CHAPTER SIX

Samantha had a whole spread set out for them by the time they arrived home. She had apparently been in the kitchen all day cooking.

“You shouldn’t have done all of this,” Chloe told her.

Sam just waved her palm at her and went back out to the kitchen. When she was gone, Trevor looked at Chloe and said, “This is how she deals with stress, she either works or cooks. She wasn’t going to go in to the office since she knew you were coming home today, so she cooked…all day long.”

“The poor thing. I feel so bad that I’ve brought so much stress on to her— on to all of you.”

“She’ll be fine,” Trevor said, “We all will. She’s just still processing how close we came to losing you again.”

Chloe nodded. The next time Samantha came into the dining room and tried to bustle back out Chloe said, “Samantha sit with me, please.”

Samantha looked reluctant, but she took the seat next to Chloe at the table. Chloe looked at her with soft eyes and said, “I appreciate everything you’re doing and everything you’ve done but it’s time for you to relax now. I’m safe. I’m home. We’re going to have a baby!”

Samantha’s face brightened automatically. She was silent for a few minutes and then she swallowed hard and said, “I’m so happy! I really am. I just can’t seem to shake this anxiety. It’s clinging to me even though I know that everyone is okay.”

Chloe nodded and turned her chair towards her mother; she took her hand. “I know that feeling and I hate knowing that you’re experiencing it. It’s like you jump out of your own skin at the slightest sound because you’re just waiting around for something else to happen. I wish I could tell you that was never going to be the case but I’ve learned the hard way and I’m sure you have to, that life doesn’t work that way. There’s no “fair share” as we as humans like to believe…if there was, everyone in this room would be exempt from anything bad ever happening again. So, in my humble opinion and bear with me, I’m new at this…We need to concentrate on the positives. We found each other. We’re all alive and well, getting stronger every day and guess what?”

“What?”

“You’re going to be a grandmother!”

Sam squealed. “I know! I’m having such a hard time believing that’s true!”

Derek laughed and said, “I am too. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m going to be a father.”

Sam had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling through them.

“My friend Carol told me once that being a grandparent is our reward for getting old. It’s called a reward because technically, you don’t have to work for it or even deserve it. You just have to “Be.” I’ve been so envious of all of my friends for the past few years. It seems like I’m the only one without snapshots to show off or little anecdotes to toss out.” The tears were flowing rapidly down her cheeks now. “One of my best friends has seven granddaughters! She hardly makes it to lunch anymore.” Her silent tears turned into a sob and Chloe leaned over and wrapped her arms around her, bandages and all. “I’m so sorry,” Samantha said when she was able to compose herself. “I don’t know what happened.”

Chloe smiled at her again softly and said, “It’s been a pretty overwhelming couple of months. You don’t have to apologize. What you need to do is start planning what you want your gorgeous grandchild to call you.”

“I think you look like a Nana,” Derek said with a grin.

“I would go with Grandmamma,” Trevor said with a wink.

Samantha smiled and said, “What am I, the Queen of England? No, I know exactly what I want him or her to call me. I want to be a ‘Granny’ like my granny was to me and my mother was to Sarah. In my family, being bestowed with the honor of being called ‘Granny’ meant you have finally made it to the top of the family tree.” Her eyes filled with tears again and she said, “I wish she could have met you.”

“Me too,” Chloe said. “Granny, it is. But since we’re on the subject of family, I would love to hear more about ours. I don’t even know my own nationality.”

“My family came over from England in the early nineteen hundreds,” Trevor said. “I did one of those genealogy searches one time on Ancestry.com. We were Welsh and I don’t want anyone to bow to me or anything, but I found out that we were descended directly from Llewelyn II.” They laughed and he said, “After Edward I invaded Wales, my family ended up in England. We weren’t treated very well. We worked as servants for a few hundred years. Somehow, one of my ancestors was able to become a goldsmith and from then on, the family did well. They came to America in 1908 before the wars broke out on both continents. After that, the blood started mixing. We have some Italian and some Puerto-Rican in us which explains the brown eyes I suppose.”

“And maybe the temper,” Derek said with a grin.

“My family has been in America since the early 1800’s,” Samantha said. They came from Norway. Oh! I have a letter from my great-great-great-great-grandfather to one of his brothers. I’ll get it out and let you see it. It tells all about his life here and talks about each family member. I was so happy when I found it in an old trunk my grandmother had. That’s one of the reasons I encouraged Sarah to keep a written diary. I know they say that technology is preserving things forever…but who really knows yet if that’s true?”

“I would love to see the letter,” Chloe said, excited. It felt good to finally know where she came from. “I would also love to take a look at those journals now too. I think I’m in a better place and I would really like to get to know Sarah.”

“Of course,” Samantha told her. “Anytime. I’ll find the letter for you after lunch and also let you look through a trunk of your grandmother’s things if you’d like? There are a lot of old photos and birth certificates, things like that in there.”

“That sounds great,” Chloe told her, honestly. She was so looking forward to the fact that she could finally relax and do something without having her mind drift to where Jesse was, what he was doing or when he was coming for her.

They finished their meal and Samantha ushered Chloe into the den to “rest.” She got the box of Sarah’s journals out for her and while Derek and Trevor helped Samantha clean up lunch. Chloe took out one of the journals and held it in her hands. She closed her eyes and wished that for just a second real life could be like a movie and she could channel her sister through the book that was so lovingly worn. She lifted it to her nose and smelled it, and then she opened her eyes and opened it up to the first page.

July 3, 2002

Dear Diary,

I am going to start middle school in a few weeks. I’m nervous, so Mom bought me this book to write my thoughts down in. I’m nervous because where we live a lot of the kids, I went to grade school with will have to go to a different middle school. I’m upset because most of my friends are going to Jackson Middle…and I have to go to Washington. I’ll have to start all over making friends. Since you’re new, I will tell you quickly about me. I’m Sarah. I have a mom named Samantha and a dad named Trevor. I’m an only child…kind of. On my twelfth birthday, my parents told me that I had been born a twin. I wondered why they waited so long to tell me…but then they said my twin died and I understood. I wouldn’t have understood about death when I was ten. Anyways, sometimes I think about her now. Her name was Sophia and Mom says they never let her see her, but they told her we were identical. That makes it easier for me to imagine her because I know what she would have looked like. I love my mom and dad…a lot. But sometimes I miss having a sister so bad. It’s weird to miss what you never had, but that’s how I feel…like I miss her. I wish she was here to start seventh grade with me…and then to turn thirteen with me so in case I don’t make any new friends at school…I could at least know that my sister would be there with me.

Chloe had to stop there for a few minutes and make herself breathe. For a second, her mind tried to flash back to when she started middle school, but she stopped it. Now was her time to bond with her sister, not to wallow in the grief that was her childhood. She gathered herself and opened the book back up. She read on:

I have been thinking about doing track. I love to run. Running makes me feel free, although I have no idea why I wouldn’t feel that way all the time. I have a good life, but it seems like sometimes I can’t breathe…so I run. I usually run with my dad. We’ve been running together since I was a baby. When I was too small to run, he would carry me in a papoose on his chest first and then his back as I grew. I don’t remember any of that; it’s what Mom told me. My whole life I’ve run every morning, rain or shine. I wonder if my sister were here if she would have liked to run with me.

Chloe wiped a tear from her cheek and read on.

Maybe I’ll join the track team. I guess that would be a good way to make friends with people who like the same things as me. Well, I better sign off now, Mom is calling me for dinner. I guess she might be right…as usual. It helped me feel a little better to write all of this down. We’ll see how I’m feeling when it’s time to actually start school.

Sarah drew a round face with its eyes crossed and a tongue sticking out. Chloe laughed and wiped another tear away. She heard someone come in and she looked up and saw Derek there.

“Are you okay?”

She smiled and nodded. “She used to think about me and wonder what I would be like.”

He came over to sit next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. Kissing her on top of the head he said, “She thought about you a lot. She used to talk to me a lot about it. She told me she liked to imagine the kind of trouble the two of you could have stirred up together. I thought that was really funny because she really wasn’t the trouble-maker type.”

Chloe laughed and said, “Maybe it was a twins thing and she knew I would be.”

Derek laughed too and Chloe laid her head on his shoulder and they sat like that for a long time. Chloe’s heart was finally at peace.