Author's Notes: I have to give even more props than usual to my beta, PhDelicious, who helped me figure out how to make this chapter better. I also owe big thanks to Sue who also gave it a once-over. And Lisa who could be the coolest reader I've ever had:) Thanks to them all, and thanks to everyone else for all the kind words.
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The Last Embrace
by Kristen Elizabeth
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March 1998
"I just want to meet a guy who can go five minutes without thinking about sex. Really…is that too much to ask?"
Sara's co-worker and drinking buddy for the evening, Corine, somehow managed to swallow a sip of beer and smile at the same time. "We're talking about men, Sar. So…yeah."
But Sara wasn't ready to admit defeat yet. She shook her head and sipped her own beer. "No. I still believe they're out there somewhere. I'm not giving up."
"Sweetie, if that were true, we wouldn't be sitting in a gay bar right now."
Looking around, she had to admit that Corine had a point. Everywhere she looked, she saw men bumping and grinding against other men. It was like being a diabetic in a candy store. "Are there straight bars in this city?" Sara countered.
Corine laughed. "I don't know. We should probably investigate that." She covered Sara's hand with her own. "Look, I know Rob really hurt you…"
"He didn't hurt me." Sara pulled her hand back and tucked it between her knees.
"Come on. You two dated for, what, seven months? He took to you Tahoe. He asked you what your ring size was. But the whole time, he was getting it on with that skanky bitch in QD?" She raised an eyebrow. "I'd be more than hurt. I'd be catatonic."
"He cheated on me."
"Yeah. Hence the catatonic state."
"No, you're not getting it. He cheated on me. It's done. No moping or agonizing about whether to give him a second chance. That's it. We're over."
Corine stared at her. "Just like that?"
Sara sipped her beer. "Just like that."
"Are you serious, or just deluding yourself to make the pain go away?" Her friend shook her head. "You don't even want an explanation from him?"
"I don't want anything from him. Except his god-awful CDs out of my apartment. Phil Collins? That should have been my first clue." Sara paused. "Cheating is non-negotiable."
"What if you love the guy?"
Sara hesitated. "If you love him…you die a little inside, I guess."
"I'll allow you that touch of melodrama, but only under these circumstances."
Sara pointed a finger at her. "But what you never, under any circumstances do…is give up your self-respect. You might as well let him slap you across the face if you do." She glanced away. After a second, she looked back. "I knew Rob wasn't 'the one' a long time before last week. It just took that final bit of motivation to get rid of him."
They were quiet for a long moment, despite the techno music that blasted them from all sides. Finally, Corine asked, "Ideally, what are you looking for? Because Rob was kind of the whole package. Except for his penchant for slutty lab whores."
"I don't know." Sara leaned forward on the edge of the bar. "I guess…someone mature. Intelligent. Good-looking, but it doesn't have to be so entirely conventional. I don't need a chiseled profile and washboard stomach." She smiled softly. "Someone who doesn't mind staying in and renting a movie and just…being together."
"So, you want an old, fat couch potato."
"No. I want a smart old, fat couch potato."
Corine laughed. "Shoot for the stars, sweetie."
Sara drained the last of her beer and plopped the bottle down. "Let's get out of here before I decide to become a gay man."
They left the bar a few minutes later and emerged into the brisk San Francisco night air.
"You want to go rent that movie? I know I'm not as attractive as your mythical man, but there are three different flavors of popcorn at my place," Corine offered.
"Thanks, but I need to get home. You should call it an early night, too. Unless you're bailing on the seminar." At Corine's pained look, Sara protested, "No, no way! Don't you dare!"
"Come on, Sara! I've got five open cases. I do not have time to sit and listen to some bug specialist talk about the life cycle of a beetle!"
"I think he's supposed to talk about more than that. And it's sort of a requirement. Plus if I have to suffer through a monotonous lecture at eight a.m., so do you." Sara tilted her head to the side. "Suck it up, sweetie."
Despite being almost five years older, Corine stuck her tongue out at her. But the next day, all was forgiven, and armed with twin Styrofoam cups of coffee, they sat together and waited for the dreaded seminar to begin.
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Laura hadn't asked to go to Texas, and Sara hadn't invited her, but neither one of them said a word when Laura packed a suitcase and Sara bought two plane tickets.
Cassie was a good flier, Laura was happy to discover, because nothing could make a plane flight worse than a crying child. She clapped her hands when Sara told her they were going to see Gamma and Pop-pop, as if she really had been missing Nick's parents since the funeral.
They arrived in Dallas and were greeted by one of Nick's sisters, Kelly. Although Sara returned the woman's hug, Laura could actually see her daughter stiffen up at the contact. Ever since the plane had touched down, Sara had been unusually quiet. Laura didn't have to think hard to guess why. It was enough that Sara had chosen to wear a bulky sweater that hid the almost-unmistakable bump in her belly.
She knew what was weighing her daughter down. How did you tell your dead husband's parents that there was a possibility that the grandchild they adored wasn't biologically related to them? Did you tell them at all? Laura was just glad those were questions she didn't have to figure out.
During the drive from the airport to the ranch, Kelly kept up a steady stream of chatter, filling her sister-in-law in on all the family news and gossip. Nick's name was never mentioned, but he was there all around them, an invisible force binding together the two women who otherwise had very little in common.
They arrived at the house just before dinner. It seemed to Laura like every single member of the entire extended Stokes clan had shown up for the meal, but she was informed, in a sweet Southern drawl, that it was really more like a handful of cousins. Her presence was not questioned out of sheer politeness, but she couldn't have felt more like an outsider if she'd worn Union blue.
It didn't help matters that as soon as Cassie saw Jillian Stokes, she screamed with pleasure and fought against Laura's arms to try to get to her. Even Sara allowed Nick's mother to hold her just a big longer than necessary when they embraced. Jillian whispered something into her daughter's ear, and Sara smiled for the first time in hours. Laura's stomach twisted; she had to look away.
Judge Stokes led the blessing over their meal. He finished the prayer with a simple request. "Lord, take care of our son until we join him in your kingdom. Amen."
Laura echoed the final word with everyone else gathered around the long table, the only exception being Sara. She was too busy saving Cassie's cup from going over the edge and staining the Berber carpet with apple juice. But there was also a faint shimmer in her eyes.
Despite everything, dinner was a noisy, animated affair. The Stokes still mourned, but they also still lived. Cassie was excessively fawned over, and Sara answered a million questions about her progress. Laura found herself concentrating on her food more than anything else, although she tried to be as courteous as possible whenever she was spoken to. But she kept her responses brief. She had no intention of inadvertently embarrassing her daughter in front of this quintessential example of the American family.
Sara waited until dessert to make her announcement. The news of her pregnancy was greeted with an odd mixture of excitement and shock, peppered with a healthy dose of tears. The surprising part was that some of the tears belonged to Sara herself. At Nick's sisters' bidding, she even adjusted her sweater to display the bulge she'd tried to hide earlier. It was almost like they needed to see it, to be absolutely certain that the time frame was right, and the child really belonged to their beloved brother. And with the one big secret Sara was keeping from them no doubt on her mind, she played along without complaint.
Laura slipped out of the dining room unnoticed and headed to the back porch, desperate for a cigarette. The night sky was incredible out in the Texan countryside, without a big city light for a hundred miles. As she smoked and watched the stars, the fresh wounds to her heart began to close up.
"Do you have another?" Jillian came up beside her. Laura offered her the pack and she extracted one, delicately placing it between her lips before lighting it. She inhaled and exhaled. "Oh, I needed this. Thank you. I quit years ago, but every now and then, the craving overwhelms me."
"I know what you mean."
Laura's cigarette was almost finished before Jillian spoke again. "I feel like you and I should know each other better. You raised the woman my son loved, the mother of my grandchildren." She glanced over at Laura. "Yet I know so little about you."
"I'm sorry to say that what you see is what you get," Laura replied mildly. "And Sara…she's a product of her own successes, not mine."
"Well. We do the best we can before we send them out into the world. I'm just grateful that they found each other." Jillian smiled broadly. "And that we get to be grandmas again."
Laura tried to return the smile, but she was afraid she fell miserably short of the mark. She put her cigarette out in the ashtray that conveniently sat on the porch railing. "I only got to meet your son once," she began. "But he was everything I wanted for my daughter."
Having taken no more than few drags, Jillian watched the cigarette burn down, closer and closer to her fingers. "Thank you." There was an awkward pause. "I wish I could have always said the same thing about Sara."
"What?"
Jillian sighed. "Please don't misunderstand me. I love her now. She'll always be part of my family. But…" She stopped.
"But what?" Laura pressed, a frown crinkling her forehead.
"When Nick told me he was getting married and giving me a grandchild, all I could remember about Sara was something I saw when he was in the hospital." She flicked ash off her cigarette. "Namely her kissing their boss."
Laura blinked several times. "Gil."
"Yes, Gil. I take it you know him?"
The question was posed almost suspiciously. Maybe Nick's mother hadn't started out with the intention to fish for information, but she'd certainly ended up with a reel in her hand. "We've met," Laura replied vaguely.
"He and Sara were obviously close at one time. Are they still?"
"They keep in touch. But no…they're not what I'd call close."
It was as near to the truth as Laura figured she could get and still be safe. Still, there were questions Jillian wasn't asking. The woman had just lost her only son. There wasn't a lot Laura could do to ease her pain, but what she could do, she figured she should. She'd want Jillian to do the same for her if their roles were reversed.
"Sara loved Nick," Laura said. "I'm as sure of it as…" She looked around. "…as I am that there are stars in the sky. Maybe someday…years from now…she'll find love again. But right now, even with taking care of Cassie and preparing for the new baby, she's still grieving for him."
Little white lies never hurt anyone. In fact, they made Jillian Stokes literally breathe a sigh of relief. The two women finished their cigarettes in silence before rejoining the group in the living room where an animated discussion of potential baby names was raging.
It was well after midnight when Laura woke from a restless sleep. She slipped on her robe and padded down the hallway in the dark, convinced that she was the only person in the entire, cavernous house who was awake.
She was wrong. Sara was in the living room with a lone lamp on, providing just enough light for her to see the pages of the photo album she was flipping through. Without a word, Laura joined her.
Sara acknowledged her mother with little more than momentary meeting of their eyes. Laura looked down at the open album on her daughter's lap. A school-age version of her late husband beamed up at them, his hair parted with ruler-straightness. She flipped the page and stopped on a graduation portrait of a teenager with a brilliant smile and a much shaggier 'do. Another graduation photo followed, revealing a grown man with a lively twinkle in his eye, ready to take on the problems of the world.
Sara traced the strong line of his jaw with her finger before slamming the album shut. She pushed it into her mother's hands and fled the room.
"Sara!" she whispered as loudly as she could as she ran after her. Sara knew the house better, however, and soon lost herself in the corners and doorways. Eventually, Laura found her. But she wasn't alone anymore.
The door to one of the guest bathrooms was partially open. Inside, Sara was hunched over the toilet. And Jillian was kneeling beside her, holding Sara's hair away from her face.
"It's okay, sugar," Nick's mother soothed, rubbing Sara's back lightly. "It'll pass. Remember?" Sara nodded tightly; in the moon's light that streamed in from the bathroom window, Laura could see shiny rivers running down her cheeks.
"I miss him," she moaned.
"Me, too." Jillian kissed the side of her daughter-in-law's head. "Every minute of every day."
"He was…everything I wanted. But he wasn't…" Stopping short, Sara clung to the porcelain bowl. "I didn't deserve him."
"Oh, sweetie. He used to say the same thing about you."
Shaking her head, Sara fought back another gag. Jillian was right there to help her through it.
Unable to watch any longer, Laura returned to the guest room on silent feet. Back in bed, she opened the album and settled down to learn everything she could about Nicholas Stokes, the man her daughter had learned to love.
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To Be Continued