by D. Brown
He looked good as he rounded the final bend on his 50’s and approached 60. He maintained decent weight, actually looking better approaching 60 than he did when he approached 40.
Except for the snow-white hair due to years spent beneath the harsh Tybee sun, Sam looked good. His complexion assumed that darker, almost leathery tone of one who spends all his time on the beach. The lines in his face burrowed a little deeper, and the boyish sparkle in his eyes lost a little bit of its shine, but the sarcastic curl in his smile remained unchanged, and those who met Sam for the first time always came away wondering what the joke was, and when he intended to let them in on it.
Still, those who knew him said the sadness radiated off him like a cold light.
He carried the burden of an inherent sadness on his shoulders, as if something was missing from his life.
Those who knew Sam McKenna didn’t waste a lot of time trying to figure out what that something might have been.
They knew.
He missed Maggie.
Sam was finishing up his Christmas shopping for the grandkids at the mall when he spied Frank Wiley.
Seeing Frank sent a visible shock through him.
He staggered.
At first, he veered to the opposite side of the atrium hoping to avoid Frank and the obvious awkwardness associated with meeting the man who had an affair with his dead wife.
For years, Sam held nothing but contempt for Frank Wiley.
He blamed him for a lot of the problems in his marriage to Diane.
He blamed him for the breakup, though technically, they never broke up as she died before that happened, but Sam was certain, had she lived, divorce papers would have soon followed.
Sam long swore if he ever saw Frank Wiley again, he’d walk up to him and clock him a good one before shaking his hand.
Until, that is, he saw Frank Wiley.
The years had been difficult he could tell . . . and his appearance hit Sam hard.
How many years it had been?
It’d been a dozen at least since Diane died, and Sam remembered seeing Frank the day she died, and again at the funeral, but they never spoke.
His shoulders were stooped as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. His hair had bled white, and the lines on his face looked as if they’d been gouged by a sculptor’s hammer and chisel. His cheeks were shallow, and his mouth looked as if it hadn’t smiled in ages.
But what struck Sam most about seeing Frank Wiley was the dull glaze that shadowed his eyes and the haunted expression pulling on his face.
It was a look Sam had seen before.
But where?
Frank hadn’t seen him, and Sam was content in continuing on his way and putting the unpleasantness of seeing his dead wife’s former lover out of his mind, when he remembered where he saw that haunted expression before.
Sam saw it every time he looked in the mirror.
The haunted look on his face was his own.
That’s when Sam veered suddenly to the right and walked up to Frank Wiley, smiling hello, and extending his hand.
All color drained from Frank’s face when he recognized Sam.
“Frank? Sam McKenna,” Frank warily accepted his hand. Sam noticed the grip to be weak and the skin on his palm clammy. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Yes it has,” Frank croaked, barely able to speak, “Several years in fact.”
His voice was heavily laced with that refined Southern drawl.
“Have you been well?”
Sam nodded, “Can’t complain, how about you?”
“Here and there,” Frank said. “Congratulations on your novels, by the way. I loved Finding Mudville, great book.”
“Better way of paying the bills,” he replied.
“How are the kids?”
“Grown,” Sam said, “Grandbabies all over the place. They’re both doing really well. How’s your family?”
Frank replied with the typical great kids getting older and growing more every day.
Frank and his wife Caroline divorced shortly after Diane’s death. Sam never knew if she suspected or found out anything about her husband’s affair. She had to guess something was up, or else they’d have never gotten the divorce.
“Frank, the reason why I stopped you,” Sam chose his words carefully, and these were difficult ones to express, and a hard pill for him to swallow.
Until now.
“I always blamed you for my marriage problems with Diane,” he said, “I was angry with you for a long time after her death. You were a convenient source of blame. It was easy to lay all this at your feet.”
Frank stood there and looked at Sam, uncertain as to how to reply, an out of left field meeting with a man he never expected to see again, and a time in his life he tried his best to sweep under the rug.
“I wanted to tell you though, I was wrong.”
Franks yellow stained eyes grew a little wider beneath the confused frown.
“Diane and I would have probably divorced had she lived, and eventually, I imagine, the two of you would have gotten together. That was the basic plan, right?”
Frank replied with a barely perceptible nod.
“I wish it would have happened. I wish you two wouldn’t have waited.”
Frank could barely find his voice. “Why?”
Sam swallowed down the rising emotion in his voice. “Because then . . . Diane would have been happy. You would have made her far happier than I ever could. She’d be alive right now, and still be a mother and grandmother to my kids and their children.”
He shook Frank’s hand again, “For that, I will always be sorry. Have a Merry Christmas Frank. Take care of yourself okay?”
Sam patted him on the shoulder and walked away, not turning around to see Frank Wiley weeping openly into his hands.
44
Maggie settled back into the routine of being wife and mother.
That winter, after Christmas, it was decided that the subject of the previous summer’s vacation on Tybee Island was closed and never to be brought up again.
David continued to ask after Sam and wanted to know when they’d be going back so he could go fishing with his best friend.
After Christmas, and as first grade gave way to second, David’s mention of his fellow He Man Woman Hater faded away and was never brought up again.
After Anna Beth graduated from high school, she signed up to work as a missionary for her church, and spent a year in Guatemala working at the local hospital.
Adam didn’t last until Halloween.
He was laid off from the factory that October and moved to Cleveland by Christmas after Anna Beth wrote to tell him she’d fallen in love with one of her fellow missionary workers.
They married during Anna Beth’s junior year in college and after graduation, spent the next six years working in Central American hospitals on behalf of the Lutheran church.
The relationship between Anna Beth and her mother had been strained as a result of their summer on Tybee Island. She was only protecting her father, and looking out for her brothers.
That’s why she called Daddy, Anna Beth explained.
“He deserved a chance to fight for you.”
But as the years passed, the summer on Tybee Island faded into the recesses of distant memory.
Anna Beth returned home when her father suffered his first heart attack, and now worked as a nurse for the Lutheran hospital in Pittsburgh.
Robbie earned All-State honors in soccer and signed a scholarship with Kent State University. He played for two years before blowing out his knee, and graduated with a business degree.
He moved to Cincinnati where he worked for a major advertising firm and married just before turning thirty.
He had no kids yet, but Rob and his wife bought a home in Blue Ash, and a vacation place on Lake Michigan in Traverse City.
They were in no big hurry to start a family, he said.
He just wasn’t that intere
sted in kids right yet.
David was a senior in high school four months from graduation, when he walked up to his mother one afternoon while she cooked dinner and asked her out of the blue, “Mom, do you love Dad?”
Maggie hesitated for that critical moment before replying. The moment, which betrays your true feelings, and makes anything you say afterward, shallow, not holding water, and lacking in any credibility.
“Of course I love your father honey.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, looking at her with a serious glint in his dark eyes.
David was always her serious child.
He’d grown tall, and strong, developing sharp features as he matured that reminded Maggie of her father.
Maggie turned from the big pot of simmering marinara sauce.
The years had been kind to her.
While her hair maintained that rich shade of topsoil brown by benefit of Miss Clairol, the lines around her eyes were minimal, the softness in her cheeks barely noticeable, and the sparkle in her smile undimmed by the passage of time.
She maintained her figure as well as any woman her age could, and every now and then she’d catch a younger man giving her the eye in the grocery store or at the mall.
She always had the legs, and middle age did nothing to diminish that.
“You don’t want to know me,” she always said, stealing from Elizabeth Taylor, and then casually strolled away.
Dumbfounded with mouths agape was usually how she left them.
“David, why would you say that?” Maggie asked, setting down her spoon and wiping her hands dry on a dishtowel.
“Because you love Sam, don’t you?”
Sam.
Maggie’s heart gave a little squeeze and fell to the soles of her feet.
It had been years since his name had been brought up, a forbidden topic never spoken of again until this moment.
Maggie though, thought about him every night.
The light had gone out of her life too, and over the years, other than her children, Maggie lost her passion for living for herself.
She was content being a mother, and attending to the needs of her kids.
A mother is not to want for herself.
She decided it was simply not meant for her to enjoy such a pure and true love.
She was a married woman.
It was wrong.
Maggie considered herself blessed to have experienced it, however fleeting and ultimately tragic their affair had been.
Love was meant for the young at heart she always said, and Maggie no longer considered herself to be young at heart.
She missed Sam . . . desperately, but her children came first, and her children needed their father in their lives.
Maggie did not regret the choice she made.
Yes, it broke her heart, but she sacrificed her own happiness in exchange for a stable, healthy home for her children.
She had all of his books, and read each one and quietly beamed when she saw he named the female love interest in Finding Mudville named Maggie.
“You smiled, just then,” David said pointing at finger at her. “And you don’t smile much anymore, at least not happy smiles anyway.”
“I did? Why?”
“You tell me. I mention his name and your face lights up. You never look like that.”
“I’m surprised you even remember Sam,” Maggie said still wearing a remnant of her wistful smile. “You were so young then.”
“It was the best vacation I ever had,” David said wearing a wistful smile of his own.
“Sam was a remarkable man.”
“He saved my life. Sam was my best friend.”
“David.”
Maggie put down the spoon and took her son by the hand and they sat down at the kitchen table. She started to speak, but David put a hand on hers and the look in his eyes said she didn’t have to.
He would.
“It’s okay that you don’t love Dad,” he said. “I can see why. He’s not the most compassionate man out there.”
“Your father is a fine man, David.”
Her son smiled back and shook his head, “But you don’t love him.”
Maggie didn’t have anything to say, so she didn’t.
Her silence said it all for her.
“You loved Sam.”
“Sam was a mistake,” she said, suddenly fussing with the folds of her apron. “A mistake I’m not very proud to admit to making. Your father and I were going through a difficult time then.”
“You’ve been going through a difficult time ever since, Mom. He’s possessive, manipulative, overbearing and a general pain in the ass. Why do you stay with him?”
“David! That is no way to talk about your father.”
Maggie’s tone while reproachful lacked real conviction.
“You want me to lie then?”
She placed her hand on top of his.
“No honey, I don’t want you to lie.”
“If you didn’t love him, then why did you stay with him?” he asked again.
“For you kids,” his mother replied.
David looked at his mother for a long time, maturity and reason glistening in his suddenly grown-up eyes.
He’d grown tall, like his brother, and strong.
He had no interest in soccer other than a recreational way to stay in shape.
David’s passion was baseball.
He was good at it . . . started varsity since last year. He played third base. He knew he’d never take this beyond high school, but he thoroughly enjoyed himself.
David loved baseball because of Sam.
It was Sam who sparked his interest in baseball that summer on Tybee Island.
“He wrote you, you know, and Dad intercepted the letters.”
Maggie didn’t know this.
“What happened was wrong, David. I’m not proud of what I’d done. It wasn’t right.”
“This,” David said, waving a hand at the kitchen around him, “Isn’t right either. I’m leaving next fall. Everyone else is gone. It’s just the two of you now. Mom, it’s okay. You are entitled to be happy. It’s your turn.”
“That was so long ago, and it was wrong. I made what I felt to be the right decision morally and for you kids.”
David just shook his head.
“Mom, what would you do if Anna Beth came home and said she didn’t love Ben anymore, but would stay with him, unhappily, because of her children? What if Rob said the same thing?”
“I’d tell her to –”
“I thought so,” he said. “Then why do you expect us, Grandma, anybody to understand what you’re doing, and why? You wouldn’t want any of us to endure a situation like this. You’d want us to be happy, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then why aren’t you allowed the same privilege?”
Maggie didn’t have an answer for him.
“Please do me a favor next time, okay? David asked, a very serious expression shadowing his handsome face. “Do us all a favor next time.”
“Anything honey, just name it.”
“Don’t do us anymore favors,” David said and smiled. “Okay?”
45
That same spring Sam finally relented and finished Locked Hearts.
Beverly Huffnagle said she didn’t give a fiddler’s damn if Sam had found his “Happily Ever After” yet or not.
She twisted his arm and said, if he ever wanted to write another book for Huffnagle and Morris, the next manuscript he submitted better have Locked Hearts printed on the title page.
Jillian pleaded with him again, performing the same ritual ever since the first time she heard Sam tell the story over lunch and they signed their first book deal.
“Sam, please. Write the story. It’s a winner. I want to retire before I die. This story will put us both on Easy Street.”
So, Sam gave in and wrote the one thing that had eluded him all these years, and snagged the story in the briars and thickets of his creati
ve mind.
His own Happily Ever After.
He had tried over the years to finish the story ever since he started it the summer after he and Maggie’s affair – he didn’t even like using the word affair, but in all honesty he had to admit, that’s all it was, and he could never come up with an ending to suit him.
They read all his proofs and fell head over heels in love with the story, saying all it needed was a Happily-Ever-After ending and they’d have a bestseller on their hands.
Sam maintained the Happily-Ever-After ending they so desperately sought was the very snag keeping him from finishing the book.
“It’s not there,” he told them, and in the meantime, wrote two more books that enjoyed better success than anything he’d published previously, but still fell short of the home run his publishers knew Sam could deliver.
They wanted Locked Hearts.
“What do you mean it’s not there?”
His story ended with Maggie telling him she had to go and disappearing from the lighted window. The last line in the book said, “He never saw her again.”
“This is too good a love story to have it end on such a sour note,” Beverly Huffnagle said. “We want our happily ever after. We want our Sam and Maggie reunion.”
“I don’t have a happily-ever-after,” Sam said. “That’s my problem.”
“Well, come up with something. Male-written love stories are the hot ticket these days, and Locked Hearts sounds so real. Readers will lap this up like kittens to cream. The ladies will go nuts over this, Sam. Finish it. The women of the world want a good love story. This is a good love story. It’s your ticket to the big leagues.”
Sam didn’t care about any tickets to any big leagues.
When Sam looked across the desk at Lindsay Kincaid, the silent senior partner at Huffnagle and Morris, a no nonsense matronly kind of Southern woman and told her he’d gotten stuck because he had no concept of a happily ever after from which to draw, she merely shook her head and smiled.
“Sam, honey’,” she replied with her typical stoic, no-nonsense seriousness. “You need to find yourself a woman and get laid.”
She sent Sam back to Beverly Huffnagle with instructions neither of them were allowed to leave the building until they came up with “a decent damn ending” to this story.