The Law of Bound Hearts

by Anne Leclaire

  Libby’s thoughts returned to last night’s dinner. At one point, Lee jumped up, saying he’d almost forgotten he had something for Sam. He left the room, then came back with a photo. Sam laughed out loud when she saw it. Lee passed it to Libby. A Polaroid of a wedding cake. Really stunning. Libby had never seen anything like it.

  Sam explained how, because she’d come here, her assistant Stacy had been left to decorate this cake. With help from Alice, she added, and then explained that Alice was Lee’s mother, and that led to the story of how they met.

  Sam has a whole family of her own out there, Libby thought, and it brought her pain to realize this. Just as it stung to see how completely and obviously Lee loved Sam, hurt because it was something she did not have.

  Admit it, Libby said to herself. She stared across her bedroom, watched the sun come through the east-facing windows and play on the furniture. Admit you’re jealous. Seeing them together had made her feel old. Used up. She faced an empty future. How had Sam gotten to be the lucky one? Was there some kind of universal balance being struck? Early in their lives she had been the talented one, the pretty one, the one people looked at first. Was it Sam’s turn now?

  There was a knock on the door, one soft tap, then Richard entered.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she said. “It’s your room, too. You don’t have to knock.” At her insistence, he’d slept in Matthew’s bed.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked. He was barefoot, still dressed in pajamas. Pajamas that she had washed and ironed— ironed—when she was still a dutiful and trusting wife who cared about such things.

  “Yes,” she said. “You?”

  He came toward the bed. “Elizabeth,” he said. “We have to talk. I need to explain. It’s not what you think.”

  She held up a hand, warding him off. “Not now. Really. I can’t right now.”

  He went into their bathroom and moments later she heard him brush his teeth, then the irritating slurp as he drank water from cupped hands. This odd habit—so unlike him—exasperated her no end, though she could not break him of it. There was a glass right there by the sink, for heaven’s sake. If he could only hear himself, slurping like a dog at a water bowl.

  That reminded her of Hannah’s greyhound. If things had been normal between them, she would have told Richard about Lulu, how when she was excited she jumped off the ground with all four feet and how she looked like she was grinning when she was praised or petted. Thoughts of Lulu reminded Libby that she hadn’t called Gabe to thank him for taking her in the way he had, and, of course, to ask about Hannah. She hadn’t heard a word and she supposed that was a good thing, for if there was news—good or bad—surely Eleanor Brooks would have called. She remembered the look of hope on Gabe’s face. Militant hope that would not be denied.

  Libby picked up the phone, amazed that she recalled a number she had dialed only once. On the other end, the phone rang on and on. She pictured the empty house and the greyhound sitting by the door, waiting for her mistress to return. Mercedes had always wanted a dog, and now Libby felt a moment’s regret that she had never allowed it, just as her own mother had not permitted her to have a pet. For the second time in two days, she thought about how in many ways she had grown up to become her mother. It was not a welcome thought.

  She checked the clock. Allowing for the time difference, it was after nine on the East Coast, not too early. She was in the middle of dialing Mercy’s number when Richard came out of the bathroom.

  “Isn’t it rather early to be calling someone?” he said.

  She kept her voice cool, distancing. “I’m calling Mercy.”

  “She’s not in,” he said, too quickly.

  She replaced the receiver. “How do you know?”

  “I talked to her last night,” he said. “She said she was going out today.”

  “Oh. When was this?”

  “After dinner. When you and Samantha were cleaning up.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “We haven’t had much time to talk.”

  He looked tired. His shoulders slumped. There was an expression on his face, in his eyes, she could not read but thought was sadness.

  She turned away.

  Last night, after they had done up the dishes, Sam had pleaded exhaustion on Lee’s part. He had driven eighteen hours straight, she said. He needed sleep. Upstairs, in the perfectly outfitted guest room, in the king-size bed, she lay cradled in his arms and, whispering so she would not be overheard, she told him about the dialysis center, the people in wheelchairs, the blood flowing through tubes, the sounds and smells. She told him about the spasm that had seized Libby. He had held her until she was talked out and her tears had stopped.

  She told him more details about Richard’s involvement with a student that had precipitated Libby’s disappearance, and Libby’s own apparent affair. And how Mercy was not at Brown, a fact Richard was keeping from Libby. She told him about her own confusing swings of emotion, a flash of love and concern and then a swing back to anger. He listened to everything. “What should I do?” she finally asked him.

  “About what?”

  “All of it.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “With all that’s going on maybe a little nonaction is called for. Just let things be, see how they unfold according to their own timetable.”

  “What? You mean like Zen?”

  He smiled. “Can’t hurt.” Then he rolled her over onto her stomach. He straddled her and began rubbing her back.

  “Aren’t you tired?” she said, even as she gave herself over to his touch.

  “Shhhh,” he said. He used his palms, his thumbs, the edge of his hand as he worked, stroking the length of her back, concentrating on the long muscles that flanked her spine. Then he kneaded her shoulders and neck and she felt her muscles release tension. His hands slowed, massage turned to caress. She became aware of his weight, the heat of his body, and an answering heat was kindled in her belly. A sound—half sigh, half moan—slipped from her lips. He lifted his weight onto his knees, giving her enough room to turn toward him.

  And then the action bed got some action.

  He woke her early in the morning.

  “What time is it?” she said, her voice thick with sleep.

  “Nearly nine.”

  She groped for her watch on the bedside table and squinted at the dial. “It’s eight,” she said, her voice all outrage.

  He laughed. “I guess I forgot to reset my watch.”

  She groaned. She wanted to sleep another hour. Easy. Maybe two.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got places to go.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”

  She bargained for more time, but he would not give in. He waited while she showered, then edged her out into the hall, down the stairs, and to the kitchen. There was no sign of Richard or Libby. Sam refused to go any farther until she’d had coffee. He waited impatiently while she drank a mug. She had never seen him this impatient.

  They took her rental instead of his truck. “How’d you happen to pick this car?” he asked as he slid behind the wheel, smiling at some joke she didn’t get.

  “It’s what they had for me at the airport. Why?”

  “The name,” he said.

  She still didn’t get it. “Dodge?”

  “Intrepid,” he said. And then: “Everything speaks to us.”

  They drove through the center of town. Church bells marked their progress. She wondered for a moment if that could possibly be what he had in mind, but he continued past the church.

  “Where are we going?” she asked again.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Give me a hint. One hint.”

  “Just one,” he said. “It’s somewhere Richard told me about last night, a place he said we should see.”

  “I don’t remember him telling you about any place.”

  “It was after dinner. You and your sist
er were doing the dishes.”

  “The lake?” she guessed.

  He shook his head and refused to tell her more. At last he turned into a parking lot. Sam looked around but there was nothing in view. “Where are we?”

  “The prairie,” he said. “Richard said this is one of the last virgin preserves in the state.”

  “You dragged me out of bed to go for a walk?”

  He grinned. “Come on.” He made his voice mysterious. “There is more that lies ahead.” Then in his normal voice: “I think you’ll be glad you came.” He took her hand and led her through a meadow to the edge of the prairie. The grasses were dried to shades of bronze and bone. She looked up at him as they walked along the path. She couldn’t imagine him truly at home anywhere but near the sea and would have thought he’d have looked alien here in this midwestern flatland, but he strode through the grasses with a quiet grace. And then, in a flash of comprehension, she understood what it was that gave him that quiet confidence. Lee was at ease in his own body. She stepped closer to him, as if she could absorb his confidence. He reached for her hand, smiled at her.

  She thought about what he’d said earlier, about letting things unfold on their own timetable. She remembered the list she had found in Libby’s book.

  Reconcile with Sam.

  The hard little marble of resentment rolled in her chest. She reached out and brushed a dried stalk that was nearly as tall as she. “How did you come to forgive your father?” she said.

  “Oh, I guess I simply didn’t want to carry that monkey on my back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was a small, rough-hewn bench, much like a pew, to the side of the path, and he drew her there. She sat with her feet tucked beneath her, leaning against his chest.

  “There is a rabbinic story told in the Book of Knowledge,” he said.

  “Funny, you don’t look Jewish,” she said, her tone light, joking. They seldom talked about religion, but she knew for a fact that he never went to church. She’d asked him once and he said nature was his parish. He had little use for organized religion.

  He smiled, then said, “I’m not telling it in the proper language. The author was more exacting, but basically it’s this: If a man comes to you three times and three times asks forgiveness, you’re bound to give it to him. If you don’t, the thing you won’t forgive becomes transferred to you. It becomes the monkey you have to carry.”

  She did not find comfort in this story. “Where did you hear that?”

  “I read it. Mishnah Torah.”

  Another surprise. She’d only seen him read Clive Cussler novels and old issues of WoodenBoat. “You read religious texts?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She took in this information. “So, do you believe in God?”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “Do you, Lee?”

  “Here’s what I believe. Or maybe I should say what I know, the kind of knowing that comes from experiencing something, not thinking about it. There have been times when I’m out in deep water, out of sight of land, and it’s gotten a little stressful.”

  “You mean dangerous?”

  “Let’s say a little intense,” he said. “It puts things in perspective. You’re called to look at the value of life and what’s important.” He paused to watch a hawk circle overhead. “And you feel something greater than yourself. You give yourself over to it and you put yourself in the hands of that something, whatever you want to call it.”

  “I read an article once about the astronauts,” she said. “I don’t remember the quote word for word, but something like no matter what they believe when they leave earth, there are no atheists among returning astronauts. Something like that.”

  “That sounds close enough.” He reached over and snipped off a tall blade of yellowed grass. She watched as he tore it lengthwise and began plaiting the strands, creating an intricate weave.

  “Something you learned in summer camp?” she said.

  “Boy Scouts,” he said, concentrating on his creation. Somewhere behind them a bird was singing.

  “I had pictured this happening differently,” Lee said, after a minute. “I had big plans.”

  “What plans? What’re you talking about?”

  “But last night, watching you at dinner, seeing you with your sister and knowing what it meant that you had come out here, well, I didn’t want to wait. So I had to throw out my script and find another.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another perfect place. Richard suggested the prairie.”

  He took a breath and rose from the bench. Before she could stand, he knelt in front of her. “Samantha,” he said. Then: “Oh, shit. I had this whole thing plotted, but now—don’t laugh—I’m too nervous.”

  She gave a half smile. It unnerved her to see him so anxious. “What is it?”

  He held out his hand, palm up, revealing a gold circle. Somehow, out of that stalk of prairie grass, he had fashioned a ring. “Sam, will you marry me?”

  She was in lag time, and it took a moment for his words to register. Then she smiled—a smile so wide it was hard to say even the simple word yes.

  She would remember this always. The bench that looked like a pew, the morning light that transformed the prairie into a sea of champagne, the ring Lee had created from grass, the bird that could not stop singing.

  He took her hand and slid the band on her finger. I’ll never lose this, she thought. I’ll show it to our children when I tell them this story.

  Our children.

  A whole future, a future she once believed forever gone, waved before her, as golden as the autumn prairie.

  “I take that as a yes,” Lee said. He drew her close and bent to kiss her. In the background that crazy bird was just singing its heart out.

  After a while he said, “What’d you say we go back and break the news to your sister.”

  She hesitated, a slight, involuntary holding back. The sun seemed to dim. Lee was different from her. He had a great heart. She wondered what would happen when she disappointed him, when she couldn’t match his heart.

  “Lee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What if you’ve tried, but you can’t?”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Forgive. What if you just can’t forgive?”

  “Forgiveness is in all of us, Sam,” he said.

  “You give me too much credit. It scares me.”

  “You don’t give yourself enough,” he said. He expected too much of her. “You are as capable of forgiveness as you are of love.”

  “How do you know this, Lee?”

  “You know it, too, Sam. It’s in all of us, if we can get quiet enough to listen.”

  She curled her fingers, felt the scratch of the grass ring against her palm. She thought, what if when you get quiet you don’t like what you hear?

  Sam and Libby

  When they returned to the car, the parking lot was nearly full. The families and the couples with dogs reminded Sam of weekends in Sippican when the beaches were full of people. Lee turned on the ignition and shifted into reverse.

  “Wait,” Sam said. “Stop.”

  “What,” he said, “you’ve changed your mind already?”

  “Fat chance.” She dug in her tote. “Here.” She held out her cell.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Alice,” she said. “She should be the first to know. Before we tell anyone else.”

  He smiled, then put the car in park and switched off the key. “I better warn you, she’ll cry.”

  “You think?” Sam couldn’t picture Alice, all Yankee practicality, crying.

  “I can guarantee it. A complete waterworks. She was beginning to give up all hope.” He punched in his mother’s number. “Fasten your seat belt and get ready.”

  “For the tears?”

  “For Alice in overdrive. Five minutes after we hang up, she’ll have the church, preacher, and organist booked. We’ll be lucky if she does
n’t start putting nursery furniture on layaway.”

  Sam looked at the grass band on her finger. “Do you want that?” she said in a soft voice.

  “Do I want what?”

  “A wedding,” she said. “For starters.”

  “I want you.” He grinned. “You get to settle the rest of it.”

  “And kids?” She felt suddenly nervous. There was so much they’d never talked about. “Do you want to have kids?”

  “It’s not a deal breaker. I mean, if you don’t want them, I guess I can live with it, but yeah, I’ve always thought it’d be great to have a family.”

  The future that she’d seen on the prairie shimmered before her, so real she swore if she held out a hand she could stroke it.

  “Hi,” Lee was saying into the phone. “No. Everything’s fine. Yeah, she’s right here with me. That’s why I’m calling. We wanted to tell you something.” He listened a moment and then laughed. He turned to Sam. “She says I’d better be phoning to say I asked you to marry me.”

  “I did,” he said to Alice, “and she said yes.” He laughed again and said to Sam, “She wants to know what took me so long.” He passed the phone to her.

  “Hi,” Sam said to her about-to-be mother-in-law.

  “I knew from the first day I laid eyes on you that you were the one for Hurley,” Alice said. “Have you set the date?”

  “I warned you,” Lee said to Sam after they hung up. “I know I just said the wedding plans were up to you, but I hope this time you aren’t set on eloping.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now that we’ve told my mother, it’s not even a remote possibility. I bet she’s already calling her friends.”