CHAPTER 15
ABI
A Man with Pain of His Own
I’m sitting in yet another chair, this one situated under a huge maple tree that caps a small knoll overlooking the lake. This spot might be my favorite so far. The breeze is blowing over my cheeks, the sun is visible through the filigree leaves of the tree, and the water shimmers like liquid gold as it laps at the bank. Not too shabby for a woman whose life is in ruins.
“Abi?”
I jump, whirling around toward the voice, heart sure to beat out of my chest. “Holy God! Sam, you scared the shit out of me.”
He smiles at me from the edge of the grass. It’s a real smile, the kind I remember from another lifetime. It stops me dead, reminds me how much I loved that smile, loved that boy, all those years ago.
“Sorry. I would’ve called, but I… Well, no I wouldn’t have.” He laughs, a soft yet rough sound, a little on the sheepish side. “I wanted to come and talk to you. In person. Is this a bad time?”
My pulse is racing. I’m not sure why, but I’m nervous. I have no reason to be. Sam is an old friend. It’s not like he’s come to assault me. And it’s not like we’re doing anything we shouldn’t. We have nothing to hide, nor will we have anything to hide. I’m not here for that. I’m not here for him. I have a plan, and wrecking a home is the polar opposite of what that plan entails.
I take a deep breath. “No,” I reply on my exhale, forcing myself to calm down. “I’m just enjoying the sunset.”
He indicates a second chair on the other side of the tree. “May I?”
“Of course.”
I watch as Sam, with one hand and a manly kind of ease, grabs the wooden chair by an arm, hoisting it like it weighs nothing, and plunks it down a foot and a half from mine. He folds his tall frame into it, kicking his legs out in front of him and leaning back. He sighs as he settles in, like he knows exactly how to get comfortable in one of these chairs. Maybe it comes with growing up in a lake community. Maybe it’s something I forgot while I was away.
“How’s the house working out for you?” He’s casual. Almost too casual, making small talk as though he’s avoiding whatever this impromptu visit is leading up to. That just makes me anxious all over again.
“Fine. It’s working out just fine. Thank you for coming all the way over here to ask.”
He laughs again, and for whatever reason, I’m deeply gratified to hear it. Although it seems that Sam has everything in the world to be happy about—a picture-perfect life, complete with honorable job, saintly wife, and angelic child—I get the feeling he isn’t as happy as he should be, and that he doesn’t laugh much. That makes no sense, of course. I haven’t seen the guy in almost twenty years. What the heck do I know about reading him now? He’s a man, full grown and clearly quite different from the boy I knew at seventeen. Maybe this is happy Sam. Happy adult Sam.
Part of me hopes it’s not, though. It would be a shame to think the world will never again see the carefree smile and sparkling eyes of the Sam Forrester I used to know.
“I see your love of snark hasn’t diminished over the years.”
It’s my turn to smile. If he weren’t making me antsy, I wouldn’t be feeling prickly enough to be snarky. “What can I say? You bring it out in me.”
He turns his pale eyes on me. He doesn’t say anything for a while, and I have to make a concerted effort not to squirm or look away. I don’t know what he’s searching for, what he’s hoping to find when he looks at me this way, but I’m not the girl who left here all those years ago. In many ways, he wouldn’t even recognize me if it weren’t for my physical appearance. The girl I was died two years ago.
“I came to explain something, but…” He trails off, and never finishes, just watches me for a few seconds longer and then turns to stare out at the placid waters.
“I’m listening.”
Now my curiosity is piqued. Maybe he’ll answer my questions without me having to ask. Because I have a lot of them.
His wife’s words rise up to taunt me. I know what it is to live with pain, Abi.
What kind of pain does Sam know?
“How long are you going to be in town?”
“I’ve got this place for four months. All summer.”
“And you’ll be alone?”
I feel my brows come together. “Yes. Does that matter?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And why is that?”
He’s silent again for what seems like forever, during which time I’m becoming more and more curious about what the hell is going on.
“When Gladys asked if you were married, you said ‘it’s complicated’. What does that mean?”
I choose my words slowly and carefully. There’s so much I can’t talk about. I don’t want to say something that might inspire more questions. “It means I’m here. For four months. Alone. And at the end of that four months, I won’t be going back home to anyone.”
Please don’t dig. Please don’t dig.
I hope that’s enough to satisfy him. I hope he’ll let it go.
Sam, still facing the lake, nods, pursing his lips as he digests what I’ve said. “So you’re married, but something happened? That it?”
My pulse speeds up and every muscle in my body clenches. A pain shoots down my leg, landing in my foot like a flaming arrow, reminding me that I have to remain as calm as I can. I take a deep breath, in through my nose and out through my nose. “More or less.”
He continues nodding. Says nothing more.
I don’t know if it’s because he’s grilling me without explanation or because of the guilt and shame I carry with me every minute of every day, but I begin to feel defensive in the silence.
“Not all of us were lucky enough to end up with a perfect life.”
I wish I could take them back the instant the words leave my lips. I hate their bitter tone. It’s almost as though I’m blaming him for having a good life while mine is in shambles.
Sam’s head whips toward me, his eyes, for the first time, full of something other than vague emptiness or half-hearted happiness. Now they’re full of fire. “Is that what you think? That my life is perfect?”
When I don’t respond, he lunges out of his chair, turning an angry circle as he drags his hand through his short hair. The action leaves dark spikes of hair sticking up in its wake. It makes him look like the devil-may-care boy I used to know rather than the composed, grown up man I’ve seen since returning to Molly’s Knob.
“Let me tell you about my perfect life then. Let’s go back a couple of decades, shall we? Let’s see. The first girl I ever loved left before I could even get used to the idea of life without her. My senior year was shit, and I had no idea what to do with my future. For a while, I felt like I couldn’t move forward. At all. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to. I did manage to make it to junior college, though. It was there that I finally met someone who could make me feel again. Some people might call that part perfect because, in some ways, I feel like Sara saved me. But then she got pregnant. Things started moving faster. Probably too fast. We got married. We got a house. We made plans. But then we lost the baby.” His pause is brief, and I wonder if this is the pain he carries.
Then he continues. “Things were tough between us for a while. That’s when I went to medical school. When I graduated, I went into practice here. I guess that part might even sound kind of perfect to some people, right? I mean, hell, we only lost a baby.” His voice is tight, almost accusatory, and his eyes are burning with a mixture of fury and agony, but it’s his lips that show his grief. They’re stretched into a thin, harsh line that says if he doesn’t hold it together, he’ll break. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by a long shot. The worst part started when Sara got sick.”
“Sick?” My voice is tentative, cautious, and heavy sense of dread balls up behind my ribs.
Sam doesn’t elaborate, but keeps going as if I hadn’t spoken. “She was determined to try for another baby, though. No one could talk her out of it. Luckily, the second one took and we had Noelle. Things seemed to level off after that. It was good for a little while. But then…Sara got sicker. Now she’s…” Sam seems to deflate right before me. The anger evaporates in the sun, leaving his gray eyes flat and resigned. Hopeless. “She’s dying. Abi, my wife is dying, and all she wants is for me to find someone to take her place so that she won’t be leaving our daughter and me alone when she’s gone.”
I gasp, my mouth dropping open as I gape at him. Too late, I smother the sound behind my hands, my heart breaking for this man I loved and the woman he made his life with.
There is a short pause before Sam ends his bitter diatribe with a dull, “Yeah, sure. My life is perfect.”
My mind spins. My heart races. My soul aches.
I know what it is to live with pain, Abi.
But we have to keep on living. Right up until the end. No matter what.
“Sara is…Sara’s…she’s dying?”
Sam drops his chin to his chest where he lets his head hang in silence. He raises one hand to his brow, spreading his thumb and fingers across it in a gesture of frustration. Or futility.
“Yes.”
There is so much feeling in that one word. Yes.
Yes, she is dying.
Yes, I’m helpless to stop it.
Yes, it’s killing me.
There is heartbreak. There is fear. There is hopelessness. I recognize it. All of it. I see it often. Every time I look in the mirror. It’s a reflection of what I hide behind the twisted bars of my soul. It’s the prison I carry with me.
Sam, however, is brave enough to admit it, to face it. To deal with his prison.
I’m not.
I ran.
Running is what I do.
“What’s wrong with her?”
I shouldn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. She’s dying. That’s enough. But I have to know. For reasons I can’t tell Sam, I have to know.
He makes his way back to the chair beside mine and sits on the very edge, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled in front of his mouth. “She has Type I diabetes, the kind you’re born with,” he explains, even though I know what Type I diabetes is. No doubt this is an occupational hazard of his. He probably has to explain diseases to his patients all the time. “That carries its own kinds of problems. But then she was diagnosed with lupus after she lost the baby. Both diseases are hard on the kidneys. Anything that puts added stress on the body should be avoided, but Sara…”
He shakes his head, regret fogging up the air around us like hot breath on a cold night. “She knew the dangers of getting pregnant again, but she thought she could handle it. All she wanted was a baby. It’s like she couldn’t be complete until we had a child, so eventually I gave in. I just wanted her to be happy. So we did. We tried again. More than one specialist warned her that it could be detrimental to her kidneys, but she was determined. She said ‘could be’ wasn’t ‘would be’ and that she had enough faith to pull it off. After a while, I actually started to think so, too. Or maybe I just hoped she was right. But it just…it just wasn’t meant to be.”
A brief pause.
A deep sigh.
“After Noelle was born, she got worse. A lot worse. She’s…she’s actually been dying for the last two years. Little by little. The dialysis has become less and less effective. She’s hanging on by a thread. Sheer will, I suppose. She doesn’t have much time left and I…I’m just trying not to die right along with her.”
There is an unbearable pressure in my chest. I wonder if it’s possible that some physical manifestation of agony might come bursting from between my ribs at any moment and rip me to shreds.
Although the circumstances are much different, I know this overwhelming, never-ending, hopeless kind of pain. It’s like an invisible wound. It’s a gaping gash, jagged and bloody, that only people who’ve been there can see. We recognize it in each other. Our misery binds us, like stitches that draw us close but have no hope of mending our broken hearts.
“Sam, I’m…Oh, God, I am so, so sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”
He laughs again, this time a short, sour bark. “Me either. I never do. I just…I guess I’m just going through the motions.”
“You’re strong. You always were. You’ll make it through this. I know you will.”
My words, even to my own ears, sound trite and obligatory. Cliché. There are some things we don’t survive. Not really. We become like the walking dead.
Like my mother.
Like Sam.
Like me.
“I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about Noelle. And about Sara. She…she’s so fixated on me finding someone else. Before she dies, she wanted to meet the woman who will raise her child. She’s had the whole damn town trying to find me the perfect match. And I hate it. God, how I hate it.”
It’s there in his voice, how much he resents it. I can imagine it feels like a betrayal to even consider what she’s asking.
Then something occurs to me and I have to ask, even though I’m not sure I want the answer. “Have…have you done it? For her? Have you pursued another woman?”
He looks genuinely appalled. “Hell no! I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. That’s the problem.”
I’m weak with relief. I shouldn’t be. He’s not my husband. I have no vested interest in this.
And yet I do.
Because this is Sam.
My Sam.
Or at least he used to be.
“What are you going to do?”
There is a pause. A long, taut pause.
When he turns to me, it’s with a plea written in every handsome line of his face. I search his eyes, eyes that are as expressive as they ever were, and I see everything. Everything and nothing. They’re hurting and hopeful, but they’re also like the lake at night—dark, fathomless and full of shadows. Unknowable. But in them, at least I see his answer. I see it long before he speaks it.
“I’m going to ask a girl I used to know to do something I have no right to ask of her.” My heart stops. The world stops. My breath catches in the back of my throat. “I’m going to ask her to love me again. Or at least to try.”
I sit back in my chair, away from him. Just enough to get some breathing room. Some space. Some distance.
I’m rocked.
All the way to my soul, I’m rocked.
I came back to Molly’s Knob to find peace. To find redemption. To help others in hopes of easing the burden of my own soul, in hopes of erasing some of the black stains there. But this…
I wasn’t expecting this.
No one would.
But what he’s asking…it is the ultimate form of help—to aid a dying woman and the man who loves her. To sacrifice in the service of someone else. There is nothing nobler, nothing more honorable than that—to lay down one’s life for a friend.
But is it still noble and honorable if it doesn’t hurt me? Is it still a sacrifice if there is a stirring in my heart that I’ve protected like a flame since I was a girl?
Through marriage and childbirth, through death and infidelity, through unspeakable joy and indescribable agony, I’ve carried a torch for Samuel Forrester. And for him to sit before me, vulnerable and tormented, and ask for me to love him again… Well, it’s like asking the sun to shine or the moon to glow. It’s something I’ve always done, and something I’ll always do. No effort required. It’s carved into my nature.
So where, then, is the goodness in that? The honor and nobility? The sacrifice?
Maybe it’s in what comes next. Maybe it’s in righting wrongs and setting kismet straight. Maybe if I can give to him, and give to his wife and his child, until I have nothing left to give, that’s where I’ll find honor.
I already knew I wanted to help him. Not just because I needed it, but also because he needed it. The boy I used to love. The man with pain of his own. I knew that first day when I saw him in the grocery store that I’d erase that dull ache in his eyes if I could. If only I could.
Now, maybe I can.
“I wouldn’t ask if it were just for me. It’s too much to ask of anyone, and I could never be that selfish. I’m asking because it’s my wife’s dying wish and I can’t bear the thought of watching her leave this world with that worry still in her eyes.”
I sit perfectly still, afraid to move or breathe, waiting for his next words. Will they hurt me? Or will they heal me?
“You loved me once, Abi. And I loved you. I think I always have. God help me, even when I said ‘I do’ to another woman, a wonderful woman who has since become one of my best friends and the mother of my child, some part of me still loved you. I know it’s asking a lot. Too much. But I’m asking anyway. I’m asking you to help me. Or at least to try. Not for me, but for a woman you’d admire if you got to know her. For a woman you’d like to help if you spent some time with her. But not only for her. This is also for a little girl who will be lost in a few months’ time.”
His wife. His child. Sam doesn’t mention how this will affect him, though, and I’m afraid to ask. I’m afraid to know the truth. Will he be lost, too? Will all the parts that make Sam Sam die with his wife? Will he give the only love he has left to his daughter and have nothing else remaining?
Doing this, if I agree to it…it could destroy me.
Because it’s Sam.
Sam.
My Sam.
But that’s why I have to do it. It’s how I know I will.
Because it is Sam.
My Sam.
“Sam, this is…” I can’t even put into words what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling.
It’s my turn to stand up, to walk away from the look in his eyes, and the way I want to reach out and touch him like I used to.
When I glance back, Sam hangs his head again, studying the hands dangling between his spread legs. He seems unwilling to meet my gaze now, and I wonder if it’s shame or embarrassment that keeps him looking down.
His voice is quiet, somber. “I would’ve been faithful to Sara until I died. I took a vow and I meant it. But I never expected this. Her to get sick. Her to die first. Or her to ask something like this of me.” He exhales through his nose and his breath hisses. This is hard for him. That much is obvious. “I’d do anything in the world for her. Anything to make her happy, to ease her suffering. Anything but this. This, I can’t do. I knew I couldn’t, even when I promised her I’d try.” When he finally looks up and meets my eyes, I see. I see and I understand. “That is, until you came back. You’re the only one it can be. You… I… I would’ve married you, Abi. I loved you twenty years ago and I never really stopped. And seeing you again…” He sighs, lowering his head and his eyes yet again. “It can only be you.”
His words are spoken on a whisper and I have to strain to hear them. But hear them, I do, and they turn my whole world upside down.
Somewhere deep, in a place I’ve tried to ignore, I still love Sam. Even now, as shameful as it is, I yearn for him just like I did when I was seventeen. All the years, all the miles, it’s like they meant nothing. Here we are again. After all this time, here we are.
Together.
Again.
“I know it’s insane. And I know it’s so much to ask, but…”
“But you are asking.”
“I am. And am I hoping you’ll agree?” He doesn’t answer his own question right away, but I’m listening with every cell of my being for the moment he does. I’m listening with anticipation. With dread. With frustration. And I’m listening with hope. “Yes. Very much, yes.”
“Sam…” I say his name, but then I trail off. I tip my head back, looking to the clouds for answers. When I find none, I close my eyes. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t even know what to say.
After long, quiet moments, I hear his voice.
“Abi?” A question. A plea. “Will you try? Will you try to love me again?”
I breathe in. I breathe out.
I lower my gaze to meet his. I meet the conflict and the honesty, the guilt and the rage. But I also meet something softer. Something sweeter, kinder. Something loving.
“Do you think you could?” he asks, open and defenseless before me.
After only a moment’s pause, I nod.
I nod because I can.
I nod because I already do.
I nod because I always have.
I nod, even though, God help me, some part of me knows that I might’ve just condemned us both.