"Honestly, John." She sighed. "I've been so bored lying here for six weeks."
He laughed at her, and then he unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders. He stood in the firelight, bare-chested, smiling at her.
"Oh my goodness," she breathed. "Just the sight of you."
He glanced down self-consciously at his body. "I'm thinner than I used to be."
"Yes, I can see that," she said soberly. "Have you been ill?"
He walked over to the chair where he had hung his coat and withdrew the letters from an inside pocket.
"Here," he said, advancing toward the bed. "Maybe we can start here."
She took them from him and examined the envelopes. A troubled look passed over her face and she lifted her eyes to his, her brow wrinkled in a deep frown.
"He kept these?" she whispered.
John had stripped off his jeans and was sliding into the bed next to her.
"Come here," he said, reaching an arm around her.
"I can't believe this," she mumbled, laying her head against his shoulder.
"I'm not giving them to you as an indictment of his actions. I'm giving them to you so you'll know where I've been with my life, and how important you are to me."
This stayed her anger, and she looked up at him with softened eyes.
"So you did care?"
"More than you'll ever know."
It was after three in the morning when John returned to the inn, and Jack was still awake watching television from his bed. Jack's eyes followed him as he dug out his pajamas and began to undress.
"How is she?" Jack asked as he flipped off the TV.
"She looks very good." And then, after a moment of deliberation, added, "Looking forward to seeing you."
"Did she say what time tomorrow I could go up there?"
"Whenever you wake up."
Jack glanced at his watch, noted the late hour, commented that Sarah might not want him up there too early after such a late night. There was a recriminating edge to his voice, but John ignored it. Not long after midnight, Sarah had fallen asleep with John's arms around her, and he had stayed and watched over her like he'd promised to do. After adding another log to the fire, he had read a little, but mostly he just sat and watched her sleep. Much later he crept into her studio to take a look at her water-colors, and he felt a flush of pride, as if already he were making her his own, appropriating her as part of himself.
An uneasy silence hung between John and the old man while John brushed his teeth and got into bed and switched off the light. The darkness magnified the tension, and both of them lay stiff and motionless in their beds until Jack's rasping cough broke the silence.
"Hope I don't keep you awake," Jack muttered, and he rolled toward the wall.
"Don't worry about it," John answered.
There was another silence and then John said, "I'm going back to Cambridge tomorrow." He heard Jack twist around in his bed, could feel the old man's eyes on him in the darkness. "I need to make arrangements so I can come back and stay for a while."
There was a drawn-out silence, and then John said, "Sarah and I are going to get married as soon as the baby's born. We were hoping you'd stay around until then."
There was not a sound from Jack's bed. After a long while he turned back to the wall and mumbled, "'Course I will." John could tell by the tone of his voice that the old man was pleased.
CHAPTER 46
Upon returning to Cambridge, John walked straight into a phone store and bought himself a cell phone. Then he walked out and dialed her number. They spoke countless times each day, in the morning and evening, and during the night if she was afraid to sleep. He never minded when she called, even if he was hard at work or in the middle of a discussion with other mathematicians. Only Sarah had his number and the phone was always nearby, so that whenever it rang his hand would shoot out and whatever he had been doing was instantly put on hold.
He assured her he would be back in a week; in the meantime he was trying to ready the house for her and their son. It was comfortable but not at all equipped for a family. He had already found a crib, a car seat, and a stroller, but they were secondhand, and he hoped Sarah wouldn't mind. She teased him sweetly and told him not to worry, said Victoria had promised her some of Justine's things, and they would manage fine. Twice he sent her flowers—red roses and, two days later, an exotic arrangement of sunflowers and wild grasses. Both times she telephoned him straightaway, and he didn't need to see her face, could hear the sheer delight in her voice and imagine it in her eyes.
But despite all their precautions and plans, John did not make it to Sarah's side in time to witness the birth of his son. Sarah went into labor the day before he was to leave Cambridge. She called him before she left for the hospital, saying the ambulance was on its way and Joy and her grandfather would accompany her. He was not to worry, she said, but there was undisguised apprehension in her voice.
John was in the Cock and Bull having dinner with a colleague and his wife when she called. Drained of color, he shot up from the table, grabbed his coat, and flew out the door with the phone to his ear. He took a taxi all the way from Cambridge to London, hoping to catch a flight to Paris, but the driver told him access to Heathrow was choked with traffic because of a petrol lorry accident, and he thought the train would be the surer bet. John caught the last Eurostar out of Waterloo Station. When he finally had his ticket and was waiting to board, he fished the phone out of his pocket and called Sarah.
His hand was shaking and his voice had dried up, and when Joy answered he could hardly speak.
"She's okay," Joy said.
"Is she really? You're not just saying that..."
"No, Daddy, she's just fine. They've got her on a monitor, and the baby's heartbeat is strong and steady. Stay cool."
John sank to a chair in the waiting lounge and dropped his head into his hand.
"Thank God," he said with a deep sigh of relief.
"But the labor's going quickly, so if you want to see that little guy of yours make his way into this world you'd better get yourself here as fast as you can."
Just then there was an announcement that his train was ready to board, and John exacted a promise from Joy that she would call him every half hour to let him know their progress.
With his reflection staring back at him from the window, he stood in the train's snack bar and drank several glasses of wine to quiet his nerves, but he was terrified. He wanted to tell someone his son was being born but given the way he looked, wild-eyed with trembling hands, he did not wonder that people averted their eyes or stood at a distance. He checked his watch every few minutes, and when after half an hour the phone had not rung, he dialed Joy, but there was no answer. He hung up and dialed again but still she did not answer. Suddenly light-headed, he made his way back down the aisle to his seat and lowered his head between his knees.
Finally, the call came. It was Sarah's voice, weak but serene. "I'm holding him. I'm holding our child," she whispered. "Oh John," she said, barely strong enough to speak, "he's so beautiful. He's so beautiful."
John had a chance to say only a few words before Joy snatched the phone away, saying she'd call him later, that Sarah was too exhausted to talk more, but they were both well and doing beautifully.
John flung his head back onto the headrest and suddenly warm tears were streaming down his face. He thought he must have fallen asleep then.
The sound of the ringer woke him, and he answered thickly.
"Sarah?"
But it wasn't Sarah. At first it seemed there was no one on the line, but he could hear rustling and what sounded like sniffling, then Jack's voice.
"John?"
"Hey, Jack, you're a great-grandpa now," John said, rubbing his eyes. But there was no laughter on the other end of the line, no cries of jubilation. An alarm rang out in John's brain and his head flooded with heat.
"What's wrong?" he shouted. "What's happening? Damn it, talk to me!"
> The anger in John's voice roused Jack to respond.
"She hemorrhaged," he said, "Sarah did. They did their best to stop it. She just... she just faded..." Then his voice broke.
John felt as if he couldn't breathe. He shot to his feet and bolted down the wagon and out the pneumatic doors to the baggage racks where the air was cooler. He shouted into the phone trying to get somebody to talk to him but all he could hear were voices in the background and somebody crying. Nobody seemed to hear him.
The train stopped just then. A town named Ashford. From there they would enter the long tunnel under the English Channel, and for twenty minutes phone communication would be cut.
He stood in the aisle against the baggage racks for the rest of the journey. When the train emerged from the tunnel, he tried to call several times but no one answered. There seemed to be nothing anybody had to say anymore.
It was a terrifying loneliness he felt that night crouched in a comer on a suitcase, jostled by the train, watching people pass by with curious stares. He did not know it was possible to feel such emptiness.
When he reached the hospital he wasn't sure where to go. With a steady voice, he gave Sarah's name to the receptionist, but they had a hard time finding it because of the way he pronounced it. There was a moment of confusion, and then the receptionist said, "BREE-den, ah oui." He didn't know any French and didn't know how to ask what had happened, so he just took the room number she wrote down for him on a piece of paper and walked in the direction she pointed.
It took him a while to find the elevator, and then he wondered if maybe they'd misunderstood because there were patients on this floor, mothers with babies. As he scanned the room numbers on his way down the hall he began to feel hopeful. He hurried, picking up his stride, his heart surging in his chest, muttering prayers under his breath, and then he was there in her doorway. For a moment he was confused. Her face was colorless against the white sheet and there were tubes in her arms and monitors blinking overhead. But then she turned her head toward him and smiled weakly.
"John." She sighed, and in an instant he was beside her, taking the hand she held out to him.
"Sarah," he whispered. "My precious Sarah."
"Have you seen him?" she mumbled weakly.
"Don't talk, just rest."
"Have you seen him?"
"Not yet. I came straight to you. They told me..."
"I know. I'm sorry."
He hushed her, kissed her lips.
"Joy tried to call back..."
"It's all right," he whispered. "It's okay now. I'm here."
"I just lost a little too much blood, that's all. But I'll be all right now. Now that you're here." She smiled again and touched his chin with her finger. "He's gorgeous. He looks like you."
He looked into her eyes and saw so much love there he could hardly breathe, didn't know what to do.
"John..." she began.
"You just rest now."
"No," she insisted weakly. "I have to tell you this. Before I..." She smiled at him. "Before I believe it never happened."
"What?"
She paused, her eyes searching his. "I must have been very close to death."
"I know."
"It wasn't a dream. It really wasn't."
"What?"
"I think I was gone from here for a while."
"But you're back. You're safe now."
"What I'm trying to say is..." She faltered. "I was with Will." She smiled then. "He wasn't that terrible little whiny baby he used to be...." She laughed weakly. "He was beautiful, the way you and I had always seen him inside. It was like I was in the presence of this enormous energy. So full of life. I got the feeling he knew about everything, about us, and it was like he was thanking me, thanking us, for having loved him. I don't remember much else, but I know, as surely as you are with me now, he was with me then."
John looked into her eyes and smiled.
"Do you believe me?" she said, curling her fingers around his cheek.
"I believe you, Sarah."
"You do?"
"Of course I do."
They exchanged a look of perfect complicity.
"Now." Sarah beamed. "Go see your son."
He returned her smile, then buried his lips in her neck. "In a minute," he murmured. "First things first."
Janice Graham's previous novel, Firebird, was an international bestseller and translated into eighteen languages. A native of Kansas, Graham has lived in France, Greece, Israel, and Los Angeles, where she studied film at the University of Southern California. Her screenwriting credits include the feature film Until September. She and her daughter, Gabrielle, now divide their time between Paris and Wichita, Kansas.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Mary Fisher, Sandy Helzer, Phyllis Malzahn, and their families for their friendship and support during our long, hot Kansas summers; Irish Hutchinson and Pierre Harbrant for their medical expertise and willingness to answer my questions; Jim Helzer for showing me the inside world of steer roping; Emily Lodge-Pingeon for her insightful suggestions; Wade Parsons for exploring the Flint Hills with me and sharing his extensive knowledge of prairie flora and folklore; Kurt Madison for allowing me to experience the actual workplace of a particle physicist; and my parents for always being there.
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