Locked Hearts

by D. Brown

  “One that makes me want to cry,” she added.

  So, they spent the afternoon writing the last sixty or so pages to Locked Hearts.

  The airport scene at the end was her idea, where they happened to bump meet accidentally, he arriving and she on her way to depart to find him.

  “Serendipity always plays big with women,” she said. “Everybody fantasizes about the unexpected. We all love a nice surprise.”

  The ending sounded okay enough to Sam but it wasn’t real and he gave up believing in fantasies a long, long time ago, and when the book finally went to print and hit the bookshelves, the readers loved it.

  Locked Hearts made Sam a fortune, and put him on the national map as one of the newest hot writers of the heart in the business.

  A late bloomer, the trade rags called him.

  Movie rights were being negotiated between the major studios and his agent.

  The pitch, the next great Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reaves epic.

  The world loved The Lake House, and Locked Hearts would blow The Lake House away.

  Over the next year Sam did the book signing tours. Women lined up out the front door of the bookstore for an autographed copy of Locked Hearts.

  Kindle and Nook sales were off the charts.

  Oprah even featured it as her Book of the Month.

  And the question on everybody’s minds, from radio call-in shows to Today and Good Morning America, to a four-minute spot on The Tonight Show, “Who is Maggie?”

  Sam always offered the same shrug and said, “Maggie is a dream. She’s a memory. She’s a lonely spot in my heart. She’s a wound that will never heal.”

  “But is she real?” came the standard follow-up question.

  “She exists in my heart, so yes, she’s real.”

  His agent loved it, his editor loved it, and his publisher ordered another printing of the book. Overnight, Sam McKenna touched the heart of every love-starved woman in America. Here was a sensitive man, who wrote the perfect love story, a man with all this love to give, and no one with which to share.

  Readers saw the book as autobiographical and began scouring the pages of the book, and Tybee Island for clues regarding Maggie.

  They descended on the island in droves.

  Just like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, through downtown Savannah, the local tourist companies started up the Locked Hearts Tour on Tybee Island.

  Sam figured, so what?

  He had no use for the book after that.

  He consented to the round of interviews and told the story behind the story, but when it came down to his killer ending, he brushed it off as commercialized pulp. Everything he wrote about the ending came out sounding shallow and far-fetched.

  Unrealistic.

  Locked Hearts wasn’t his love story anymore.

  There’s no such thing as Happily Ever After, at least not in real life anyway.

  I guess that’s why they pay guys like me the big money to spin these fantasies.

  On the road, wherever Sam traveled, he always looked for her face in the crowd.

  In Cincinnati, he did two book signings, and appeared on a local talk radio program.

  In Cleveland, he was up at 4:00 AM for a seven o’clock interview segment of AM Cleveland.

  In Pittsburgh, he scanned the crowds, figuring if she were to show up anywhere, it’d be here, searching the eyes of every woman who smiled back at him, trying to pick out the spark of recognition hidden in a pair of brown eyes which continues to haunt him to this day. Surely, if nothing else, wouldn’t curiosity nag at her to want to know how he’d been doing?

  A 45 minute drive was all that separated Sam and Maggie when he was in Pittsburgh, a straight shot west on Highway 7, through the West Virginia panhandle and across the Ohio River. In less than an hour, Sam could be standing on Maggie’s front doorstep.

  He could do it.

  He could knock on the door, wait for her to answer, and then look into those eyes that once melted his heart and tell her he loved her.

  And then what?

  Sam didn’t know.

  That’s what he wanted to find out.

  So, what stopped him from going?

  Everything.

  And nothing.

  It’s been 11 years, Sam thought, and not one word.

  Not even a damned birthday card.

  An email.

  A text message.

  Sam certainly put himself out there far enough.

  A Twitter account – my God, how he hated that – and Facebook, he created the Internet presence and received friends’ requests by the dozens, but none of them Maggie.

  She could find him if she tried hard enough.

  She wouldn’t even have to try hard at all, Sam thought. He’d left instructions about her.

  How much trouble is that?

  Hell, even something as antiquated as a cheap two-dollar card and a postage stamp apparently was too much trouble, telling from his empty mailbox.

  Maggie knew how to reach him.

  It’s not like he spent the past 11 years trying to hide.

  His cell phone number hadn’t changed, and he knew Maggie had that number.

  He published his email address, and Twitter and Facebook accounts on each book cover, inviting readers to comment and share their thoughts.

  The dedication page in Locked Hearts read simply, “To Her.”

  He created the email address specifically in the event an email appeared from Maggie. The editorial assistants handling his email fan letters knew exactly what to do with it.

  Sam had Locked Hearts websites.

  In this day and age of instant and constant connectivity, nobody is so damned busy with their lives that they can’t take five minutes to call, or five seconds to zap out a quick “how are you?” email or text, or buy a damn postage stamp and slap it on a card. It doesn’t take that much damn effort. He didn’t even know if she were still alive. Just a little bit of thought is all, that’s the only thing he required of her.

  Five seconds.

  And don’t think Sam didn’t scour the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, any social networking site imaginable for her.

  He did.

  But found nothing.

  Every time.

  It’s like she had dropped off the face of the Earth.

  Vanished.

  Or never existed at all.

  And the letters he wrote.

  What about them?

  Every one of them postmarked “Return to Sender.” Sam found it hard to believe in the time he wrote Maggie those letters, not once did one of them slip through Robert’s vigilant eye.

  The only reason she hadn’t contacted him was because she didn’t want to.

  Like an old photograph, their memory faded away.

  He remembered when she rationalized her decision: “Robert asked me to give him the chance to be the kind of husband I always wanted him to be, and Sam I intend to give him that chance.”

  Bullshit.

  Maggie Scott dropped off the face of the earth when she stepped away from that window so long ago. She closed the door on their love and picked up the pieces of her life. Her silence told Sam one thing – he needed to do the same.

  This is real life.

  What the two of them shared was fantasy – make-believe.

  It was obvious to everybody except Sam he needed to let her go.

  Let her go, Sam.

  Sam had just one problem though.

  His heart wouldn’t let him.

  46

  When Sam returned to Tybee Island after Memorial Day the year after Locked Hearts published, he reached a decision.

  No more.

  No more pining for Maggie Scott.

  No more drowning himself in his sorrows, mourning her loss.

  No more living in the past.

  Their past wasn’t real.

  Today and tomorrow is what now. I’m done wasting time waiting on a fantasy.

 
Done.

  Though Sam promised her this once, he knew his todays and tomorrows no longer included her.

  They spent five days together, the sum total of their time barely made up one good workweek. How could he have ever expected to build a lifetime on so little?

  Was he so much of the fool to believe in such a love?

  Well, no more.

  I’m done.

  It’s time to get on with what’s left of my life.

  She’s gone.

  The only one who fast to your silly little ‘I’ll Wait for You’ promise was you, Sammy boy.

  Everybody else, including Maggie, had long ago forgotten it.

  I’ll wait as long as I have to.

  You’re a fool Sam, a silly lovesick fool.

  Sam didn’t regret his choices, and he didn’t bemoan putting his life on hold to wait on Maggie to join him, but those days were done now.

  I give up; he said one morning to the rising sun.

  He made a mental note to email Jillian Whitaker when he got home, and invite her down to Tybee Island for a long weekend over the Fourth. And he’d remember to tell her to pack a swimming suit, and to leave anything and everything work related at home.

  I deserve a little bit of happiness too, he decided. It’s never too late for that.

  But right now, Sam wanted to go fishing.

  “Y’all are still as ugly as damn sin,” Sam said as he propped open his folding chair. “You save me a seat?”

  “Oh my God, look what the tide washed up.”

  Finch sat down his pole and came out of his chair, sporting a huge grin and snatched Sam up in a tight bear hug.

  “How the hell you been, Sammy?”

  Finch had a good ten years on Sam, and while his fiery mane of red hair had long ago bleached lily white, and thinned a bit here and there as well, it still stuck from beneath his baseball cap like wild tufts of saw grass. He was still a mountain of a man, except for a slight slumping in the shoulders – the weight of age, Finch called it, and all the crap he’d put up with over the years – the all-the-crap codicil he made sure was never uttered within earshot of his dear wife.

  His round face may have deflated some, but the intense sparkle in his blue eyes never wavered. He kept busy these days doing legal counseling for the Municipality of Tybee Island, and keeping Wendy entertained.

  “I deal with real estate law to relax,” he told Sam once, “Wen’s my damn full-time job.”

  Sam set to arranging his tackle box and bait bucket, then exchanged hellos with the rest.

  “Jerry Lee, how’s the fourth wife?”

  “Driving me crazy, what do you think?” he replied with a hug.

  Sam patted McGee on the shoulder, busy fighting the fish he just hooked.

  “Don’t get up on my account, okay?”

  “Sissy,” McGee spat through the stub of his cigar. “Write a man’s story next time, geezus.”

  Sam touched the empty chair between McGee and Jerry Lee.

  “Tin Can, how’s it going?”

  Walt Tinken passed away shortly before Christmas. They noticed at the end of last summer that Tin Can’s step slowed a bit more than normal. A dull yellow film glazed his eyes. Trips to the doctor didn’t find anything, and was attributed to the rigors of advancing age.

  “I’m 78 years old,” he said. “I guess I’m supposed to feel like crap now.”

  One morning after Thanksgiving, when Tin Can couldn’t muster the strength to get out of bed, Jeanne called the doctor who admitted him to the hospital.

  That’s when they found the cancer.

  It’s funny, how a person can hold on through the worst of ordeals, when not knowing the source or origin of the ordeal. But get the news you have cancer, and people seem to slip. They seem to give up, submit to the ominous future, or lack thereof that cancer offers and they stop fighting.

  Tin Can died less than three weeks later.

  They always left a seat for him, as if rather than not coming at all, Tin Can was merely running a little bit late, and would be along shortly.

  “I read the book,” Finch said out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t let McGee know I told you, but we all did.”

  Sam grinned and leaned forward, looking past Finch at McGee, who looked more like a cured hunk of leather now, “Really?”

  “Damned sissy,” McGee pinched the cigar between his thumb and forefinger and spit a stray tobacco leaf. “And you call yourself a sportswriter? Since when do sportswriters write sissy love stories?”

  “I started writing sissy love stories when they generate more than $15 million in retail sales, that’s when. Did you like it?”

  “Never said I didn’t like it,” McGee replied, “Just said you were a damned sissy.”

  McGee spent his days alone now as well, burying Laura two years ago following a massive heart attack. They were watching the news, both relaxing in their recliners, when McGee’s wife of fifty-two years looked up at him with a puzzled expression, said she didn’t feel well, and promptly died.

  “Just tell me, who’s going to play me in the movie?” McGee cracked around the cigar stubble. “Don’t give me any old farts. I want somebody with class and style, like Paul Newman or Jack Lemmon.”

  “McGee, they’re both dead.”

  “Oh, so that’s it, you’re going to kill me off eh? Fine, be that way, I didn’t want to be in your damn movie anyway.”

  And with that McGee went back to fishing.

  Finch told Sam he had been a bit concerned about McGee lately, noticing a bit of a slip in things, you know, like being forgetful, losing track of this thoughts, nothing serious, but at his age – McGee was the oldest of them all at 79, when you see things like this, you start to get concerned.

  Sam lost his grandfather to Alzheimer’s disease, and knew exactly what worried Finch. It was the time thing again, or lack of it. There never seems to be enough time when you need it, too much of it when you don’t want it, and it’s always running out.

  Sam relished these times now, heightened by the obvious absence of Tin Can and his appreciation of the here and now. Their days were numbered, and that number dwindled with the passing of each day. His only regret was that so much time had been wasted on what McGee called a sissy’s dream. Still, even now, with the thought of calling Jillian and inviting her down for the Fourth, Sam couldn’t let go. He’d go through the motions with Jillian, but his heart wouldn’t be in it.

  He didn’t have it anymore.

  He gave it to Maggie years ago, and she still had it.

  47

  The young man had come back here to find the man who loved his mother.

  The man named Sam.

  He came back here to find him and ask a question, a question every son asks of the man who loved his mother.

  He wanted to know.

  Do you?

  Do you love my mother?

  Sam recognized him right away.

  David Scott had his mother’s eyes.

  His smile creased the weathered lines on his face, and a curious squint squeezed the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t ignore the clutch of anxiousness seizing his heart, and at 58, it was nice to know he was still capable of a clutch of anxiousness seizing his heart without keeling over dead.

  Still, he knew the moment for what it was, and how in the span of a couple seized heartbeats, his life has come down to this moment.

  To right now, and what the boy had to say.

  Sam wanted to ask him, “What brings you here?”

  The young man who last walked this beach as a 7-year old boy, curled around the slope of the dunes, stopping to give a long look at the beach house where they stayed that summer so long ago. It looked exactly as he remembered it, right down to the Adirondack chairs arranged around the picnic tables and fire ring.

  He never realized how much he missed this place, a place where he remembered his father saying as they drove off into the night, “If we never set foot on this piss
ant island ever again it won’t be too soon.”

  And here he was, all these years later, back on this same piss-ant island.

  To David, Sam looked like a picture postcard.

  He never changed, even with time.

  Neither did Tybee Island in the boy’s eyes.

  Time treated Sam well, the young man thought. He aged, but hadn’t yet grown old.

  David did notice one difference in Sam that the years had stolen from him. The sparkle that once flashed in his eyes, a child’s sparkle, had dimmed. An air of weariness, an inherent sadness replaced it.

  He looked tired.

  David remembered those five days like they happened just last week and how Sam took the time to be with him then, and didn’t mind.

  He took him fishing.

  He taught him how to play baseball.

  They even formed a club, the He Man Woman Hater’s Club, and Sam looked as if the enjoyment he took from being with him back then was indeed genuine and not an act.

  As if Sam had as much fun with all this as the seven year old did.

  The young man couldn’t always say the same about his own father.

  David stopped at the base of the porch steps, stomped his feet free of loose sand on the flagstone walkway, and looked up at Sam, a curious smile of his own pulling at the corners of his mouth, hands stuffed in pockets, feeling suddenly like a kid again.

  “Remember me?”

  Sam’s smile shined like the sun at dawn.

  “You never forget a fellow He-Man Woman Hater.”

  He stood, a little more slowly than David remembered and crossed the porch to take David’s hand. They shook, and then Sam pulled him close to give a warm hug to a young man who was the little boy Sam would have liked to treat as a son once upon a time, and whose mother he once loved, and still loved very much.

  “We’re in the South, son. We hug down here.”

  And Sam pulled David closer and patted him on the back.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “I wasn’t sure I’d find you.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  Sam stepped away, hands still clasping the boy’s shoulders to get a good look at what kind of man the little boy he remembered had grown into. Wetness glistened in the old man’s eyes, “It’s been a long time.”