CHAPTER 31
ABI
Eclipse
The letter. The letter that destroyed everything and the letter that saved me from a coward’s way out—I hold it in my hand. It’s now folded into an envelope with Marlene scrawled across the front. I slide it into my purse, grab my keys, and lock the front door before I pull it closed behind me. Time is running out and I’d like to see Momma one more time before the lake and I become one.
A little more than two hours later, I’m walking the familiar halls of Serenity Gardens, making my way to my mother’s room. When I push open the door, I find that she’s asleep on her bed, curled on her side with her hands tucked under her cheek like a small child. My mother never naps anymore. At least not that I know of. My heart lurches behind my ribs, my thoughts racing to worst-case scenarios like illness or a deterioration of her condition.
I walk quietly into the room, setting my purse on the chair in front of her vanity, and I stand at the foot of the bed looking down at her. I’m struck by how much she still feels like my mother when she’s not awake and moving or talking. This way, asleep, she looks like she always has, just older. She looks like Momma.
She swims in my blurring vision and I hold my emotions in with the tips of my fingers, as if pressing them to my lips can keep me from feeling as effectively as it can keep me from making noise.
It can’t.
An intense wave of homesickness washes through me. God, how I long for the days when I could walk into my mother’s room and find her napping after a long shift or on Sunday afternoon. How I long for the days when she would open her eyes and smile that smile reserved just for me, her only daughter. That smile or a hug, or even for her to say my name, unprompted, would feel like water to my dry bones right now.
But I’ll never get any of that. Those days are gone, just like the days of so many other good things in my life.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t stir. I stay that way for several minutes, listening to the deep and even cadence of her breathing. Then, as gently as I can, I stretch out beside her, tucking my nose as close to her hair as I can without waking her. I can hear all the commotion going on just outside her door—residents and workers going about their business, talking, laughing, explaining—like I’m not lying in a strange bed with my mother who doesn’t even know me, telling her goodbye in my own twisted way. It’s bizarre. And tragic.
These moments seem so significant to me, but no one else would even bat an eye. To an onlooker, I’m a woman visiting her mother. No more, no less. But to me, I’m spending the last minutes I will ever spend with the woman who gave me life. She doesn’t remember my name, and she certainly won’t remember my death.
Tragic.
Like the majority of my life, but for a few short spurts here and there. My years with my parents. My years with Sam. My years with Sasha. All short-lived. All came to a tragic end. I miss them all. Desperately.
But when my eyelids drift shut, the scent of my mother’s shampoo locked as tightly in my lungs as it is in my memory, it’s not her face that drops into my mind.
It’s Sam’s.
********
I glance at the passenger seat again, to where my purse rests, unzipped, with a white rectangle poking out of its depths.
The letter.
I didn’t leave it.
I couldn’t.
And I’m still not entirely clear on why.
At first, I told myself that it might confuse or upset her, and I wouldn’t want to do that. She doesn’t deserve that. When I wrote it, I just wanted her to know why she wouldn’t see me anymore, but I think I also needed to confess, to tell someone of the awful things I’ve done and of the awful thing I ended up doing. I think I hoped that would somehow garner me a form of forgiveness. The more I thought about it, though, lying there beside my mother after I awoke from my short nap, the more I realized it might be the most selfish thing I’ve done yet. It would only hurt her.
I waffled back and forth for a little while then ended up deciding not to leave it. After I made the decision, I refused to think of it again.
I’m still refusing.
I went out and talked to the nurse when I finally got up, and she assured me that my mother was fine. She said Momma had started to develop a bit of insomnia, hence the daytime naps. And while I wouldn’t wish insomnia on anyone, I was glad to hear it wasn’t something serious.
When I made my way back to Momma’s room, she was just waking up and she was not in the mood for company. The moment she saw me at the door, she told me to leave, and when I didn’t, she said it again, only louder. I was a bit surprised by her vehemence, so I didn’t concur right away. I was too stunned to move. Unfortunately, that only made her shriek louder and louder. She’s never not wanted me around. And I can’t help but wonder why she wouldn’t now. Now of all times.
She might have a childish tantrum every now and again, but Momma has never acted like she did today. This was…this was…different.
And, of course, today of all days, I hadn’t taken the time to stop and buy her a gift, so I didn’t have anything to use to try and calm her, to smooth things over. I’d only brought my letter, and that certainly wouldn’t do the trick. So when she continued to spiral upward, drawing the attention of the staff, I was asked to leave. Nicely, of course, but still… They had to ask me to leave because I was upsetting my mother. I still don’t know what I did wrong, but it left me with a sense of loss that only compounded the grief I was already feeling. I’d been robbed of the last few minutes of time with my mother that I’d ever get to spend.
Now, I feel as though I’m standing at the edge of that damn black hole, staring in. Only today, I’m wishing it would suck me in for good. Suck me and all these awful feelings into the nothingness where there is no worry, no mourning, and no feeling. Just…nothing.
Arriving back in Molly’s Knob and driving past the cheerful welcome sign only seemed to underscore the restlessly hopeless feeling I was already carrying. Momma’s upset swirled through my head on a loop. Then came the picture from Sara’s obituary to mingle with it, followed by visions of Sam and Noelle, the combination of which left my brain feeling like a gnarled and twisted thatch of thorns, dark brown and dripping blood.
More than usual, I found myself in need of a respite from thought, from emotion. From life. I knew I wouldn’t find that respite at my cabin. All I’d find there would be Sam. Sam is everywhere it seems. I can’t escape the sight or the thought of him for long. That’s why, as I drove back into town, I wheeled impulsively into a parking space in front of Luke’s. That familiar pink neon sign seemed to promise exactly what I needed—a temporary loss of memory. Of pain. Of feeling.
An escape.
So here I am, getting out of my car and heading into a bar, before dark, all by myself, in search of something to deaden the nerves.
I left the letter lying on the seat. It felt like a physical reminder of my predicament, and leaving it felt like a physical representation of all I wanted to avoid by going into Luke’s. So I left it. And I left everything that is attached to it.
The interior is dark despite the early evening hour, as is the case with most bars. There’s something alluring about this kind of dark, though. It’s as though the shadows pledge not to judge, but to hold any secrets you tell them. And, in my case, they offer a temporary reprieve from everything outside them. Everything outside here.
I choose a table toward the back and within a minute, a waitress that looks to be about my age comes to take my order. It’s been so long since I’ve been on a bender, I stumble and bumble over what to order. Eventually I settle on a simple rum and Coke.
It goes down easily, starting a nice warm fire in the pit of my stomach and alleviating that sensation of weight, of heaviness that I’ve carried so long. For just a few seconds, I think to myself that this is why escaping into a bottle is so dangerous. The feeling of release, of freedom could be addictive.
But not for someone like me. I don’t have that long to live. Addiction is for those with longevity. I don’t have that, so addiction is the least of my worries right now.
I order another drink, which takes a little more of the edge off. Finishing it quickly, I lean back in the booth, melting into the vinyl as I await my third push into blissful oblivion. Around me, the strains of a guitar usher in a familiar song, one of my favorites, something about taking time. When it first came out some years ago, it made me think of Sam, which should’ve been strange, but wasn’t. So, so many things have made me think of him over the years. It seemed so natural, so much a part of who I was, I thought nothing of it. It didn’t register that Sam never left me completely, or that I never completely let him go. It was just… Sam. Always a part of me.
Always.
I close my eyes, the fingers of one hand wrapped around my empty glass, and I let the melody wash over me. I let it carry my thoughts to places I can’t let them go when I’m in full control of my faculties.
But right now I’m not. And I don’t want to be.
Right now, I just want the good. I want to get lost in the what-if. In the comfort of something other than what’s real and solid and unavoidable.
Somewhere in between the lonely cords, I hear a solemn voice say my name. “Abi?”
Sam.
At first it seems like a part of my imagination, a pleasantly realistic dream. My name on Sam’s lips… Bliss! For years, it has anchored beautiful memories to one corner of my heart. Like a pushpin, it kept the memories I kept tucked away, too afraid to take them out, from being forgotten.
When I hear my name a second time, however, I’m prompted to open my eyes. I see a hand a few inches in front of my face. It’s extended in a silent offer, and a silent plea. Begging me to take, and begging me to give. The fingers are long and square tipped, steady, and competent. The hands of a healer.
Only he can’t heal me.
But, tonight, I want him to try. I need him to try. And I need to let him.
I just need.
I need Sam.
He’s my oasis in the dry, empty desert. He’s my lifeboat in the dark, lonely sea. He’s the moor that tethers me to this world and keeps me from drifting away into the nothingness.
I know better than to follow the hand to the arm, the arm to the shoulder, the shoulder to the neck, and the neck to the face because I’m afraid of what I’ll see in his eyes. I’m afraid it will kill me. I’m afraid that it will destroy one of the supports integral to my plan, sending the whole thing tumbling down around me. Then where will I be?
I can resist looking into his eyes. What I can’t resist is taking his hand. I can’t resist the hope of comfort, the promise of shelter.
I can’t resist one last chance to be in his arms.
I slide my fingers across his palm, the skin slightly rough yet warm. Frisson skitters up my arm and rains down my spine, causing me to shiver. My hand lies motionless within his for several seconds before he grips it. It’s as though he was giving me a chance to change my mind.
He needn’t have bothered. About this I won’t change my mind. Right now I need Sam. Any way I can get him.
With a gentle tug, he pulls me from my seat. I can feel his eyes on me, but I keep my face averted. While the alcohol has freed me from some of my burden, it’s also freed me of some of my inhibition, and I can’t afford for Sam to see what’s really going on inside me, what’s really happening inside my mind. That could be my undoing.
Head down, I let Sam lead me to the small dance floor, which is little more than a few dozen squares of parquet flooring off to one side of the otherwise tiled room. He walks to the back corner and stops, turning to face me as he pulls me into his arms.
Even as he slips one arm around my waist and laces the fingers of his other hand with mine, I don’t look up. I can’t. I can hardly think as it is. The only thing on my mind is the way our hands fit together and how his body feels along mine when he takes a step closer and slides one thigh between mine.
Our hips are squared, and our legs fall into a perfect tangle as he starts to sway. He seems to melt around me so that all I feel on every surface is Sam—Sam’s heat, Sam’s strength, and Sam’s tall, muscular frame. All I can smell is Sam, too, like even the smoke from the bar can’t compete with the hold he has over me.
The lights are low and the music is soft. I close my eyes and give myself over to the rhythm, but not the rhythm of the music. I feel only the rhythm between us, the rhythm that’s ours and ours alone.
The rumble of the guitar vibrates against the soles of my feet, and I feel the beat of Sam’s heart where his chest is pressed to mine. I sigh deeply, almost happily when he releases my hand and winds his other arm around my waist. As we move, shifting slowly against one another, he lowers his head so that his stubbly cheek rasps across mine.
He exhales, and his warm breath flutters at my ear. When he speaks, his voice is so low I have to strain to hear his words. “You didn’t show up today. I was worried. I thought that—”
I frown as I try to work out what he’s saying, but my thoughts are sluggish. My brain is showing the first signs of alcoholic delay. “Show up where?”
Did I have an appointment I forgot? Did I promise to participate in something and then it slipped my mind?
As if sensing my slight impairment, Sam elaborates. “Your chair. You weren’t in your chair.”
“Oh,” is my only response. I don’t trust myself to say more. My insides are alive and on fire. The good kind of fire for once.
Sam missed me.
He missed that I wasn’t watching him from across the cove today. He missed seeing me. He missed me. And that makes me happy in a way it shouldn’t. But it does. I just can’t let him know that. I can’t let him see.
“Abi, I…” He trails off and, I think I heard pain in his voice before he stopped speaking. That triggers an alarm response in me, and for a few seconds, my pulse thumps with fear. “When you didn’t show up, it scared me. Scared the hell out of me, actually. So I drove over to your house. When I couldn’t find you, I thought…I thought…”
His arms wind tighter around me. I feel the anxious desperation radiating from his body into mine. I feel the urgency of what he felt and still feels as he considers that one day I won’t be there.
At all.
Ever again.
“But after a few minutes of panic, I realized your car was gone. My parents got in this morning and they’ve got Noelle, so I started driving the roads looking for you. I was on my second trip through town when I saw you parked out in front of this place. Christ, I’ve never been so relieved.”
Guilt spikes within me. Are there no limits to the pain I cause this man? Whether I intend to or not, I hurt Sam. Over and over and over again.
My tone is laced with every ounce of the sincerity I feel. “I’m sorry I worried you. I would never hurt you on purpose.”
Not so long ago, he was telling me that very thing in the stairwell of the hospital as his wife laid three floors above us, dying. So much has happened since then. It seems eons ago.
“That’s not true. You will. You’re going to.”
A stab through my sternum.
He’s right.
I will.
“I never meant to. This was never my intention. I didn’t expect to find you again. Not like this. Not this way.”
“But you did.” Sam leans back and catches my eye before I can look away. I fall headlong into the turbulent gray sea of his gaze. There is raw, honest vulnerability in it. He’s letting me see everything. Bare, naked everything. “You found me again and I found you. After all this time, we got a second chance. How could you just waste it? How could you waste us?”
“I’m not wasting anything, Sam. I’m saving you. From me. I’m broken. Broken beyond repair. There is no hope for me. It died a long time ago.”
“That’s such bullshit,” he growls, his fingers digging into my waist. “I’m your hope, Abi. Hope in me. I’ll carry you when you can’t walk. I’ll hold you when you can’t sleep. I’ll be everything you need, and you’ll be everything I need. Most people don’t get second chances like this. Don’t throw it away. Don’t throw me away.”
His eyes are blazing and dying at the same time, but it’s his last words that scorch all the way through me. Don’t throw me away.
Oh God!
Oh, God!
I feel sick and hopeless and angry and…torn. Sam makes me feel torn about the only thing I’ve been certain of in years. Although it scares me half to death, Sam makes me want to live. Or at least try. To give it one more shot and try to do it better this time.
But what if I fail?
What if I screw this up as badly as I’ve screwed up everything else?
I’ll be hurting more people I love. And maybe hurting them worse than if I just took my leave of this earth the way I’ve been planning.
It’s a risk.
And it’s a risk I can’t take.
Not without some assurance that I’m doing the right thing. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my thirty-five years it’s that there are no assurances. Life just doesn’t work that way.
“Sam, I—”
Firm, familiar lips cut off my words. It doesn’t begin as a kiss. It begins as Sam simply holding my mouth closed with his own, like he’s trying to smother what I was about to say.
Without taking his lips from mine, he reaches up to hold my face in his hands, keeping me still, and he speaks against me. “Don’t say no, Abi. Please.” Seconds pass and his mouth softens over mine, melting me, melting my resistance, melting my defenses. “I love you. Can’t that be enough?”
I love you.
A small part of me screams “no”, but the rest of me, the heart and soul of me, shouts “yes”.
My lips part as his do, and the words leave his mouth to flood my own. We sway and we cling and we breathe each other’s air.
And then there’s a shift. The shift as Sam’s lips begin to move in a different way, a way that’s as emotional and painful as it is exquisite and familiar.
He drags his mouth back and forth over mine, lips lazy and soft, tongue flickering out to taste me. He kisses and licks and mumbles all at once, a barrage of sensory input that has my knees dissolving beneath me. “I love you, Abi Simmons. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t go. I can’t let you go again. I can’t do it. Please. Please. Please.”
His pleas fade as his mouth starts to devour mine in earnest, like he’s resisted his greatest addiction until this very moment, and there is no more resistance left in him.
Or maybe that’s only how I feel.
Sam is my drug. He is my addiction. He is the only thing stronger than the pain I feel. But my love for him is the only thing stronger than he is.
And my love vows to protect him. Even if it means breaking him to do it.
The salt of my tears mingles with the sweet taste of his tongue and the residual tang of my drink. My torment leaks freely from my eyes even as my body and my heart rejoice at his words, his kiss, his love. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Since he first gave it to me, losing it has been one of the greatest agonies of my life. And I’ve had plenty. Only one compares to it.
Killing my child.
The loss of Sasha nearly destroyed me. I know the loss of Sam will finish the job. After that, all that will remain is a shell, the shell that I will give to the lake for safekeeping.
A voice pierces the haze of my emotions like a dart through a balloon. “Ma’am, is this your phone? You dropped it on the floor.”
“Pardon?” I’m still fuzzy, but for a totally different reason now.
I frown at the waitress before I glance at what she’s holding. Sure enough, it’s my phone. I don’t even remember holding it. But that’s what Sam does to me. He eclipses everything else.
“Oh, yes, it’s mine. Thank you.” She nods and smiles, and my phone lights up with a missed call before she can even walk away. My heart skips a beat when I see the identification displayed there. Serenity Gardens. They rarely ever call me, but especially not after I’ve just left there.
Every thud of my pulse is like the warning beat of a native drum signaling impending doom. I have no reason to think so, no reason to believe so, but I feel it nonetheless. Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong.
Having missed the call, I step away from Sam and hit redial, hurrying across the floor and out the door, away from the music. Outside, I hear the receptionist answer, so I ask for Momma’s nurse and I’m immediately put on hold. The next person to pick up isn’t Sherry. I don’t know who she is, and she doesn’t identify herself. She only asks my name.
“Mrs. Jordan?”
I hate being called by my married name, but I haven’t changed my information in the Serenity Gardens files yet, so I just go with it.
“Yes. I’m Marlene Simmons’s daughter. Is everything okay? I just missed a call from there and my mother was—”
“Your mother has had what we believe to be a massive heart attack, Mrs. Jordan. She went into cardiac arrest and she’s just been transferred to the hospital.”
“A heart…cardiac arrest?” A crushing weight descends upon my head, my shoulders, my chest, like I’m sharing in my mother’s fate. “Is she…is she okay? Was she conscious? Will she be all right?”
As a nurse, I know these are questions she can’t answer, but I’m not an ex-medical professional at the moment. Right now, I’m the daughter of a patient. I’m a person in desperate need of reassurance. I’m a woman who has to know if the last solid, stable part of her life is gone.
“I can’t say for sure, of course. She was resuscitated here, and then the squad took her over to the E.R. I’m sure they’ll do everything they can to help her.”
“But she was conscious when she left there?”
The voice of this stranger drops into a tone I’ve heard too many times, a tone I know all too well. “No, ma’am. She had not regained consciousness.”
I bend over, the world swimming around me, the gravity of this news breaking me in half. “I…I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I whisper, my breath coming in short pants as I fend off hysteria.
I hang up and move to the side of the building. I need something to lean on. I need…something.
Everything is falling apart. I had a plan and I was the only one who would get hurt, even though it would only hurt for a moment. But now it’s disintegrating, crumbling to pieces around me—my plan, my heart, my world.
Sadness stings. Panic grips. Despair threatens.
But I force myself to straighten.
I can’t afford to give in to this right now. I can’t fall apart. Not yet. I have to drive back to my mother. I have to get to her.
“Abi, what is it?”
Sam.
I don’t turn to face him. His voice, his presence, his concern…they’re almost enough to buckle my knees. Oh, how tempting it is to give in, to let him love me and care for me, to let him help me carry the load.
“My-my mother. She…she coded. She’s in the E.R. I have to go to her.”
I turn and push past him without even looking up. I know what I’ll see in his expression, and I can’t take it right now.
Fingers clamp down on my upper arm like steel vices, stopping me in my tracks. “You’re not driving anywhere like this. You’ve been drinking. I’ll take you.”
Still I don’t turn to him. I can’t. I won’t.
“I’ll be fine, Sam. Let me go.”
“The hell I will, Abi! I love you. I’m not letting you get behind the wheel to kill yourself a different way.”
“I won’t. I’m okay to drive. I just need to get to my mother. Let me go, Sam.”
“You say that because you think it’s just your life. Something disposable. But what about other drivers? What if you wrecked and hit a bus full of kids or a woman with her new baby? You’re willing to risk your own life. I get that loud and clear. But what about someone else’s? Are you willing to take that risk just to leave me behind?”
Sam knows me too well. Still. After all this time. He knows exactly what to say and where to press. My ability to stay strong, to resist, to be stubborn is nearly nonexistent in the face of his persistence.
I give in. Sam is right. Again. I’m upset and between the alcohol and my emotional distress, I’m not thinking straight. If I were, I would never even consider taking such a chance. “Fine. But what about Noelle? Don’t you need to get home?”
Sam reaches for my other arm and pulls me around to face him, giving me no other choice. “She’s with my parents. Remember?”
“Oh, right.” I give my head a shake. “But Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“After this, please let me go.”
His expression is as soft as mountain heather and as tender as a newborn’s skin. “I can’t do that, Abi. I’ve tried.”
“Try again.”
“I’ll think about it on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You think about trying again, too. With me.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, you just won’t. There’s a difference.”
“Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?”
“Can’t you see I’m trying to protect me, too? My life is better with you in it. And yours can be better with me in it. Just give it a chance.”
I sigh in exasperation. My defenses are low and I want with all my heart to say yes. “Can we talk about this later?”
Sam’s mouth opens like he’s about to say something, but in the end, he only nods, sliding his hands down my arms to lace his fingers with mine. He brings them to his mouth, kissing my knuckles then whispering over the tops of them. “Later. Yes. I’ll take later. Later gives me hope. Now let’s go see your mom.”
Sam leads me down the sidewalk to his truck, one palm pressed tightly to mine, and all I can think about is the flicker of hope I saw come to life in his eyes.
Later.
And how seeing it made me feel.