“Fiona found Alex and Cassie got Jack. All because of the swans.”
“So if I should see a big swan heading toward me, I should look out.”
She just smiled and turned to the door. “You won’t see it coming,” she said. “But in my family, love always wins.”
She was gone then, but her smug little smile hung in the air along with her words. It didn’t matter what happened in her family. This was going to be the exception. He was not going to budge, come big swans or not.
Sam stared at the swans, her left hand on her hip and the bag of bread held closed by her right hand. “Look, you guys, you owe me,” she told them. “All right, so I didn’t do that much in the big rescue—I did all I could. I was just a little kid, remember.”
The swans just glided about in the water, as if content to wait forever. As if they were more interested in the changing colors of the leaves and the chill in the air that said winter was coming. Sam sighed and tossed a few bread crusts out onto the water. They pretended not to notice it.
“Even if I wasn’t the one who actually rescued you, I’ve been feeding you for years,” she told them. “So when are you going to sic the spirits on Kevin? It’s been two weeks already.”
The swans went over to daintily nibble at the bread.
“Gary’s been over twice and Kevin won’t even take my calls. Don’t you think this has gone on long enough? What are you guys waiting for?”
“Auntie Sam!”
Sam turned and saw Jennifer running down the slope toward her, golden and reddish leaves flying at her feet. Alex was following more slowly.
Sam caught the girl in a big hug. “Hi, Jen. How’s it going?”
“Can I feed the swans?” she asked, reaching for the bag of bread.
“Sure. They’re mad at me, anyway.”
“How come?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re not telling.”
“I’m going to be a princess for Halloween.”
“I bet you’ll be the best princess in town,” Sam told her.
“Hi, Sam,” Alex said, giving her a hug. “How’re you doing?”
“Okay.” She didn’t have the strength to pretend for the family.
“The swans are mad at her,” Jennifer told Alex.
“Oh?” He looked at Sam. “You give them stale bread again?”
She just shook her head. “They’re supposed to be working their magic about now,” she replied. “They did it for Fiona and for Cassie. Why aren’t they helping me?”
“Maybe they’re working behind the scenes,” Alex said.
“Yes. Or maybe there is no magic.” Sam sank onto the bench. She was getting so discouraged. Everything she’d tried had failed. There didn’t seem to be any way to wear Kevin down.
She turned toward Alex and tried for a smile. “So where’s little Michael?”
Alex sat next to her, his eyes on Jennifer who was engrossed in feeding the swans. “He’s having one of his clingy days,” Alex explained. “Fiona thought it might be better for Jen to get out. She starts to feel guilty if she doesn’t share her brother’s moods.”
“It’s been a rough time for them both,” Sam said. “For all of you.”
“Yes.” Alex leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “I love having them with us, but I wish they hadn’t had to go through all they did to get here.”
“I know what you mean. But you know, sometimes I think things happen for a reason,” Sam said. “I mean, it’s terrible for the kids to have lost their mom and have their dad so ill, but because you and Fiona found each other, you were able to offer the kids a home. Sometimes I think there’s a great big plan behind everything.”
Alex looked at her for a long, silent moment, then reached into his jacket pocket. “Funny you should be thinking along those lines,” he said. “Maybe you can make sense of this.”
Sam took the paper that Alex offered her and unfolded it.
“It’s a copy of the report of your parents’ accident,” Alex said. “I requested it ages ago, but it just came the other day. Fiona’s so occupied with the kids, she hardly looked at it. Cassie’s just barely back from her honeymoon and I didn’t want to bother her with it. And with you being upset over Kevin, I wasn’t going to show it to you now, either, but then I thought you might like a distraction.”
Sam just frowned at him, then looked down at the report. “Is there something here you didn’t expect?” she asked.
“Well, it’s pretty much as the newspaper articles reported it,” he said. “So maybe I just interpreted it wrong.”
He pointed to a small diagram of the accident scene at the corner of the page. “Look at this and tell me what you think.”
She had never been good at guessing games and wished he would just come out and say what he was thinking. But she did as he wished and looked at the diagram. It showed the highway, the exit and the path of her parents’ car as well as the one that had hit them, forcing them off the road and into a bridge abutment.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?” she asked.
“They were past the exit when the accident happened,” he said. “They should have taken that first exit if they were going to the Mayo Clinic.”
Sam looked up at him, not knowing what to make of any of it. “Maybe they missed it.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they weren’t going there.”
Sam looked down at the paper. “But you said he was ill.”
“Yeah. I got that verified. And I don’t believe for a second that they were leaving you guys.”
“So what does this mean?” Sam stared at it for a long moment.
“You got any more bread?” Jennifer asked, interrupting Sam’s thoughts. “The swans said they’re still hungry.”
Sam got to her feet. “I think the swans have had enough,” she said. “But I’ll bet Grandpa’s got some cookies that you could have.”
“Okay.”
Jennifer ran ahead of Alex and Sam and was in the house before they were even climbing the back steps. Sam didn’t know what to make of the accident report. It threw all their suppositions into disarray, so she ought to be upset. But after all that she’d gone through with Kevin, she just wanted some answers.
Her dad was in the kitchen with Jennifer, so while Alex stopped to chat, Sam hurried into the office. A slow idea was forming in her head and she needed to check something out. She found the atlas on the bookshelves and opened it to Minnesota. If she followed the highway that her parents were on, it would take her to…
South Dakota. Her father’s home.
Sam wandered over to the windows and stared out at the lake. He had been going to “heal his heart.” What if he hadn’t been going to a doctor for healing but had been going home to make peace with his family? He’d never made it. Would his family ever have known what had happened to him? Or that he’d wanted to make peace with them?
Suddenly Sam noticed that the swans were still there, near the feeding shore. Why? They always left when the bread ran out. Always. Was something wrong?
She slipped out the kitchen door and hurried down to the lake. The swans were gliding in their usual circles so there was no need to call for Cassie and her scissors; but they were watching her.
“I need to go there, don’t I?” she asked them. “Instead of being so selfish and thinking only about me and Kevin, I’ve got to find my dad’s family and ask them to forgive him.”
They stopped their gliding to stare at her.
“But how am I going to do that?” she asked them. “I still haven’t gotten an answer to my inquiry about them.”
There was no movement, no sound. All the world was standing still. Waiting.
Sam took a deep breath. “Okay,” she told them. “I need the magic to find my dad’s relatives. Wake up the spirits and tell them my dad’s love for his family is the love I need their help with.”
They left then, gliding away as silently as ever. But they took with them a piece of her heart. I
t was over between her and Kevin. She had just given away her last hope of making it work.
She turned and slowly climbed the slope to the house.
Sam walked slowly into the community center on the west side of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Like the whole neighborhood, it had seen better days, but the brightly colored drawings all over the walls said there was still life and love in the place. She looked around her. After five days of searching through tribal council lists, and phone books, of asking questions and reaching innumerable dead ends, she was almost at the end of her quest. And she was suddenly nervous.
“May I help you?” a young woman had stopped in the middle of the lobby to ask her.
“I’m looking for a Mr. and Mrs. Stonebreaker,” Sam said. “I was told they were here on Friday afternoons.”
“Oh, you mean Joe and Martha? Sure, they’re down in the library. It’s story time.”
The young woman led Sam down a hallway and opened a door at the end, waving Sam to go inside. It looked like a school library—a small collection of battered books on shelves around the edges of the room. In the center, though, on the floor, sat twenty-or-so children ranging in age from about three to thirteen or fourteen. Behind them, on a mixed collection of chairs, sat a dozen adults, some young, some older.
And across the room, at the center of everyone’s attention, was an old man—wearing—unbelievably—a swan mask!
Sam slid into an empty chair at the back of the circle. The old man—must have been her grandfather—was telling a story, the story of the Ugly Duckling. Or a version of it.
“And when the last egg hatched, out came this big old bird,” he was saying. “He was not at all like the other ducklings, so soft and yellow and small. He was bigger, with gray fuzz all over him. The other mother ducks came over to see the babies. ‘Oh, he is so big,’ one said. ‘He looks so different,’ another said. ‘He is beautiful,’ said his mother.”
The old man’s voice was soft but carried a whole range of emotions—haughtiness, love, pain. With simple words and a few gestures, he was painting a vivid picture of the ducks.
“But the little ducklings all loved him. He could swim fast and chase the older ducklings away. Little by little, though, some of the young ones learned to be afraid of him. ‘He’s too big,’ the old turkey said. ‘He’s too different,’ the old hen said. And little by little, the big duckling began to believe he was different. That he wasn’t as good as the others. He began to stay away from the others, to swim by himself, and he shunned even the little ducklings who still wanted to be his friends.”
The children at the man’s feet sat enraptured. No one moved. No one spoke.
“Then one day, there was a. terrible storm,” her grandfather went on. “Lightning flashed and thunder crashed and the rain came down for days and days and days. And when it was all over, the ducks discovered that other birds had taken refuge in the pond. Big, beautiful white birds. When they saw the big duckling, they called to him. They said he was one of them and he shouldn’t be there with the ducks. That he should come with them to the place where swans lived. But his duckling friends begged him to stay. The big duckling didn’t know what to do. He was afraid to go with the swans and afraid to stay with the ducklings.”
“So what did he do?” a little voice piped up.
The old man sat down, taking off his swan mask. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “What should he do? Do you think the ducks and the swans could live together in peace?”
Sam blinked back sudden tears as she got to her feet. This man had turned the Ugly Duckling into a discussion on prejudice and fear.
She watched as he led the discussion down many roads until they decided the big duckling should invite the swans to stay at the pond, too, so they could all live together.
After a few minutes, the children were rushing over to examine the man’s mask while the adults were exchanging greetings. Sam just stayed at the back, watching.
“Hello,” an old woman said. “You’re new here, aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
“Yes. I’m here to see Mr. and Mrs. Stonebreaker.” Sam took a deep breath. There was something familiar about the woman’s eyes. Like they were mirrors of her own. “You wouldn’t be her, would you?”
“Yes, I am. How can I help you?”
Sam looked over at her grandfather. The kids were starting to leave.
“Maybe you’d like to wait a few minutes,” Mrs. Stonebreaker said. “And tell us both at once.”
Sam nodded and tried to gather her thoughts. How did you tell someone that they were your grandparents? Then suddenly the old man was over there with them, and the others were all filing out of the room.
“This young lady wants to see us, Joe,” the woman said.
“I’m Samantha Scott,” Sam said. “From South Bend, Indiana.”
“My, goodness,” her grandmother said. “What would someone from so far away want to see us about?”
“Maybe we could sit down,” Sam suggested and led them toward some chairs. Once they were all seated, she hesitated.
“I’m not sure where to begin,” she said slowly. “But I think that my father was your son.”
She cursed herself for letting it come out so bluntly. The two old people just stared at her. The sound of kids’ laughter came from the hallway, but might have been from miles away. From another world, even.
“Joe Junior?” Mrs. Stonebreaker finally asked. “You mean, Joe Junior?”
Sam nodded, then bit back a sudden rush of fear. What if she’d been wrong about everything? What if they’d thrown her father out, all those years back? Maybe he hadn’t left of his own choice. Maybe they didn’t want to hear about him.
“Joe Junior?” Mr. Stonebreaker repeated, shaking his head slowly. “We haven’t heard from him in more than twenty years.”
“Thirty years,” his wife corrected and clasped her hands tightly together. “He was so unhappy here. So sure that if he could just escape, life would be great.”
“But you take yourself with you,” the old man said.
“I think he regretted his silence, though,” Sam said softly. “He was on his way back here twenty years ago when he and Mom were killed in an automobile accident. He told his friends that he had to heal his heart.”
“Joe died?” the old woman asked.
Mr. Stonebreaker’s hand came over to cover his wife’s. “We’d thought for a while now he must’ve died. You lose your anger when you get older. He’d have come back by now.”
“He was trying to,” Sam said. “He wanted to say he was sorry for all the years of silence.”
Mrs. Stonebreaker just nodded, her eyes teary. She looked at her husband, and for a long time they seemed to share their sorrow and their memories. Although no words were spoken, Sam knew they were communicating. That’s what love lets you do—open your thoughts to another person, she mused.
Would she ever have that kind of love?
Chapter Fourteen
Kevin hurried through the parking lot. He’d spent his morning in a civic planning meeting at city hall and had grabbed a sandwich at the Amish lunch shop. He would eat it at his desk while he went over loan applications. He’d learned over the last few weeks that the key was keeping busy. Real busy.
He stopped with a frown when he entered the bank. The place was festooned with Halloween decorations—corn stalks, pumpkins and people in costume. Tellers were all dressed up as pirates and witches and football players. He just cringed and hurried back into the office area.
He wasn’t into all this dress-up, even if it was a commendable effort by the downtown merchants to provide safe areas for the kids to celebrate Halloween. Further proof that he was “an old poop,” as Sam would say.
He walked past an angelic Cindy—complete with halo—and snapped, “Good afternoon.”
“Well, aren’t we cheery today?” she said with a bright smile. “And in your ‘grumpy banker’ costume, too.”
&n
bsp; He glared at her. “Costumes weren’t mandatory.” He went into his office.
She followed him. “You know, you were a lot more cheerful when you were dating Sam.”
He increased the intensity of his glare. “Thank you for that little tidbit.”
She just smiled even brighter. “We think you should get back together with her.”
“We?”
“Oh, you know. The staff here.”
He clenched his teeth. Great, now his disposition as well as his love life was the topic of discussion at the bank. “I was too old for her,” he said.
“Well, you’re sure hell-bent to prove it, aren’t you?” she returned. “Funny, when you were with her, you seemed a lot younger.”
“Maybe it was before my birthday,” he said.
She just raised her eyebrows, then pointed to his desk. “Your messages are there with your mail, and that package came for you.” She took a few steps toward the door. “Oh, and don’t get tied up around two. The kindergarten classes from Perley School are having their costume parade this way and Mr. Cartwright’s got a storyteller coming to entertain them. He wants us all to pass out candy to them. Yours is in that bag.” She pointed to a sack of chocolate bars.
“Great,” Kevin muttered and sank into his chair as Cindy left. He should have scheduled meetings for this afternoon, too.
He picked up the package and ripped the tape that closed it. Probably some free sample or some other useless—
He stared into the box. Two small wooden swans lay in it. He dropped the box on his desk like he’d been stung.
Damn. Things should be getting better by now, not worse.
He took deep breath and picked up the box, holding it carefully as if it might contaminate him. They were from Sam, of course. Why couldn’t she just let things be?
He put the box, with the swans still in it, into his file cabinet. Then he went back to his desk and pulled over his mail. There was a lot of it. With luck, he would be busy for a few hours.
He got through part of the stack before his attention started to wane. He wondered how Sam was doing. Had she started to date someone else? The thought hurt. No, she wouldn’t have sent him the swans if she was involved with someone else. That knowledge brought relief.
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