Authors: Sharon Sala
* * *
It was after nine when Sam woke up again. Someone slammed the door in the room next door, and he sat straight up in bed with the gun in his hand.
“Shit,” he muttered and laid the gun on the side table as he got out of bed.
The motel bathroom was small, but the lights over the vanity were bright enough to light up Broadway. He stripped, and then paused and stared at himself, turning to the right and then back to the left, eyeing the puckered burn scars on his back and down the backs of his legs. Then he turned to face the mirror and looked again, eyeing the burns across his belly and down the fronts of his legs to just below the knees. He used to be disgusted at the sight. It had taken years for him to appreciate the simple fact of still being alive when so many of his buddies were not.
He showered quickly and shaved just as fast. Thirty minutes later he was dressed and heading out the door. The wind was still sharp, and he held on to the Stetson with one hand as he headed for his SUV. He got a text from Trey as he was starting the engine and quickly put the car in Park.
Trina is the same. Dallas is home sick and I'm transporting a prisoner from here to County. Be back after noon.
Sam texted him back.
Where does Lainey Pickett live?
Where she always did.
Thanks. Safe trip.
Sam sat there looking at the words while a wash of emotion swept over him.
She was right where he'd left her.
Then he sent Trey one last text.
Is she married?
No.
He didn't know he'd been holding his breath until he saw the answer, then he let himself breathe and headed to Charlie's to eat breakfast.
* * *
Lainey woke up around midnight on the floor of her closet with a sweatshirt wadded up under her head and Sam's picture clutched against her chest. She rolled over with a groan, and then squinted against the light shining down in her eyes.
I fell asleep in the closet just from seeing Sam Jakes? What the hell will happen to me if I ever talk to him again?
Disgusted with herself for falling apart, she returned the picture to the cedar chest, kept the sweatshirt and headed for the bathroom.
When she came out, she went through the house locking doors and pulling draperies closed, then turned up the heat before going into the kitchen.
It was too early for coffee and too late for supper, but her belly was grumbling and she was already in trouble with her doctor because she'd gotten too thin. The chemo had made her sick, but that regimen was over. At this moment she was cancer-free. She still had regular checkups, and they would have to keep close watch for the next five years to make sure she didn't have a recurrence, but so be it. She'd gotten through all of this and refused to borrow trouble.
She poured a glass of milk, cut herself a generous slice of poppy-seed cake with cream-cheese frosting that she'd made last week and carried everything to the living room. After turning on the television, she scanned through the channels until she found a show about Marie Antoinette on the History Channel and decided it fit her mood. Off with their heads. Let them eat cake.
Poor Marie.
Poor Lainey, but at least she had cake.
With sweets in her tummy and her mood somewhat calmer, she carried her dishes to the kitchen then turned out lights on the way back to her bedroom. She switched her clothes for a nightgown and crawled into bed.
The moment she closed her eyes she saw Sam's face. She didn't know the man she'd seen in City Hall. He was bigger and gruff and angry. The anger she understood. It was because of Betsy. But he wasn't the hurt and broken man she'd last seen in that hospital bed. She didn't know this man, but he scared her.
She fell asleep with tears on her cheeks and woke up to daylight and a large resounding crash from somewhere outside. She jumped out of bed and raced to the window to look out. One pickup was in a ditch in front of her house, and another one was out in the pasture beside it.
Dressing quickly, she ran into the living room, dropped her phone into her old coat and went out the door, pulling on gloves as she went.
The air was cold and there was an inch of snow on the ground, but the wind from last night was gone.
She recognized the drivers of the vehicles as two of her neighbors. Both were already out of their vehicles as she ran up the drive.
“Are you guys okay?” she yelled.
“I think so,” Bud Decker said.
“Yeah, I'm okay,” Larry Kinney yelled back.
She eyed them closely. Both men had a penchant for making homemade wine and imbibing without caution.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Slick road,” Bud said.
“No room to pass,” Larry added.
She eyed the crushed front ends of both vehicles. Obviously they'd hit each other head-on, which meant neither one of them was telling the truth, but none of that was her concern.
“I'll call the sheriff,” she said.
Their shoulders slumped.
“Tell him we need a couple of wreckers, too,” Bud added.
Larry pointed at his car. “Sorry about your fence.”
She didn't answer. She was already dialing 911.
Six
T
wo hours later the vehicles had been towed and a deputy from the county had taken Bud and Larry to jail for drunk driving, leaving Lainey with a fence to fix on her own. Her old horse, Dandy, was in the pasture somewhere, and she needed to get the fence back up before he had a chance to get out.
She had the fence stretcher on the ground beside her and the post driver in her hand, getting ready to replace another T-post, when she paused to rest. She hadn't begun to address the broken wire on a four-wire fence and was becoming overwhelmed with what she had left to do. Even though she was wearing gloves, her fingers were numb from the cold, and her physical strength was almost gone.
She was at the point of tears when she heard a vehicle coming down the road, and when it began to slow down and then pulled off into her driveway and stopped, she turned to look, expecting it to be a neighbor who'd come to help.
But it wasn't a neighbor.
It was Sam.
She watched him get out, settle his hat firmly on his head and start toward her. The long stride and the way one shoulder tilted down just the tiniest bit were as familiar to her as her own face. The urge to run was huge, but she stayed her ground. This was her turf, and he was the trespasser.
“Lainey.”
His voice yanked a knot in her gut.
“You're obviously lost,” she said, then turned her back on him and went back to work.
He stepped up beside her, slid one hand over the post driver, took it out of her hands and gently eased her aside. And she let him do it. Partly because she was shaking too hard to hold it, and partly because she wanted the fence fixed badly enough to let the devil do it if he happened to pass her way.
“What happened?” Sam asked as he set the next T-post in place and began to pound it into the ground.
“Bud Decker and Larry Kinney hit each other head-on. Bud went in the ditch. Larry went through my fence.”
“Were they drunk?” Sam asked, as he set the last post and pounded it in.
“Yes.”
“Some things never change,” he said.
“And some things
do
,” she snapped, and grabbed hold of the broken ends of the bottom wire and began patching it back together.
Sam picked up another wire and did the same. When they'd repaired all four wires, Lainey held them in place as he clipped them to the T-posts. When he was finished, she began putting her tools into the back of her ATV.
“Thank you for helping. What are you doing here?”
Sam felt her rage. “I want to talk to you.”
She was pulling off her gloves as she turned and, for the first time since his arrival, looked him square in the face.
“I am so sorry for what happened to Betsy and Trina,” she said, and then slapped him hard across the face. “That's for abandoning me without a fucking word, Sam Jakes.”
She turned on one heel, got onto the ATV and drove off toward her barn.
Sam's cheek was stinging from the impact, but it was nothing he didn't deserve. He hadn't come expecting a party. He'd come to make peace, but he couldn't do that standing out here in the cold, so he got back in his SUV and headed for the house.
Lainey was walking up from the barn with her head down when he got there. He could tell she was crying. Seeing the end result of his desertion was even worse than he had imagined.
He knew she wouldn't open the front door for him, so he followed her into the house from the back. The fact that she let him was somewhat of a relief. Since he wasn't sure how she would react, he stopped just inside the door, feeling the warmth of the kitchen and watching as she kicked off her work boots and hung up her old coat.
She walked past him with her chin up and tears on her cheeks. He was waiting for her to give him a sign that she would hear him out when she paused at the kitchen counter, picked up a coffee mug, then spun and threw it at his head.
He ducked as it shattered on the wall behind him. She had another one in her hand when he took a step backward, holding up his arms in a gesture of surrender.
“Please don't break any more of your dishes. I came to apologize. Hear me out, and then I'll never bother you again, if that's what you want.”
“If that's what I want?
Now
you're concerned with what I want? Ten fucking years later you care what I want?”
Her voice broke on the words, but the expression in her eyes never wavered.
Everything he'd planned to say went out the window. Words would not explain him. How he'd been. What he'd become. He took a slow, shaky breath and began taking off his clothes.
Lainey thought nothing of it when he took off his coat, but when he began unbuckling his belt and then pulling at his shirt, she shouted, “Stop! What do you think you're doing?”
“There's nothing I can say that will explain why, but I can show you.”
She flashed on the day she'd sneaked into his room at the hospital, remembering the bandages and all of the monitors and machines keeping him alive.
Her voice started to shake. “Don't, Sam. It doesn't change anything. You didn't trust me to love you then. Why would it make any difference now?”
His panic grew as he kept undressing. No one but his doctors and nurses had seen him like this. The more that came off, the more still she became, until she was completely motionless. She didn't flinch when he tossed his shirt on the kitchen table, and when he stepped out of his jeans and she saw the thick, ropy scars of melted flesh that covered his body, she didn't shriek, she didn't cover her eyes in disgust, and in those moments something inside him broke. She was facing his truth and standing firm. He didn't know he was crying until she threw a box of tissues at him across the room.
Stunned by her response, he caught it on reflex.
“Yes, I can see life dumped a load of shit on you,” she said, and without looking at him, began taking off her sock cap, then tore off everything she had on, revealing the little cap of red curls on a head that had so recently been bald and a woman's too-thin body with scars where her breasts used to be. Then she held her arms out at her sides as if she was about to be nailed on a cross and looked upâstraight at the tears rolling down his face.
“Yes...cry me a river, Sam Jakes. I cried one for you.”
She never saw him move.
One moment he was across the room, and the next she was in his arms. He buried his face in the curve of her neck and just kept saying the same thing over and over.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”
She didn't feel the scars beneath her hands as she wrapped her arms around his neck, but she felt his tears, and she felt his body shaking beneath her grasp.
“I loved you, Sam. It wouldn't have mattered. I loved you. How could you forget that?” she cried.
“But I didn't love myself. Ah, Lainey, you don't understand. I tried so hard to die.”
The words shattered her. Ten years of heartache bubbled up and came out in harsh, ugly sobs.
Sam couldn't breathe past her pain. He couldn't quit thinking that he'd done this to her. He'd wounded her heart like the war had wounded him. And he didn't even know her prognosis. Was she healed? Or was she going to die?
Without thinking, he picked her up in his arms and carried her through the house that he knew so well, down the hall and to her bedroom, to the chaos she'd left behind her when she'd been awakened by the wreck. He sat down on the bed, settled her on his lap and cried with her until there were no more tears to cry. When she was still and he could breathe without choking, he began to talk.
“After they let me out of the VA, I had PTSD so bad I nearly killed my first landlord. Mom talked him out of pressing charges. I lost three jobs because of it. I was afraid to be around the people I loved most. I was afraid I might hurt them...hurt
you
. So I figured since I couldn't work for anyone, I should work for myself.”
She listened to the nightmare that had been his life with growing horror.
“And now?” she asked.
“I cope. I sleep with a handgun and my cell phone. I haven't been at the powder keg level in five years. I see a psychiatrist who works with veterans. I own a successful private investigation business. But I'm alone, Lainey. Always.”
She covered her face with her hands, but she couldn't hide from his truth.
“Don't hate me,” he whispered.
She looked up at him then.
“No. I won't hate you ever again,” she said.
“Thank you, more than you can know.”
Her shoulders slumped. Out of instinct she started to cross her arms over her breasts and then remembered they were missing, but she did it anyway, because she was too naked in his arms.
Sam saw, but instead of looking away he tilted her chin and made her look at him.
“Are you okay? What is your prognosis?”
“I'm cancer-free. I begin reconstructive surgery in a few weeks. I was waiting until the end of the semester so I'd have all of Christmas break to heal.”
“You teach?”
She nodded. “World history for the University of West Virginia, online. I teach online courses from home.”
“That's wonderful, Lainey.”
“I like it,” she said.
He threaded his fingers through hers, then noticed how fragile she appeared and was afraid that he might hurt her, so he eased his grasp.
“Your parents?”
“Dad died about a year after you came home. Mom died a couple of years back.”
“And you stayed.”
She nodded and looked away.
“Why?” he asked. “Didn't you ever want to see the world? See if there was something more than Mystic?”
She was struggling with words. She pushed out of his lap and grabbed a robe from the end of the bed, then turned her back to him to put it on.
“I'll be right back,” Sam said, and left the room.
She could hear his footsteps moving through the house, and then a few moments of silence before she heard him coming back. When he walked into the room again he was wearing his shirt and jeans. He sat down on the side of the bed and held out a hand.
“Just talk to me.”
She sat down in the rocker across from the bed.
“Why did you stay here?” he asked again.
For a moment she couldn't answer. Wasn't sure how to put what she'd done into words. Finally she leaned forward, looking straight into his eyes.
“You know how you hear about mothers whose children disappear, women whose husbands disappear, and no one ever finds out what happened? And how they refuse to leave their homes for fear that one day their loved ones will come looking for them and they'll be gone?”
Sam was caught in the sadness of her gaze. He felt the words coming and knew they were going to gut him, but he wouldn't look away.
Her fingers were curled around the arms of the rocker, and her face had turned pale. He knew she was struggling. He wanted to hold her again, but she had a “keep away” look on her face.
“Do you remember what you said to me the day you left for boot camp? You said you'd come back to me. You promised me, Sam. I couldn't leave. I was waiting for you to come home.”
The ache in his chest was so great he couldn't move.
“You know he died there, don't you, girl?”
Lainey's eyes widened as the meaning of what he'd said began to dawn.
“Your Sam died in a desert in Afghanistan. They sent his body home, and this is all that's left. I don't know what to say to you. I don't know how to make this right.”
She leaned forward. “What do you want from me, Sam? Why are you here?”
“I want...no, I
need
you to forgive me. I need you to understand.”
She was crying againâa weak, helpless cry without sound. “Understand what?”
“That I could hurt you. I'm broken.”
“So what does that make me?” she asked, splaying the palms of her hands across her chest. “I'm in pieces, too, and I don't quit.” She sagged against the rocker and closed her eyes. “Go away, Sam. You said your piece, and I heard it. I am not your priest, but you are absolved of your guilt. So go back to Mystic. Help Trey find out who killed your mother, and then go back to wherever you came from. Hide from what's left of your life. Be the cripple. Be the victim. Just leave me alone.”
He wanted to be angry at her, but she had done nothing but speak her truth.
“I hear you, and I'm leaving. But we're not done here,” he said. “I'll call you tomorrow.”
“You don't know my number. Go away,” she said and turned her face to the window.
Sam walked out of her bedroom with a knot in his chest. Then he noticed the house still had a landline, and with an ache in his heart, realized he still remembered the number. He picked up the receiver and verified the number on the dial, then left the house. All the way back to Mystic he kept running scenarios of how he could make a relationship work, what kind of safeguards she might need if they gave it a try.
When he saw the city-limit sign he had no memory of how he'd gotten there. The farther he drove, the deeper the pain became. He didn't yet know how to fix this, but he had to make it right. No matter how long it took, or what he had to do to convince her to let him try, he had found out one definite truth. He could never leave Lainey behind again.
* * *
Lainey heard the door slam as he left, and there was a moment when she thought she should run screaming from the house, begging him to take her with him. But it wasn't her place to beg. It was his. If he wanted her bad enough, he knew where she lived, and if he did not, when he was gone, so was she. She'd held up her end of the bargain when she'd waited, but she'd fought too hard to survive cancer to bury herself out on a farm all alone.
When he started his car, she got up and watched him as he drove away. She understood the horror of what his family was going through. She got it that Trina's life was hanging in the balance either way. If she survived the shooting and the surgery, they still had to find a way to keep her alive until they could apprehend the killer. And what irony it would be if her own mother's childhood diaries became a focal point in solving such a mystery.