Derek laughed and said, “I am too. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m going to be a father.”
Sam had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling through them.
“My friend Carol told me once that being a grandparent is our reward for getting old. It’s called a reward because technically, you don’t have to work for it or even deserve it. You just have to “Be.” I’ve been so envious of all of my friends for the past few years. It seems like I’m the only one without snapshots to show off or little anecdotes to toss out...” The tears were flowing rapidly down her cheeks now. “One of my best friends has seven granddaughters! She hardly makes it to lunch anymore.” Her silent tears turned into a sob and Chloe leaned over and wrapped her arms around her, bandages and all. “I’m so sorry,” Samantha said when she was able to compose herself. “I don’t know what happened.”
Chloe smiled at her again softly and said, “It’s been a pretty overwhelming couple of months. You don’t have to apologize. What you need to do is start planning on what you want your gorgeous grandchild to call you.”
“I think you look like a Nana,” Derek said with a grin.
“I’d go with Grandmamma,” Trevor said with a wink.
Samantha smiled and said, “What am I, the Queen of England? No, I know exactly what I want him or her to call me. I want to be a “Granny” like my granny was to me and my mother was to Sarah. In my family, being bestowed with the honor of being called “Granny” meant you’d finally made it to the top of the family tree.” Her eyes filled with tears again and she said, “I wish she could have met you.”
“Me too,” Chloe said. “Granny, it is. But since we’re on the subject of family, I’d love to hear more about ours. I don’t even know my own nationality.”
“My family came over from England in the early nineteen hundreds,” Trevor said. “I did one of those genealogy searches one time on Ancestry.com. We were Welsh and I don’t want anyone to bow to me or anything, but I found out that we were descended directly from Llewelyn II.” They laughed and he said, “After Edward I invaded Wales, my family ended up in England. We weren’t treated very well. We worked as servants for a few hundred years. Somehow, one of my ancestors was able to become a goldsmith and from then on, the family did well. They came to America in 1908 before the wars broke out on both continents. After that, the blood started mixing. We have some Italian and some Puerto-Rican in us which explains the brown eyes I suppose.”
“And maybe the temper,” Derek said with a grin.
“My family has been in America since the early 1800’s,” Samantha said. They came from Norway. Oh! I have a letter from my great-great-great-great-grandfather to one of his brothers. I’ll get it out and let you see it. It tells all about his life here and talks about each family member. I was so happy when I found it in an old trunk my grandmother had. That’s one of the reasons I encouraged Sarah to keep a written diary. I know they say that technology is preserving things forever...but who really knows yet if that’s true?”
“I would love to see the letter,” Chloe said, excited. It felt good to finally know where she came from. “I’d also love to take a look at those journals now too. I think I’m in a better place and I’d really like to get to know Sarah.”
“Of course,” Samantha told her. “Anytime. I’ll find the letter for you after lunch and also let you look through a trunk of your grandmother’s things if you’d like? There are a lot of old photos and birth certificates, things like that in there.”
“That sounds great,” Chloe told her, honestly. She was so looking forward to the fact that she could finally relax and do something without having her mind drift to where Jesse was, what he was doing or when he was coming for her.
They finished their meal and Samantha ushered Chloe into the den to “rest.” She got the box of Sarah’s journals out for her and while Derek and Trevor helped Samantha clean up lunch. Chloe took out one of the journals and held it in her hands. She closed her eyes and wished that for just a second real life could be like a movie and she could channel her sister through the book that was so lovingly worn. She lifted it to her nose and smelled it, and then she opened her eyes and opened it up to the first page.
July 3, 2002
Dear Diary,
I am going to start middle school in a few weeks. I’m nervous, so Mom bought me this book to write my thoughts down in. I’m nervous because where we live a lot of the kids I went to grade school with will have to go to a different middle school. I’m upset because most of my friends are going to Jackson Middle...and I have to go to Washington. I’ll have to start all over making friends. Since you’re new I will tell you quickly about me. I’m Sarah. I have a mom named Samantha and a dad named Trevor. I’m an only child...kind of. On my twelfth birthday my parents told me that I’d been born a twin. I wondered why they waited so long to tell me...but then they said my twin died and I understood. I wouldn’t have understood about death when I was ten. Anyways, sometimes I think about her now. Her name was Sophia and Mom says they never let her see her, but they told her we were identical. That makes it easier for me to imagine her because I know what she would have looked like. I love my mom and dad...a lot. But sometimes I miss having a sister so bad. It’s weird to miss what you never had, but that’s how I feel...like I miss her. I wish she was here to start seventh grade with me...and then to turn thirteen with me so in case I don’t make any new friends at school...I could at least know that my sister would be there with me.
Chloe had to stop there for a few minutes and make herself breathe. For a second, her mind tried to flash back to when she started middle school, but she stopped it. Now was her time to bond with her sister, not to wallow in the grief that was her childhood. She gathered herself and opened the book back up. She read on:
I have been thinking about doing track. I love to run. Running makes me feel free, although I have no idea why I wouldn’t feel that way all the time. I have a good life, but it seems like sometimes I can’t breathe...so I run. I usually run with my dad. We’ve been running together since I was a baby. When I was too small to run, he would carry me in a papoose on his chest first and then his back as I grew. I don’t remember any of that; it’s what Mom told me. My whole life I’ve ran every morning, rain or shine. I wonder if my sister were here, if she would have liked to run with me.
Chloe wiped a tear off her cheek and read on.
Maybe I’ll join the track team. I guess that would be a good way to make friends with people who like the same things as me. Well, I better sign off now, Mom is calling me for dinner. I guess she might be right...as usual. It helped me feel a little better to write all of this down. We’ll see how I’m feeling when it’s time to actually start school.
Sarah drew a round face with its eyes crossed and a tongue sticking out. Chloe laughed and wiped another tear away. She heard someone come in and she looked up and saw Derek there.
“Are you okay?”
She smiled and nodded. “She used to think about me and wonder what I would be like.”
He came over to sit next to her. He put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her into his chest. Kissing her on top of the head he said, “She thought about you a lot. She used to talk to me a lot about it. She told me she liked to imagine the kind of trouble the two of you could have stirred up together. I thought that was really funny because she really wasn’t the trouble-maker type.”
Chloe laughed and said, “Maybe it was a twins thing and she knew I would be.”
Derek laughed too and Chloe laid her head over against his shoulder and they sat like that for a long time. Chloe’s heart was finally at peace.
Chapter 7
The next few weeks between some mild morning sickness, her follow-up appointments with her surgery and O.B. doctors and beginning physical therapy, Chloe read through her sisters’ journals. She noticed that at least once a week next to one of her entries, she would draw or color something on the blank page next to it. She enjo
yed looking at Sarah’s art work as much as she did reading her posts. Chloe was no artist, but even she could see how talented her sister had been. Her sketches improved rapidly over the years and by the time she made it to high school, she could draw a face that looked like a portrait.
She read every post in chronological order, feeling like she was getting to know her sister a little better every day. She also found out that in spite of not sharing an interest in art, they really did have a lot in common. They both hated carrots, they both loved the beach, and they both lay awake at night and dreamed of who they would marry and how many kids they would have. Sarah was interested in history and she hated math. Chloe was in awe of how much they were alike even though they’d lived such different lives with such different people.
She got to know Trevor and Samantha better not only by visiting with them, but by reading the journals. Sarah talked a lot about her parents in her writings. She had the same angst in her early teen years that other girls had:
“Daddy says I can’t date until I’m sixteen! That’s two years away! Ryan will totally find another girl to like by then!” or about Samantha she had written, “Mom doesn’t see that I’m almost a woman. She wants to buy me little girl clothes and then I feel like I have to wear them so that I don’t hurt her feelings. I’ve started taken an extra shirt in my backpack on those days and I only pray she doesn’t have to pick me up early one day and I forget to change.”
She drew a picture of Ryan. He looked like a cute kid to Chloe.
As Chloe read on she had to wonder if both she and Sarah had subconsciously been compelled to keep the journals as a way to communicate with each other. Some of the passages she wrote seemed to be written just for her. On one of the pages where Sarah talked about going to a school dance and winning a track meet, she had written,
“Stay strong, things will get better. It might me stormy now, but the rain won’t last forever.”
It didn’t seem like Sarah had any problems at the time, but it was written when they were fifteen and Chloe remembered that being a particularly bad year for her at home. She was getting older than the old man liked his girls; so thankfully, he had cut back on the sexual abuse. But, the physical abuse grew ten-fold and that summer Marg and Daphne had gone out of town for two weeks and left her alone with him. It had been two weeks that Chloe was sure would even cause people in Hell to shudder.
She read about Sarah’s first date with a boy named Nick:
September 29, 2005
Dear Diary,
“Well as of yesterday, I am finally sixteen. Nick Statler has been asking me out for almost a year now, but Daddy wouldn’t give in. He did take us to the mall a few times and the roller rink and bowling...but he never took his eyes off of us. It wasn’t that we were going to do anything. Nick is a nice boy and he wouldn’t try anything like that...but it’s still a little bit uncomfortable. I can’t believe Nick waited around this whole time. He says it’s because he likes me so much that he couldn’t walk away.
So tonight I have on my new jeans and my new B.B. shirt that Mom let me buy yesterday even though it was way out of the price range she gave me before we left the house. I think I look pretty good. Daddy had tears in his eyes when he saw me. It’s not like I’m going to the prom or something. I rolled my eyes at him, but inside I’m glad that he loves me so much. I don’t know what I would do without him or my Mom. I have to go now, Nick is here!
That night when she came home she wrote:
My date with Nick was amazing. He took me to see The Guardian. It just came out today. It had Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher in it. It was about Navy Seals. The movie was good, holding Nick’s hand was better. After the movie we had Pizza at Fatte Albert’s and we talked and laughed and I found out that we have a lot in common. I wonder if it’s too soon to wonder if Nick might be “the one.” He’s already asked me out again, so we’ll wait and see.
On the opposite page there was a drawing of Nick. He was definitely an upgrade from Ryan in the looks department. The sketch was in charcoal, black on white, but she’d colored his eyes a sapphire blue. He reminded Chloe of Derek.
Chloe read about Trevor taking his daughter out on the country roads and teaching her how to drive. She read about her applying to colleges and being accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design. She was ecstatic about that and although she was so happy, she’d written at the bottom of the page, “You can break down a woman temporarily, but a real woman will always pick up the pieces and rebuild herself.”
“Thank you, Sarah.” Chloe spoke out loud to the room. She was really beginning to believe that although neither of them knew it, they did have some kind of connection and inner strength.
By her third week, she came to the journal that Sarah had written about meeting Derek in...Chloe was hesitant and actually put off reading it for a few days. She’d gotten through Derek telling her about falling in love with Sarah. It wasn’t always easy to hear about, or think about...but it was a fact and now the fact was that Derek loved her. Chloe didn’t feel guilty about that...but that could be because she had yet to read it in her sister’s own words. She was sitting out on the patio, sipping a glass of iced tea. Derek and Trevor were out riding the horses and Samantha had gone into town. Chloe thought this was probably the best time she would find to do this. She opened up the journal and began to read.
August 12th, 2006
Dear Diary,
I borrowed Dad’s car today. That’s not the news; I do that all the time. Today my car was having the brakes worked on and I had to go to Rhode Island to finish some paperwork for school. I can’t believe I’m starting college in a week...Yay! I know I dedicated an entire two pages to that when I got accepted, so I’ll leave that part alone for now. What happened that was really exciting was that I met a man...Well, I didn’t really meet him, I saw him at Daddy’s office and said hello. I intend to meet him, however and soon.
I was coming out of Daddy’s office and there were two men coming down the hall with Daddy’s receptionist towards his office. The older man smiled and I smiled back and then my eyes traveled up and locked into an incredibly beautiful pair of crystal blue ones. Those eyes were the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, and they were surrounded by thick, dark lashes. I have to use mascara to make mine look that way, it’s not fair. I had to hold my head up as I looked at him because the man was really tall, way over six feet I would have to say. He had dark hair that looked so soft I wanted to touch it and he was wearing a suit that looked like it was made for him. The suit was a gun-barrel gray color and even underneath the fine material, I could see the outline of the muscles in his arms. My mouth went dry, but I think I did okay. I smiled and said hello. That was reality. In my fantasy, I took a giant leap, landed in his arms and pressed my lips to his. Did I forget to mention those lips? He had the most amazing set of full lips that looked like they were made for kissing.
I wanted to turn around and take another look, but I was afraid he would see me and I would look like a pervert. I kept walking and I had to remind myself to breathe. I’ve honestly never seen anyone who looked like him in real life. It was as if he’d walked right out of a magazine or off a movie screen. When you looked at him it was like you were looking at the most perfect design that God ever created. Afterwards, I wondered if he was even real, or if my mind had conjured him up.
That night when I got home with Daddy’s car I tried to casually ask about the man. I said,
“Daddy, who was the really tall man in your office when I came by today?”
Daddy looked up from his paper and said, “Hmm...really tall? Was he bald?”
“No.”
“Did he have bushy blonde hair?”
“No.”
“A pot belly?”
I laughed. “No daddy. He was wearing a gray suit and he had another man with him...”
“Mustache?”
“No.”
“Bald spot in back?”
Laughing again because
I knew Daddy was teasing me I said, “The one who looked like a model, Daddy. The man with the crystal blue eyes.”
“Oh that one!”
“Yes, that one. Who is he?”
“He’s a client.”
“Oh...what’s his name?”
He narrowed his eyes at me then and said, “Derek Stark.”
I suddenly realized why I felt like I knew him as soon as I’d laid my brown eyes on his blue ones. I’d spent a lot of time in Rhode Island, getting ready for school. There was a billboard in downtown Providence that I just had to look at every time I drove by. I remember the first time I saw it, I was thinking that maybe I should go house hunting. I already had a dorm room and a roommate...but that man sold real estate and he was drop-dead gorgeous. I have to see him again...in person.
Chloe was smiling. She knew first-hand the impact of those crystal blue eyes and full lips. She turned the page. During this period when Sarah was getting ready to start college and move away from home, she didn’t write in the journal as much. This one skipped two weeks ahead.
August 26, 2009
Dear Diary,
I met Derek Stark today!!! He was on campus, giving a real estate seminar. I had hoped he was coming, I’d seen the bulletins for it, saying that “representatives from Stark Real-Estate” would be here. The announcements were all over campus for over a week. Each time I looked at one of the fliers I wondered if he would be there too. I told myself that if he was there and I saw him that would mean that our meeting was “fate” and he was “the one.” Silliness, but he definitely was in my fantasies. I had the whole relationship, wedding and child-having imagined already. I know that I’m being silly, but Diary...you’ve never seen, or met Derek Stark.
I waited outside of the conference hall. Some might call that desperation. I call it innovation. As he and his associates started out, I walked by...casually...I hope. He and I made eye contact and that same jolt ran through me as it had the first time I saw him. I smiled...but the whole plan I had in my head of saying hello and making conversation with him, was not going to happen. I couldn’t do it. I would have been lucky to croak out a “hello.” But something happened Diary that stopped me in my tracks. Derek Stark said my name. He looked right at me. He is the most beautiful man on the planet. I was shaking all over as he said,
SCARRED - Part 6 (The SCARRED Series - Book 6) Page 4