beyond his control. When she learned from Sheldon that he'd suffered a cardiac episode at the scene and had been taken to the hospital, her heart went out to him.
It was something she did, and something she didn't discuss with anyone but David.
She'd learned that if she did, she was viewed as naïve or gullible, or as someone being taken advantage of when she made charitable gifts to people others perceived as someone taking advantage of her. She'd learned to hide her involvement and make gifts anonymously. It kept everyone saner, and David was always happy to help her and do the research that would verify her decision as correct.
He'd yet to find a person she'd made this decision about who was not genuinely in need.
She had gone to talk to the driver before she left the hospital and he'd been so apologetic and so thankful her baby was fine and that she hadn't been more seriously hurt, despite his own problems. When she fully realized what some of his problems were, she decided to help him.
She wanted to know if David had taken care of that already.
It wasn't an overly generous gift, but it would certainly be a bridge the man could use. David promised he'd check in on his situation in another month.
Amanda thought they were done and started to say good-bye when David stopped her.
He wanted her to be aware of what her husband wanted to do with his half of CrossAxe, and he needed to give her the documents she needed.
She stopped and sat down in the nearest chair.
Her voice was soft, her expression disbelieving. "He wants to . . . what?"
"Turn it over to you or you and your son."
She was numb for a moment before she finally glanced down and flipped through the documents David had obviously spent a great deal of time preparing. One caught her attention.
"The trust?"
"At your discretion—for yourself or Sam."
"Sam's already taken care of in the . . . and this? A will?"
"It is the reason you agreed to let me locate him before he arrived, if you'll remember," David said quietly. "That just fills in the items you'd left blank when we discussed this a few months ago, just before he arrived."
She felt a wave of sorrow engulf her. "This is not . . ." She couldn't finish her thought out loud.
David read the emotion in her eyes. "I did ask him why he wanted to do this. He said he didn't want to hurt you."
"I see," Amanda said softly. "I'll read these and call you if I don't understand something." Then she took a deep breath. "And I'll let you know what I . . . we decide."
"I gave him his copy of this earlier today."
She put her hand over her heart then. "His copy. Her copy. Great. That's just . . . great." She tucked the small elegantly prepared document portfolio in her shoulder bag, nodded sadly to David and left.
David hoped Sam Axe was smarter than David's current opinion of his intelligence.
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Sam came through the kitchen door around 3, and was quickly followed by Diesel. A few seconds later, the storm hit, and a few seconds after that, they lost electrical power. It was a frequent enough occurrence that being prepared was part of day to day life in this part of the world.
It was dark enough outside to need illumination indoors, but light enough that it was easy to locate flashlights, candles and a hurricane lamp.
Amanda had been sitting on the couch reading the documents David had given her. She set her pile to the side on the blanket chest next to the couch.
Sam joined her and sat next to her, then put his sock-encased feet on the low table in front of it.
"You drove. How did you like it?"
"I did. Thank you for taking care of the SUV for me."
"Were you . . . okay?"
"I was. It was a little strange on the way down, but I had other things on my mind on the way home, so I didn't think about much besides that."
When he didn't say anything, she turned to look at him. He was studying her, waiting.
"I saw David."
"I know."
"Why did you do that?"
"It's not mine. All of that was the result of your work. Not mine. This house, the land here—I paid a tax bill on it a long, long time ago. That was it."
"That was your inheritance."
He leaned his head back against the couch. "And what would I have done with it? Wasted it? I can't own part of this, Amanda. I didn't earn it and don't deserve it."
"I should have figured you'd find a way out."
"What?"
"It'll be easier to leave when you get ready to leave, won't it?"
"What are you talking about?"
When she didn't reply, he turned and put his hands around her shoulders. "Amanda? I can't even begin to guess what you're thinking. Clue me in."
She wanted to shrug away from his touch but it was too warm, and she needed it. "You understand the concept of a square peg in a round hole or is it the other way around? I can't remember."
"What?"
"You fit here, but you don't fit. I know . . ." she sighed. "Why would you turn away from something that is yours?"
"Oh, I get it." He released her shoulders. "You think I'm leaving. The next little Sam shows up and I'm outta here. Right? Not going to happen, Mandy. Not happening."
"Can you say that for sure?"
He looked at her and shook his head. "There are no sure things, Amanda. You and our baby could have died in that accident. Or I could have anytime in the last couple of decades. There are no certainties in life."'
"Promises?"
"Yeah, there are promises. But sometimes people break them. You know that."
"I do. I know that."
And with that she got up and left the living room and went into the bedroom to lie down.
The electricity snapped back on, and lights that had been lit before the outage were bright once more.
Sam, however, was completely in the dark.
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David wasn't disappointed when Sam arrived the next morning.
"I thought you were supposed to explain it to her so she would understand," he said, unable to hide the angry undertone.
"I did. I told her you believed it was her work that made the company as prosperous as it is, that you thought Sam or your future children would be better off having the money from the trust, or that she would, and that your altruistic ideas were something she should be honored by."
"Your sarcasm is noted and not appreciated."
Sam slouched in the chair across from David's desk, one booted ankle on top of the other knee, his hands folded flat against his stomach that was still a little queasy. There was something wrong with him. His wife no longer suffered morning sickness; he did. It was a little after 8 and he wasn't that solid. Being irritated, though, was a calming influence on clenching stomach muscles.
"If you recall, I advised you against this."
"Why?"
David smiled. "Finally. An important question."
He used the joystick on his electric wheelchair to move it away from his desk before opening a drawer and removing several fashion magazines.
He looked at the cover of each magazine before he pushed the small stack across the desk to Sam.
When Sam picked them up, at first, he was puzzled.
It wasn't like the man was keeping a stack of old Playboys. These were fashion magazines. Then, he looked at the covers, one at a time, trying to decipher David's intention when he suddenly realized he was looking at Dee Pence. David's wife.
So that was why she seemed so familiar. Hers was an iconic face. Through the years heavy straight black hair turned pure silver, but her beauty remained.
"I'm remembering a really big billboard of just her face in New York. A perfume ad, I think," Sam said slowly. "She's the mysterious D." He glanced over at David quickly. "I've been in a lot of waiting rooms in the last year."
"She uses D, the letter, because her name is DeeDee. When we were in law school she shortened it to Dee, then when she started modeling, she shortened it again to just the letter."
"Not following here, David."
"Personal story about what makes us different from women." David pointed to the magazine on top. In this image, Dee was pregnant, her body displayed from the side, the curve of her chin visible, the curtain of hair hiding most of her face, her hand strategically placed over a breast. "She was pregnant, and I wouldn't marry her because I told her she deserved a whole man."
"I don't—"
"That was her second pregnancy. Our oldest son was four by then."
Sam sat back and listened.
"We met in law school, but I got drafted, so you know what happened then. Surely you've read up."
"Where did you go?"
"After training, Quang Tri. Northern most artillery base then, but it went NVA quickly. Went into Laos, then back, and that's where I got this souvenir," he indicated the burned portion of his face and his missing limb. "After I got sent stateside, my best friend came looking for me, and she brought along a son I didn't know I had. Long story short, I finally got it together, moved back here, in with my parents, and finished law school. Dee wouldn't go away, and she didn't tell me she was modeling. I was oblivious. Fashion mags didn't hit my reading list those days. She asked me to marry her and I said no. I wasn't going to saddle her for the rest of her life with this. She got pregnant again. Pretty sure that wasn't an accident. We had lots of arguments. This magazine cover was her last proposal. The point is, she wanted something from me that I didn't think I could give her, but we've been married almost 40 years now and we have four sons."
Sam held up his hands. "That's a great story, David. I'm happy for you and Dee, but I'm not following this."
"Dee wanted something from me and I didn't think it was possible. Amanda wants something from you, and I can't know what it is. You are the only person who can and does. So if you value that woman the way I think you do, you'll figure it out."
Sam was frustrated and it came out easily when he spoke. "What in the hell does that have to do with restructuring CrossAxe?"
"She gave you a gift. You rejected it."
"I can't . . . take. . ."
"You rejected her."
He sat back in the chair with a thump. "Oh."
"More than once."
Sam looked away then. "I got it the first time."
"The only thing I know for sure is that whatever you need to do doesn't have a thing to do with the assets of CrossAxe."
Sam was under water again, and it was impossible to breathe.
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"So, I need to make a couple of changes," Sam told Michael.
"They charge for changes."
"It's okay; it's just money, Mike. I might have made an arrangement to work here, out of Sheldon's place."
"I'll find out the cost and let you know."
"Yeah."
"It'll take couple of weeks before they go up. You know that, right?"
"I do. When are you coming to see Sheldon?"
Michael told him, and then he asked a favor. "Do you have space? Can we stay with you? Fiona would really like to get to know Amanda. But I know things are different—"
"We'd love that," Sam said, crossing his fingers.
Crossing his fingers was about all he could do these days.
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"Look, Michael. Oh, no," Fiona laughed. "Pull over."
"We need to take a picture of this and send it to Maddie and Jesse and Dani and Nate and Ruthie," she said between giggles.
Michael turned into an abandoned discount store parking lot and stopped and looked up.
It was magnificent. It was bold. You couldn't miss it.
It was a 14 by 48 foot board, standard huge. The background was neon yellow. The type was black. Even a person with compromised vision would be able to see the words. Sam LOVES Amanda.
"I wonder what he did?" Fiona asked.
"Or didn't do."
She laughed at that. "Yes."
Fiona got back in the car to check on their son who was soundly napping in his car seat in the back seat.
This trip north to see Sam and Amanda and spend time talking with Sheldon Dunham had been stuffed full of normal. The everyday life for most people. Since Michael Gabriel had arrived, it had become something she longed for, and this trip was another step in the direction of All Things Normal in the Westen World.
She'd been looking at an atlas during their trip and had found a town in Illinois by that name. "Maybe we should visit there, Michael. If we're looking for normal, that might be a good starting place."
He didn't think it was amusing the third time she suggested it.
That could have been because they both were finding North Carolina was a compelling place to be. The closer they came to where Sam lived, the closer the Blue Ridge Mountains came to their field of vision, the more Fiona experienced a sense of the ancient, very different but very similar to the rugged northwestern part of Ireland where she'd spent time as a child visiting her father's aunt.
"This is a beautiful place," she said, then touched Michael's arm. "You need to pull over again. There's another one."
It was the same size as the last one, only this one had a neon green background with black letters.
Amanda, I'm Sorry
Fiona got out and took another photo and sent back to her Miami family. "This is too fun," she said as she climbed back in the car and watched as van emblazoned with a TV channel stopped and started unloading equipment in front of the sign in the background.
"Time to go," Michael said.
As she returned to the passenger seat she knew this wasn't nearly the surprise to Michael as it was to her.
"Are there any more of those?" she asked.
He looked away from the winding road quickly. "What?"
"Signs? The big signs. Any more messages Sam has for Amanda?"
He couldn't help himself. He grinned. "Yeah."
"Do they say the same thing?"
Michael shook his head. "No. One says I Love You and the other says Please Forgive Me."
She frowned. "Wow. What a statement. How did you . . . ?"
"I'm just helping Chuck Findley."
"What?" she laughed.
"Sam called six or seven weeks ago and said he needed Chuck to help him out, and so we—"
"We?"
"Me, Jesse and Barry, acting in the persona of Chuck Findley."
"It took three of you to be one Chuck?"
Michael laughed. "Yeah. He's a hard act to follow. All we did was place some ads for him. That was all, Fi. They're only going to be up for a month, but he figured that would be long enough."
"For what?"
"To fix what he broke, he said."
"Michael, this could get uncomfortable if we're supposed to be guests in their home. I don't want . . ."
"Amanda's pregnant, Fi."
"Oh. My."
"He said he doesn't want to screw this up, so that's why we—"
"Need to help him."
"No, we need to stay out of his way, Fi. He can handle this."
"Okay, but—if—"
"No."
She sighed. "Okay."
It was the mailbox with the bold letters AXE on the side, sitting on crossed axe handles that indicated this was the right place. Michael pulled into the driveway just as a small, very pregnant woman came out the front door and was followed by the tall, lanky son he'd met several months earlier.
"That's Sam. His son," Michael said.
When they spotted their guests, their demeanors changed and they smiled welcome. Sam waved.
"Oh, my," Fiona said. "That is his son, isn't he? I hope Gabe takes after you the same way."
When Michael's phone rang, he flipped it open. "Sam. We just got here. Oh? Sure. We'll see you later then."
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Amanda had a landline into the house; it had the same number it had always had, and the answering machine on that line was now completely full. She wasn't about to erase any messages because that meant more would arrive. That's what happened yesterday.
And they were all the same, all asking the same question.
Was she the Amanda from the signs?
She finally realized the fastest way to resolve that problem was to just unplug the phone from the jack, so she did.
When her cell phone rang, she looked at the screen. Another number she didn't recognize. This was beyond annoying.
"Sam Axe, I am going to kill you," she muttered in disgust as she stared at her phone.
"What'd he do now?" Sam wondered.
Amanda turned and watched as her son came through the back door with a picnic basket full of things Zoe had provided. Two casseroles, two pies. Enough for two days of guests.
Sam had cleaned the loft room and changed bedding and had retrieved the portable crib from Zoe so his friends could stay with them. Of course that meant he'd be returning to their bedroom. She wasn't unhappy about that, not really, but she was still highly annoyed with him.
The signs, however, were wonderful and sent a burst of joy straight to her heart even if she was horrified by them. She planned on not telling him that for a while, though.
Sam LOVES Amanda
Amanda, I'm sorry
Please Forgive Me
The signs were obnoxious. Loud. Very loud.
He said he wasn't responsible. And she didn't believe him, so she'd called the outdoor advertising company and learned he was right. Someone by the name of Chuck Findley who lived in Pennsylvania purchased the advertising. The payment came from a Pennsylvania bank. It really didn't make any sense.
There could be another Amanda, he said.
There were other men named Sam.
I love you was something people said to other people all the time.
So was Please Forgive Me.
For an under the radar, low profile woman who cherished her privacy and had never, never, never yearned to be in a spotlight, it was awful.
Awful.
So she asked Zoe to make sure to take pictures of all of them.
Amanda turned to look at her son, her son so much like his father in appearance that it had always affected her heart. "It's those signs," she told him. "Do you know how many people call here? And now they found my cell phone number!"
"Mom, you can change the number."
"I do not want to change my number. Oh, that reminds me. I need to take the letters off the mailbox."
"Mom, don't do this," Sam said with a sigh.
"Why'd he do that? Put those signs up?" she wondered, feeling quite sniffly.
"Is it really a bad thing?"
"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. But I am taking those darned letters off the mailbox." She started out the front door and Sam was on her heels but stopped when she realized their guests had arrived.
"Put on your happy face, Mom," Sam advised as he did the same. "You've got company. I'm calling Dad."
#
#
#
Night at this elevation without the distraction of light from human activity brought the stars closer and made them brighter.
It had been a long time since Fiona had seen stars like this.
She'd been sitting on the front porch, wrapped in a warm jacket Amanda had loaned her, enjoying the quiet and the night noises, her hands cupped around a mug of perfectly brewed hot tea. Amanda joined her.
Inside, Michael and Sam were talking softly as Michael sat and rocked his son to sleep.
"If I lived here, I don't think I would want to leave," Fiona told her when she took the rocking chair next to her. "This feels . . . old, if that makes sense."
"It does. This whole range is about 400 million years old. The geologists who study this have found a lot of interesting things about it. When the large plates that created land masses to form the earth moved, these mountains were created. Some say they're the backbone of a much older range but I think they're talking about the same thing."
"In daylight, they really do look blue."
"They do. It's a tourist attraction, but not so much in this area."
The front door opened and Sam let Diesel out. "He doesn't think you should be out there by yourselves."
Diesel nudged Amanda's arm then went down the steps.
"He's on patrol," she explained.
"He's very large, and he seems to like Sam."
Amanda laughed. "He adopted him. I'm not sure Sam thinks it's a good thing some times."
They were silent a few moments before Amanda raised the question. She'd been watching Sam interact with the couple since they arrived and it struck her that if Michael was Sam's brother, Fiona was his sister.
Diesel returned and thumped his large body in front of them, lying down, but alert, watching and listening to the night.
"I was wondering," Amanda said, "how long you've known Sam."
"Oh, gosh, let me think back. Ahmm, the first time I met him was in Ireland, and I kept running into him in many of the same places Michael was working, but I've only really gotten to know him well in the last six years. All three of us sort of landed in Miami. We ended up working together and then last year, Michael got hurt. We weren't sure we were going to get him back, but Sam committed himself to that, and here we are. I'm forever grateful to him for his help. He's like a brother to us."
Sam hadn't revealed this much, Fiona had, even with the gaping holes lacking explanation. She'd only cracked the door open a bit. She realized there were so many things she didn't know about her husband, things she might never know. Navigating her husband's past life was going to take time, if he allowed it.
Sam opened the door and stepped out.
"Hey, Fi. Mike's took the kid up to bed. We'll let you two use the bath first and then we'll go to bed. Okay by you?"
Twenty minutes later, Fiona lay in Michael's arms looking out the window at the end of the loft. Gabe was sleeping in the portable crib next to them. "Michael, I really, really like it here."
"I know."
"If they offer you—"
"We'll talk about it. I promise."
Below them on the ground floor, Sam joined Amanda who had already turned off the bedroom light. He didn't want to talk about anything. Not their disagreement, not signs, nothing. She'd turned away from him, so if he understood that correctly, neither did she.
He closed the distance between them and kissed her bare shoulder, then slid his hand to where she protected their child. As soon as he spread his hand across her, the movement ceased.
"I love you, Amada."
She sighed. "I know."
She turned over then moved to put her head on his shoulder so she could sleep in his arms.
It was almost perfect.
Almost.