Locked Hearts

by D. Brown

  David sat up.

  “I’m glad you did. Look at her,” he said and nodded at his mother standing on the front porch. “She’s happy Sam. I haven’t seen her smile like that in years. Well, since the last time she was with you.”

  He sniffed quickly and swiped a self-conscious hand across nose.

  “Damned smoke.”

  He swiped the back of his hand across both eyes. Sam reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief.

  “Comes in handy every time I watch Oprah.”

  “Bite me old man,” David said and they laughed a moment before falling silent.

  David leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. He waited a long moment before speaking, and when he did, his words, while concise, and almost simple, spoke volumes.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” Sam asked.

  “For loving my mom.”

  Sam rustled David’s hair just like he’d done when he was a boy. “You don’t have to thank me for anything, David. The pleasure is all mine, trust me.”

  “I’m just sorry you had to wait.”

  Sam shrugged, “You know what they say, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’”

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  Sam turned.

  At first, she looked just like Maggie, just as beautiful, eyes burning just as intensely.

  “Mind if I steal him from you, little brother?” Anna Beth asked.

  David waved her off and took another pull from his beer bottle, “Sure, as long as you promise not to sing anymore.”

  Anna Beth made a face, “Does mom know you’re drinking that?”

  David made a face back. “I’m special.”

  “Tell me that in the morning, big guy when you’re hugging the toilet,” Anna Beth smacked him on the arm and then turned to Sam, “Can I talk to you?”

  Sam smiled, “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

  She took him by the hand and led him away from the fire ring, and the circle of torches, into the night’s darkness down near the water.

  When she was sure they were out of earshot, Anna Beth stopped and sat down in the soft, cool sand. Sam plopped down beside her, and for a long time, they just sat there saying nothing. They watched the night, letting the cool ocean breeze pull the summer heat off their cheeks, and listened to the gentle cascade of the ocean surf.

  Off in the distance, the flicker of lightning pulsated behind the wall of storm clouds.

  A distant bell sounded somewhere.

  When Sam looked at Anna Beth, tears filled her eyes.

  “For the longest time, I hated this place,” she said. “I hated you. I hated my mother. Most of all I hated what I’d done to my mother.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” Sam replied softly. “I’m sorry for how it happened. I promise you, none of this was my intention. It just happened.”

  “I love my father, Sam, and I was fighting for our family.”

  “I know. Anna Beth, you don’t have to explain anything to me. You did what any daughter would have done. You were looking out for your parents.”

  “No, Sam,” she said. “It’s not that. It’s something else. Something I had no right to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  Anna Beth slipped her purse off her shoulder and unlatched it. She removed a bundle of envelopes, tied together with a ribbon. She handed them to Sam.

  “I committed mail fraud,” she said with a sheepish smile.

  Sam took the bundle and pulled at the ribbon. He saw his name and address written in Maggie’s neat script centered on the front of the envelope. Her return address had been written in the top left corner. There were about twenty envelopes in all.

  “They’re letters,” Anna Beth said, “From my mother to you. She wrote them right after we came home, up until about Christmas. Daddy never kept her from writing to you.”

  She tucked in her lower lip to keep it from collapsing.

  “I did.”

  Tears glistened in brown eyes that were just like her mother’s and one stray spilled a crooked line down her cheek.

  “Daddy didn’t keep your letters from reaching Mother. I did.”

  Sam looked out into the starlit night and counted the sparkles of green and white. It served no purpose being angry over the past, and she was only doing what a daughter who loved both her mother and father should. Those times are over now, and Sam decided he was done being mired in the past.

  “Please don’t hate me.”

  “Sweetheart,” he said and took her hand in his. “I have no reason to hate you. You did what any daughter should have done. I would expect no less from my own daughter.”

  “She loved you, Sam. She really loved you. I read her letters, and I’m sorry I hurt her, and I’m sorry I hurt you. Those letters are yours, and I wanted you to have them.”

  “I thank you for giving these to me, and don’t worry. You’re fine. I’m proud of how you love your parents and I promise not to rat you out to the Feds.”

  Anna Beth laughed.

  “When she never heard back from you she decided, as a family, to put everything behind us and not mention it again. Mother decided to let you go and her letters stopped. I still checked the mail every morning before school. She’d wait until we were gone before putting your letter in the mailbox. I'd sneak home and check. I knew her schedule, and mother never deviated much from her routine.”

  “Does she know?”

  Anna Beth nodded, “Yes. I told her this afternoon, before the ceremony. I asked her if she wanted to give these to you, and she thought it’d be better if I did.”

  Sam nodded and smiled, “I see, and what do you think?”

  Maggie’s daughter, and oddly, now his daughter too, looked at him and smiled.

  “I think so too.”

  54

  The kids had gone to bed. Sam figured about every available inch of floor space was taken by a child, or grandchild. He didn’t care how old they may get or how many they have of their own, his children will always be considered his kids, and when they come to visit, they’re going to stay at Dad’s place.

  Maggie’s too.

  Everyone else had gone home, leaving Sam and Maggie around the fire with Finch and Wendy, Jerry Lee and his wife, and McGee, who had come with Jeanne Tinken.

  Since Tin Can died, and with McGee’s wife gone as well, McGee and Jeanne kept each other company. Theirs was never going to evolve into one of those Golden Years romances, but it did keep the two of them from having to show up at such functions alone.

  Sam picked at a plate of ham, ribs, some macaroni salad, and nursed a beer. Maggie sat next to him, legs curled up beneath her, sipping on a glass of wine.

  Finch and Wendy held hands, enjoying this moment, and feeling thankful they didn’t have to wait this long to be able to enjoy their time together.

  McGee nodded off, dangling a smoldering cigar butt off the end of his fingers.

  “Jeanne,” Wendy Finch said, “If you do nothing else while you have that fool man under your wing, hide those filthy cigars.”

  “I keep throwing them out every time I come over for Tuesday night dinner, but he keeps going to the store and buying more.”

  McGee snorted, suddenly awake, “That’s what happened to my damn cigars? And dammit, here you had me thinking I was going senile or something. Damn woman, you had me scared to death. I don‘t know how Tin Can ever put up with you all those years. I bet the man‘s a Saint in heaven right now.”

  “Right next to Laura,” Jeanne replied with a wink at Maggie and a don’t-go-there tilt of her head at McGee. “She’s sitting on the right hand of God I’m sure, having moved Jesus to the back row to make room. God told her any woman who had to put up with your sorry ass for 52 years deserved the best seat in the house.”

  They all laughed.

  McGee grumbled something incoherent and most likely profane, so it was for the best no one understood what he said.

  “Sam, Maggi
e, this is your wedding night,” Wendy Finch said, “Why aren’t you two off somewhere alone?”

  “First,” Sam said, “We have a house full of company. Don’t get me wrong, that house has stood empty for too damn long. It’s nice to see a line waiting to use the bathroom.”

  “We wanted both families to be a part of this,” Maggie said. “We’re marrying them too, you know.”

  “Well, I thought the ceremony was beautiful,” Jeanne said.

  “And Sam,” Wendy added, “It’s so nice to see that you can wear something else besides khaki and denim.”

  “What’s wrong with khaki and denim?”

  “Nothing, one or two days a week,” Wendy said, “But every day?”

  “Hey, Maggie likes my khaki and denim.”

  “All fine and good, honey, it’s just nice to see you can dress up for a change.”

  Wendy winked at Maggie.

  “And Maggie? Buy this poor man some socks.”

  Jerry Lee and Twyla Lewis, his fourth wife, returned to the fire ring each carrying trays filled with flutes of champagne and the bottle for more later on.

  “Everyone take a glass, don’t be shy,” Jerry Lee said as he passed around the tray.

  Once done, he stood in the center near the fire and raised his glass.

  “A toast,” he said, and looked up into the swirling shower of orange sparks, “To good friends, new and old, to those friends who are here, and those friends who aren’t.”

  He raised his glass.

  “Tin Can? Laura? Heaven is a better place for having you. Sam? Maggie?” he paused as emotion choked his voice. “You two are living proof that true love wins out over all.”

  “Jerry Lee,” Wendy dabbed at her eyes. “Just when I think there’s no hope left for you, here you go and pull something like this.”

  They all touched glasses.

  “You want to take a walk?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Sam and Maggie locked hands and said good night, leaving the fire’s dying glow behind. They walked along the low tide water line in the hard wet sand, the trail they left behind now two sets of footprints, interlacing to the point where it was difficult to see where one trail ended and the other began, just as it always should be.

  “I forgot how much I missed this place.”

  “I forgot how empty this place was without you.”

  They walked down the beach to the pier, then beyond to the sea wall where they first sat and held hands. They watched the vast darkness stretch out over the ocean. There was no sound, other than the steady rush of surf, and the distant clang of buoy bells bobbing in the deeper surf. They spoke in whisper, as if to speak any louder would disturb the tranquil quiet of the slumbering night.

  “Are you happy?” Sam asked, his hands closing about hers.

  “Contentedly,” she replied. “This is where I always wanted to be, here, and with you. This is Heaven to me.”

  She kissed the top of his arm and looked up at him. “What about you? Are you happy?”

  “Unbelievably,” he smiled. “If this was the road I was destined to travel in order to bring me here, with you, right now, then this was the road I had to take. I have no regrets, none at all. You are my wife now. What more could I ever want in my life?”

  Maggie looked up into his and kissed him. “More time?”

  “I’ll always want more time, one more moment, one more kiss. In the end I’ll know it will have passed too quickly, but I don’t regret this, not at all. I’m with you. Anywhere else and I’m incomplete, only half a man.”

  They sat there for a long time and watched the night’s stars crawl across the sky.

  I’ll always want more time, Sam thought, and kissed her hair.

  Maggie stood and took Sam’s hand in hers, “Would you like to make love to me husband?”

  “Most certainly, wife,” Sam replied as he stood and followed his wife back down the beach toward their home.

  Happily-Ever-After

  55.

  The Final Years

  Sam and Maggie enjoyed their years together, making up for the lost time, all those years spent apart.

  Following the wedding, they settled into a routine, a steady daily pattern that deviated little over the years. They woke each morning before sunrise and walked the beach as they considered this their time.

  They collected seashells and other beach debris that washed ashore overnight to add to their porch collage.

  They fed the seagulls breadcrumbs from yesterday’s biscuits.

  They visited with the Finches, McGee and Jeanne Tinken, and the Lewis’s.

  They drove into Savannah once a week for dinner and drinks at Churchill’s.

  They attended the various festivals and civic celebrations on River Street, and watched them dye the river green every St. Patrick’s Day.

  There was the St. Simons to Hilton Head Regatta which included a Tybee Island stop over, and Sam always fired up the smoker and lit the bonfire for that.

  Maggie joined Sam on the pier every day. This of course was much to McGee’s chagrin and further cemented Sam’s place as a world-class sissy, but he really didn’t mind.

  “Women don’t fish,” McGee griped. “They scare the fish away.”

  Sam made no apologies for his wife’s intrusion into the sacred order of the He Man Women Haters Club. He didn’t want to endure another moment without her at his side, and for the rest of their lives,

  And McGee only pretended to express chagrin because it was his duty to express the appropriate and necessary chagrin if circumstances warranted.

  Or not.

  He loved Maggie like a daughter.

  They observed time’s passage, the high points and the lows. They laughed during the celebrations and accomplishments, and cried during times of loss.

  Bill McGee had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease one spring. As is the case with most terminal diagnoses, once the disease was known, the patient succumbed quickly, and with McGee, this proved no different.

  He died before Labor Day.

  When you grow older sadness stains your life as happiness.

  Loss of friends and loved ones become more commonplace as the years begin to add up.

  Maggie lost her mother the following winter, and the two of them flew back to Ohio for the funeral.

  Robert Scott died from his third heart attack at age 67.

  Maggie decided not to attend the funeral.

  She hadn’t spoken to her ex-husband at all since he left her to marry his secretary six months before Sam showed up on Maggie’s front porch with broken coffee cup in hand.

  Her children understood their mother’s reluctance to attend the funeral.

  Maggie passed that day sitting in her rocker and reflecting on her years with her husband and their reason for being together was to have and raise their children. She wondered though if they were ever really happy together.

  Sam sat with her and said nothing.

  Sometimes silence speaks volumes, and Sam knew when it was wise to keep those thoughts and comments to oneself.

  The spring after McGee’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Paul Finch died in his sleep at the age of 83.

  Six months earlier, the doctors told Finch he would have to cut back on his alcohol consumption. Not that Finch ever had a drinking problem, but at 83, his Irish liver was almost worn out.

  “You have to change,” his doctor said.

  “Well, what if I don't want to change?” Finch replied.

  So Finch cut out his drinking, and spent the next four and a half months pissed off at the world and everybody in it.

  It was St. Patrick’s Day when Finch decided, “to hell with it,” and figured if living out the rest of his days meant being this miserable, he’d take his chances with the occasional beer or three.

  Wendy didn’t argue with him, at least not much.

  “Something’s got to kill me. It might as well be a pint of Guinness.”

  Six weeks
later, Paul Finch died quietly in his sleep, two empty longneck beer bottles standing sentinel on the nightstand next to his bed.

  Sam was 74 then.

  Finch’s death hit Sam hard.

  It was a reminder that they were all living on borrowed time, and in the end, death would come knocking on each of their doors.

  Of them all, Sam feared that time the most, and didn’t want to think about a life that didn’t involve Maggie again.

  He endured that hell once.

  The both knew soon, someday too soon, their time would be at an end, and they tried not to mire themselves in noticing the obvious lack of time together.

  So they savored each moment, and took nothing for granted.

  They spent much of their time on the porch, Sam in his rocker, Maggie in hers next to him. They enjoyed the company of each other and kept to themselves. Their closest friends were either too old or had passed away.

  But with Sam and Maggie, you never saw one without the other.

  It was no longer just Sam, or just Maggie, but Sam and Maggie now.

  Like peanut butter and jelly.

  Or peas and carrots.

  No you, or me, or she and I, just we, or us.

  Sam wrote one more novel. It was a novella, one of those short and sweet coffee table books. No more than seventy pages long.

  It was entitled simply, Sam’s Happily Ever After.

  He pitched the idea to his agent as the ending to Locked Hearts he always wanted to write. Jillian Whitaker had no problem selling the novella as the way his story was supposed to have ended, and was also able to negotiate a paperback re-release of without the scripted original ending included.

  If readers wanted to know how the story ended, they were told to purchase a copy of Sam’s Happily Ever After, due out on bookshelves after Memorial Day.

  Both became best sellers, with bidding for the movie rights to commence in the fall.

  She also started a line of gift accessories associated with Locked Hearts and Happily Ever After that included an official locked hearts pendant, Locked Heart rings, and the famous broken coffee cup. They became huge Valentine’s Day hits.