The roses fall from her hand. Her hand goes to her chest, and I yell out for help. She closed her eyes and fell into a coma right after that.
The tears run down my face as I come back to now. Looking at the roses move in the breeze, I shake my head. “I can’t believe you never married me.” I try to joke with her, but the hurt is still here seven years later.
I close my eyes, and I’m back to that same day. The balloons were gone, the cake out of my face. We sat by her bed as I held her frail hand in mine, kissing the inside of her wrist where her heart was beating. Faintly. The doctor had just left, and he didn’t have to say what we all knew. There was nothing he could do. Her body was failing. Her parents sat on one side of the bed while I sat on the other, and the tears never stopped. “I love you,” I whispered to her, and her eyes fluttered open.
“I’m tired.” She looked at me. “I can’t do it anymore.” She didn’t have to tell us because we knew. We saw it in her eyes. “Best thing I ever did was join that debate team.” She tried to be funny, but no smile came to her face. “Don’t close yourself off,” she told me. “Live.”
“I love you,” were the only words I could say.
“Then live,” she said. “Do everything we said we would do. Promise me you’ll fall in love.”
“Frankie,” I said as she closed her eyes, and then slowly opened them again.
“Promise,” she whispered, and then closed her eyes. Two hours later, she took her last breath and took my heart with her.
My eyes slowly open as I look at what’s left of her—the cold black stone. “I’m sorry I didn’t do what you told me to.” I lie on my side, resting my head on my arm. I sit here for what seems like forever, then get up and go to my truck. My phone is beeping from calls and messages. My family knows what today is. They give me my space but always call just to check on me and tell me they are here for me.
I see that Samantha has called a couple of times and has also left a couple of messages. Not today, I tell myself, though I’m not sure what that feeling is that creeps in.
I get home, close the door and all the drapes, and take the bottle of whiskey out of the cupboard on my way to the couch. I pour myself a couple of shots, taking them all in a row. The initial burning starts to slowly go away. For two hours, I finish the bottle. The sun’s setting, and I close my eyes, hoping that the darkness takes me until tomorrow. I rest my head, and I’m about to sink into the darkness when a soft knock makes me open my eyes. At first, I think I’ve imagined it, that it’s just in my head, but I hear it again.
I get up to go to the door when the knock sounds again. “I’m coming,” I bark out and swing the door open. “What?” I say, and I’m not sure if it’s the whiskey or my imagination, but she’s standing there in front of me.
“I figured you needed a friend,” she says softly, and right then, my heart fills for the first time in forever. Her smile fills me; it makes almost everything okay.
“How did you know?” I ask her, moving aside to let her in.
“I didn’t,” she says softly as she looks around. “The kids left for the night, and I went into my room and I read the letter again. But this time, this fell out.” She takes the white envelope out with Hailey’s name on it. “Seems Eric wanted to say goodbye to her also.”
She turns around and notices the empty whiskey bottle. “Am I crashing a party?” she asks, and I don’t know why, but I tell her.
“Seven years today, Frankie died,” I say and then go to the couch and she follows me.
“Do you have another bottle somewhere?” she asks me, and I actually smile. “In the kitchen.”
She gets up, and I follow her the whole way. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, nothing sexy, but she oozes class. She comes back with it and pours a shot in the glass and hands it to me “To a great, great woman.” When she holds the bottle up, we click the bottle to the glass, and she takes a pull while I swallow the shot. She hisses. “That’s fucking awful,” she says, coughing, and I laugh while she pours another shot. I raise it to my mouth, but she doesn’t join me.
“How did you know where I lived?” I ask her.
“I didn’t. I went to the firehouse I found online. They gave me your address,” she tells me and smiles. “FYI, they think I’m a stripper gram.”
I burst out laughing, smacking my leg. “No way.”
“I had to make it believable.” She laughs as I swallow another shot. My vision starts to get foggy.
“I promised her I would fall in love,” I say, looking at her sitting on my couch. “I lied.”
“You’ll fall in love again. I know it,” she tells me, smiling with tears in her eyes. “Anyone would be lucky to be loved by you,” she says, crouching down next to me and looking straight into my eyes.
“I can’t love anyone. I’m broken,” I tell her the truth. “Half of me is broken.”
“What if you find someone who is just as broken as you are and”—she swallows, and her hand comes to my face as she cups my cheek in her hand—“together, you’re whole.”
My hand moves on its own, brushing the hair from her face. “I would be so lucky,” I whisper, and then my eyes close, and the darkness finally finds me.
Samantha
Samantha
I don’t know what I was thinking. Fuck, I wasn’t thinking. When the girls left, I went to my room and remembered the white envelope stuck in with the letter from Eric. When I pulled it out, I was in shock that he left Hailey a letter. I immediately called Blake, but he didn’t answer. I knew he wasn’t at work, and when he spent most of the day radio silent and then didn’t answer my texts, I got worried, so I decided to take a drive. Was it my smartest moment? Obviously not. When I walked into the fire station, the eyebrows all raised when I asked if he was around. I joked around, saying I was his stripper, and one of the guys finally gave me his address.
When I knocked on the door, all the drapes were closed, but his truck was in the driveway. When he opened the door, the glaze in his eyes was apparent, and so was the shock of seeing me. I had no idea today was the anniversary of Frankie’s death.
He’s suffered all by himself; the big man with the biggest heart I’ve ever seen suffered by himself all day long. So I sat with him shot after shot until he passed out. But not before he told me he could never love again. Not before my heart broke for him and with him.
I close the door softly behind me as I walk down the steps to my car. I hold the tears in until I sit in my car and head toward my house. Our conversation plays over and over in my head for two and a half hours. When I finally roll home, I don’t bother to turn on the lights. I just walk to my bedroom and kick off my clothes, the first tear finally falling. Of course, I went and fell in love with a broken man who could never love me back.
I fell in love with a man who thinks he’s so broken he can’t love another person. “Wow, do I know how to pick ’em,” I say and fall into bed. The darkness comes for me easily, and the next day, when I roll out of bed, my whole body aches.
I walk to the coffeepot, and my phone rings, showing me it’s Blake. I press connect to start the FaceTime.
“Did I dream that you came here last night?” he says. I look at him, and his face is rough this morning. I laugh at his one eye open and the other eye closed.
“Would it freak you out if I said it was a dream and you thought you were going crazy?” I laugh at him as he groans.
“I can’t believe you came and just left,” he says as he lays his head on his arm. “I woke up looking for you.”
I shake my head, placing the phone down while I start the coffee. “It was a rough day yesterday,” he says softly, and I go back to the phone. “It’s been so long, yet it feels like it just happened.”
“I guess when it’s that day, the memories of what you did that day just suddenly surface, right? I mean, I can never smell lemon again without thinking of Eric.”
“Yeah. I asked her to marry me the day she died,” he says, and my
heart breaks for him again. “She said no.” He shakes his head. “Every single year, it’s the only memory I have.”
I look at him, not sure what I should say. Not sure there are any words out there to say. “Anyway, thank you for bringing Hailey’s letter. I’m going to visit her tomorrow when I get off my shift.”
“That should be relaxing. You can detox all that whiskey from your body,” I tell him, winking at him as the doorbell rings. “Okay, mom duty time.” I hang up and go to the door, opening it for the girls.
Lizzie comes in and doesn’t say anything but just goes upstairs. I watch her and then turn and look at Elliot. “What is wrong with Lizzie?”
“I guess she just didn’t sleep well,” he says, dumping their bags at the front door without making eye contact. “Um, I guess I’ll see them around,” he says and walks out. The whole encounter is so fucking weird.
I look at Daisy. “What in the world?” I ask, and she looks at me. “I don’t want to live with Grandma and Grandpa either,” she says, and then I call Lizzie right away.
“Come here please,” I say, and she comes down the stairs with tears running down her face. “What in the world?” I take her in my arms, and she sobs. Her hands squeeze me so hard when my arms go around her. “What in …?” I whisper, and she finally lets me go.
“I don’t want to go live with Grandma and Grandpa,” she finally says out loud.
“Why would you think that?” I look at Daisy and then Lizzie.
“Uncle Elliot wanted to know if we would like to go live there instead of here,” Lizzie says, and my heart stops and then beats faster. “When I got mad, he said it was just a question.”
“I don’t know why he asked you this,” I tell them both, “but there is no way I would let you live with them when your home is right here. Now, let’s unpack the bags, and we can have movie day on the couch.” I smile, and they walk with the bags to the laundry room. I pick up my phone and call Elliot and it goes to voicemail. I call him back again and leave him a message. “Elliot, you need to call me back.”
I hang up the phone, but my stomach never settles, even after we watch two movies and the girls return to normal. That night, I text Elliot when he doesn’t call me back, and he doesn’t answer that one either.
I toss and turn all night long, my hands shaking with nerves, and the next morning when I get back home from dropping off the kids, my phone rings, and I jump at it, expecting it to be Elliot, but it’s Blake.
“Hey,” he says, and I sigh. “What’s up?”
“I’m waiting for Elliot to call me back,” I say. Sitting down, I feel my legs shaking with nerves. “He asked the kids if they wanted to go live with my in-laws.”
“What?” he asks, and I suddenly hear he is in his truck.
“Yeah, Lizzie came into the house pissed and stormed upstairs. He gave me this horse shit excuse about her not sleeping. Daisy is the one who said she wasn’t going to live with them.”
“Why would he ask that?” he asks the question that no one has the answer to.
“I have no clue, but you can bet your ass if he doesn’t call me, I’m going to show up at his work tomorrow. I don’t give a shit anymore.” He doesn’t say anything as I rant and rave about them. “Where are you going?”
“Hailey’s,” he says. “I’m almost there. I left right after shift.”
“Are you excited?” I ask him, and he says yes. We talk for a bit more until he arrives.
I hang up the phone, and the doorbell rings. I walk to the door and open it. A man stands before me with a clipboard in one hand. “Samantha Schneider,” he says, looking at the paper and then up at me again.
“Yes,” I say with one hand holding the door. His hand reaches out with papers folded in his hand. My hand reaches out to get them.
“You’ve been served,” he says and turns and walks away. I close the door as my hands shake, holding the letter.
I turn it over in my hand, unfolding the pages, and I don’t even realize I’ve hit the floor when I do.
I see nothing except the names at the top corner of the plaintiffs—Judy and Adrian Schneider—and then my name under the defendant. And what I see under that stops my blood cold.
They are suing me for custody of the girls, deeming me unfit and alienating their affection.
The sob rips through me, and my hand moves to my chest. I run to grab my phone and call Elliot first, and he doesn’t answer. “Please call me back,” I say between sobs. “Please.”
I then call Judy, and I’m sent straight to voicemail. “Judy, you need to call me back,” I whisper as I sob.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to call, so I call the only lawyer I know. When the secretary answers, I ask to speak to Mr. Feldman. I’m transferred right away, and he picks up. “Mr. Feldman, this is Samantha Schneider. I’m calling because I got served papers today from my in-laws.”
“I’m aware,” he says, not shocked at all. “I suggest you get yourself a lawyer.” He then hangs up on me.
I look up in shock at the phone. What the hell am I going to do? I sit here, and for the first time in my life, I regret the day I fucking met Eric.
Opening the computer, I google family lawyers in the area. I call the first one my eyes land on and make an appointment for the next day. The whole day is spent with me reading and rereading the papers I was served. I hide them away before I get the girls and try to act as normally as I can. My phone beeps, showing me Elliot responded to my text.
I’m sorry.
It’s the only thing he says, two words. He didn’t even have the fucking balls to pick up the phone and call me. That night, I make the girls sleep with me, hugging both of them while they sleep, and I cry silently, kissing their heads.
I ignore the call from Blake and the texts. He has enough going on right now. The next day when I walk into the lawyer’s office, he reads the paper and looks up at me. “It is very rare that the grandparents are awarded custody when one of the parents is still alive.”
I fill him in on the whole double life that Eric led. He tells me what I don’t really want to hear. “You need to find a character witness who can confirm all this,” he tells me, and my shoulders slump. I leave the lawyer’s office with a list of things I need to do and papers that need to be filled out. When the girls come home, I again try to pretend everything is normal, but Lizzie senses something.
I let them sleep in their own bed that night and then pick up the phone and dial the one person I know who can help me—Blake.
He answers after two rings, a little breathless. “Hey,” he says, and I lose whatever I was holding in me, letting go of everything.
“Samantha,” he says, “breathe for me, baby, just breathe.”
I listen to his words as I try not to hyperventilate. “I need your help,” I tell him quietly.
“Anything,” he answers without hesitation.
“I need you to be a character witness,” I tell him and wait for the next question I know is coming.
“For what?” he asks, and I say the words I dreaded all day long.
“My in-laws are suing me for custody of the girls,” I say quietly and then cry. “They are going to take my babies away from me.” He doesn’t say anything else.
“I’m on my way,” he says and disconnects, and I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel like everything is going to be okay.
Blake
Blake
One minute, I’m having pizza, and the next, I’m rushing back to my truck, kissing Hailey goodbye, and hightailing it to Samantha’s house.
I had no idea that when I pulled up to Hailey’s cottage on the beach, I would find such a different person. She was not even the old Hailey; she was a better Hailey. I thought I would have to snap her out of it, but she smiled and laughed and looked in love. Then I found out why when a soft knock came, and I found her in Jensen’s arms.
I hated being the one to break her out of that when I gave her the letter. Actually, she
didn’t even fucking take the letter; she just left. Lucky for me, Jensen came and made her okay, brought her back to center. She took the letter to her room and then told me we were eating pizza for dinner.
I sat at the table with Hailey and Jensen, who showed up with his adorable daughter. Not only did my sister fall in love with Jensen, but she was also head over heels for Mila.
Crystal was also doing well and came in with Jensen’s cousin, Gabe, who was also her boss. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was more to that story, and I made a note to ask her about it when we got home.
Then my phone rang, and I went outside to take it. I had been calling Samantha for two days now with no answer, but her voice was unrecognizable. The hairs on my neck stood up right away. Then she asked me to be a character witness, and my mind was going around and around.
“My in-laws are suing me for custody of the girls,” she said so quietly I was afraid I misunderstood her. “They are going to take my babies away from me.” My blood ran cold and only one thing went through my mind was over my dead fucking body would someone take the girls away from her.
“I’m on my way,” I say, disconnecting then telling Hailey there was an emergency. I didn’t mention anything because I didn’t have time to tell her about Samantha. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share her yet.
I got in my car, thankful she is halfway between Hailey’s home and my home. I pull up in her driveway around eleven. I don’t even have to call her because she’s standing at the door. Leaning against it, she watches as I put the truck in park, get out, and walk up the stairs to her. Taking her in my arms right away, I hold her while she cries. Quietly, I pick her up around her waist and bring her inside the house. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her while I hold her. “Let me see what they sent you,” I ask her, and she disengages herself from my arms and takes my hands to lead me up the stairs to her bedroom, then locks the door after I step inside. She goes to the dresser where she opens the drawer and takes out the paper.
Love Series (Complete Series) Page 50