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WHEN SHE DROVE INTO her hometown for the first time since she had left Hazel Creek, Sarah Swanson reached for her phone and excitedly dialed Simone Watts’ number, anxious to get in touch with her, and see her again after all the years.
She was frantic to shrug off her fears, and she was sure that Simone could better prepare her for her return. As she gazed around her, she could almost feel him again, but she could hardly discard the terror that had begun to overwhelm her, by the mere thought of seeing Daniel again.
She felt a shudder run through her entire body and was at once thankful that Simone had taken her call without delay. “Simmy, it’s me ...”
“Who?”
“Me, Sarah ...”
“Sè! How are you?”
“Are you at work?”
“Yep. All day, every day.” “I’ll see you in a bit?”
“You’re here? In Hazel Creek?”
“Yeah ...”
“Wow! Okay ... just look for Super Sim Styles, on the corner of 2nd and Harley. Okay?”
“Thanks, Simmy, see you in a bit!”
Sarah had met Simone midway through grade two when Simone had moved to Hazel Creek from the city when she was barely eight years old. Sarah took pity on her when she found her having her sandwiches alone during their lunch hour. She felt badly for the new girl, who had not yet made friends, and at once invited her to sit with her. “Hello. My name is Sarah.”
“Hey, I’m Simone ...”
“Where are you from?”
“Canterbury.”
“Oh? The City! Have you made any friends here yet?”
“No ...”
“So, I’ll be your friend if you like. You can sit with me and we can sit together in class, if you like?”
Simone smiled broadly when Sarah extended a hand to her, and walked her over to her lunch table. She hurriedly introduced Simone to the rest of her group, and quickly opened a seat for her to take right beside her.
They were an odd pair when they became inseparable in the years that followed. To most of the world, their friendship seemed an unlikely alliance.
Simone Watts was the only child of Charles and Maggie Watts, both teachers at Hazel Creek’s only high school. Simone was almost a full head shorter than Sarah, even though she was a couple of months older.
Sarah often chuckled softly when she scrutinized Simone, and regularly teased her when she once told her that she must be the secret love child of a Greek god. She bore no resemblance to her parents, and Sarah often wondered whether Simone’s appearance had perhaps been inherited from her grandparents. “You must look like your grandmother?” Sarah joked as they sat in the library, one afternoon after school.
“No ...”
Simone giggled when she noticed the frustration on Sarah’s face. She was enormously proud of her long, raven black hair, with eyes that seemed darker than at the very dead of night. “Well then, you’re adopted! You must be!”
Simone burst out laughing, before she finally put Sarah out of her misery, “My grandfather is from Spain. I look like his mother, my great grandmother ...”
Simone was petite and timid, but what she lacked in height, she made up for in her playful personality, and infectious laughter. She was beautiful and kind, but almost as though a switch had been flicked, she would become quiet and utterly withdrawn at times.
Sarah discovered very early on that Simone was shy, and that being an only child, had kept her caged and guarded from the rest of the world. Her parents, both teachers, had kept her on her toes, and Sarah couldn’t help but pity her from time to time.
Charles and Maggie Watts were strict parents, but it was nothing more than their love for Simone that had kept them protective over their only daughter. Even though Simone was permitted afternoons out at the bookstore with Sarah, they very rarely agreed to sleepovers or outings away from Hazel Creek.
Sarah, on the other hand, was only too happy to flaunt her long blonde hair that trailed down her back and past her waist. She was pale, but her hazel green eyes were striking and large, and it would often appear as though there were murky puddles that would spill out into her eyes, during a stormy and tempestuous night.
She was popular at school, and she adored the attention her teachers, brothers and sisters would bestow upon her. She would often remind her sisters that as the youngest of five children, she was and would remain the apple of her parents’ eye.
Sarah would converse freely, and without filtering her words. She would often be the victim of her extroverted personality that persistently landed her in more trouble than she cared to admit to.
She was the youngest daughter of Thomas and Cindy Swanson, who would regularly introduce her as their untamed child. They would apologize in advance for the daughter who would speak her mind and fight for her place in their family, and in the world.
Thomas and Cindy knew that Sarah came into this world without any brakes, and that she would rarely apologize for saying what she felt without consideration the implications thereof, even though it was inappropriate most of the time.
Even though they had little to no desire to restrain or tame her, they hoped that she would sieve through her words more carefully as she grew older. Sarah treasured her parents and knew from the deepest and most central part of her that she was tiring, and a handful at the best of times.
Without apologizing for her uncultivated words, Sarah would often place her arms around her parents as a way of expressing regret for her persuasiveness, and subsequent lack of tact.
It was as though it had become an unwritten agreement that her remorse would be found in a loving embrace that she would have ready for her parents and her siblings, especially after one of her tempestuous outbursts.
As much as she adored her parents, Sarah was wholly besotted with her sisters Megan and Claire, while she secretly worshipped her brothers Benjamin and Robert. She would watch from the sidelines as Megan fell in love often, and she would secretly stand on the other side of her bedroom door, and hear her weep into her pillow with each broken heart she would endure as a result. Megan loved fiercely, and she loved unequivocally.
Cindy often told Thomas how she thought that Megan was simply in love with the idea of love, and that she was not sure how much more bruising or battering her heart could endure.
Sarah loathed the fact that Megan’s heart was shattered so often, and she swore that hers would remain intact, and that she would someday, choose someone who would love her so much more than she could ever be capable of loving him.
Megan was barely two years older than Sarah, but she dreamed of having a house filled with children someday. She was desperate to become a mother, and desired having children more than anything else in the world.
After she had graduated from high school, she enrolled in college without delay, and completed her very first teaching diploma a short three years later. Even though she had met David Dawson in high school, she married him a month after she graduated from college.
They had settled into a suburban home in Hazel Creek where Megan took up a teaching position at Hazel Creek Primary School. Within three years, Sarah became the proud aunt of a niece, Melissa, and a nephew, Michael, even though she had never met them.
She had left for Queenstown a few months after her eighteenth birthday, almost a year before Megan and David were married. Megan and Cindy were equally devastated when Sarah failed to return for the wedding or show up for the birth of either of her children.
“Honey, it’s your sister’s wedding?” Cindy had made a desperate attempt to convince Sarah to return to Hazel Creek for Megan’s wedding a week before she was due to get married. “We haven’t seen you in a year, and she so much wants you to be a bridesmaid.”
“I know, mommy, and I’m sorry. I just can’t. I’ll be out of town for a month, possibly more. I can’t back out, I am under contract ...”
Sarah was frantic to explain her commitments and justify her absence, even though she felt immense guilt for failing to make a bigger effort.
“I don’t understand, Sarah. We can’t come visit you, you won’t let Daniel come and see you, what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on, mom. I am never here. I am always on the road or in the air. I can’t cancel my bookings. I can’t do that, not now while I am still trying to establish myself. This is a tough industry to break into, you know that, mom?”
Cindy sighed and gently shook her head. “It’s been a year, Sarah. You said just a year. You said you wanted to go to the city for just one year.”
“I know that. I just cannot dictate my schedule to my agent or publishers. I just need a little more time here. I am so close to achieving all the things I came here to do. If I give up now, it would all have been for nothing.”
“Sarah, you are missing out on the things that are important. You are going to look back someday and regret the time you spent chasing the wrong things. It could all be gone in the blink of an eye.”
“Oh mother, I’ll be home soon, you’ll see. Tell Megs I love her, and I hope her day is as beautiful as she is. Please send me photographs of the wedding?”
Cindy remained silent when she realized that Sarah was bewitched by the glamour she had found in the city, and that she would not be home anytime soon. “I love you, mom.”
“I love you too, Sè ...”
Sarah ended her call to her mother and hurriedly dialed Daniel’s number. “Sè?”
“Hey Danny ...” She was at once eerily silenced when she heard his familiar, comforting voice.
“You are coming up for Meg’s wedding, right?”
“I can’t, Danny. I am flying out to St. Rose’s on Thursday.”
“Come on, Sarah! It’s your sister’s wedding! The first wedding in your family!”
“I know, Danny, there’s nothing I can do. I just can’t take time off now. I have commitments and obligations that I can’t just cancel. But Danny, I wanted to ask you, I mean, I haven’t seen you in a year, and, do you want to join me in St. Rose’s for the weekend?”
Daniel remained silent for what felt like an eternity. “I can’t Sarah, I can’t skip Megan’s wedding. And you shouldn’t either.”
“You’re right. So, I’ll speak to you soon?”
“Whatever, Sarah. When are you coming home, for good?”
“I don’t know, Danny, I just have so much still to do, maybe next year?”
Daniel closed his eyes, before he ran his fingers through his hair, “Right ...”
“I’ll come visit soon, I promise ...”
“Yeah, tell Megan that. Anyway, I have to run, take care!”
Before she could respond, Daniel had abruptly ended their phone call. Sarah sat down on the edge of her bed, and felt a shudder make its way into her heart. Sudden fear had begun overwhelming her, and for a moment, she was sure that she might never see Daniel again.
Daniel tossed his mobile phone onto his bed, and in a fit of anger and frustration, he picked it up and hurled it against a wall. He had assured Megan only days before that Sarah would not allow her work to come between her, and her sister’s wedding.
Daniel was annoyed, but it was his disappointment in her that entirely dominated him. When he picked up the broken pieces of his phone, the thought of never seeing her again had never felt as real, as it had at that very moment.
Claire was the eldest daughter, and the most level-headed and even-tempered of the entire Swanson clan. From an enormously young age, she buried her head in newspapers, and would change the television channel to any documentary or news channel she could find.
At the age of fifteen, Claire discovered a brand-new reality series that introduced her to a world of buying and selling exclusive and luxurious property.
From that moment on, it was all she could talk about, and all that intrigued her for years to come. She had no desire to meet boys, and later men, and was quite content to plunge herself head first into the dynamic, enthralling and glamorous world of realty.
Claire remained focused and career driven, and was determined to impress herself in the community, as the top realtor of Hazel Creek. Even though she regularly dated, she in no way at all, allowed her heart to manipulate or lessen her probability of success as a realtor.
She had spent five years at their local estate agency before she proudly opened the doors of her very own firm, Claire Swanson Properties. She was whole-heartedly devoted and committed to becoming Hazel Creek’s largest listing agency, and thought very little of working extremely long, and tiring hours which left barely any time at all for her to fall in love.
She was the most ambitious of them all, and barely attended any family get-togethers other than Christmas and Easter.
Robert was the second youngest child of Thomas and Cindy Swanson. He grew up almost hiding behind his siblings. He was quiet and withdrawn, and very rarely enjoyed the spotlight. From the moment he had received his first doctor’s play set as a little boy, he dreamed of becoming a doctor, and by the time he turned twenty-seven, he had received his degree and was working as a resident at The Hazel Creek Medical Centre.
He began dating a nursing student almost two years before, and by the time he had begun his residency, they had moved in together.
Benjamin Swanson was the oldest brother, and oldest child of the entire Swanson clan. He loved designing and building things, and from a very young age, Thomas knew that he would someday, be an architect.
When Benjamin obtained his degree years later, he had no hesitation but to follow in his father’s footsteps, and began working on the ranch where he would often formulate changes to existing structures on the farm or construct a new barn.
He would happily design or build a new shed from the ground up, or he would simply re-design Cindy’s kitchen once it was outdated. They were a family of seven, but Thomas and Cindy Swanson knew from the very beginning that Sarah would be the child to stand out some day.
She turned out to be the child that refused to fade away into the background, and she grew up to be the most vocal of them all. Thomas Swanson was a tall and stocky man who was born and raised in Hazel Creek. He had been raised on the ranch he later inherited from his father.
Swanson Cattle Ranch had been in the Swanson family for generations before, and when Thomas met and married Cindy, a local bookstore owner, they were both eager to start a family on the ranch.
Cindy adored the bookstore she opened shortly after she had graduated high school. As a young, single girl who had lost her parents a year before in a motor car accident, she found solitude and recluse in her bookstore, Fine Books.
She found peace and tranquility while surrounded by the stories so many authors were willing to share with her. She had converted a storage area upstairs to an apartment she lived in until she met and fell in love with Thomas.
Cindy continued to open the doors to Fine Books, and later converted the apartment upstairs to a safe reading area for the children of Hazel Creek. Sarah shared her mother’s love for books and would often head straight for the little bookstore in the center of their beloved village, each chance she had.
She would beg Cindy to keep her from school some days, just so that she could spend a day at the bookstore.
She would carefully select a book, and rush upstairs to her very own little reading corner where she would spend all her free time reading anything and everything she could get her hands on, especially when new books were delivered.
She loved the smell of the pages that swept her up and out of the bookstore, before transporting her into a world she could conjure up as she read on. She adored the feel of the turning of the pages, and she would often lose herself in the stories that were coming to life through the tips of her fingers.
It was not long after she had begun high school, that Sarah began writing her own stories in secret. She dreamed of someday telling her own stories and sending them out into the world. She found utter delight in the idea of holding her own book in her hands, and she never allowed herself to forget what Cindy once told her, “If you cannot find anything to read, my darling, you write it.”
The Swansons were a functional, normal and happy family. They were extremely close-knit and supportive of one another, even through the darkest and most trying of moments.
Thomas and Cindy Swanson were loved and hugely respected by the entire Hazel Creek community. They were a part of a religion of the small town that embraced and treasured them.
Yet, Sarah could not discard feeling as though she was caged in and sheltered from the rest of the world. She was overwhelmingly conquered by an inexplicable urge to find her worth in the world, by crossing the borders of Hazel Creek and the safety she had known all her life.
She wanted to become an important person. She wanted to become someone others spoke fondly of. She wanted to write, and she wanted to write the very best books the world had ever seen. When she left for Queenstown shortly after graduating from high school, Sarah insisted that she would be gone no more than a year, and she swore to Daniel that she would return as someone wonderful, not too far in the not so distant future.
Queenstown was a city almost a thousand miles away from Hazel Creek. It was young, vibrant and bustling. There were trains and subways, apartments and malls. There were highways and bright night lights, all of which bewitched and captivated Sarah and the dreams she was hoping to chase and eventually, make her own reality.
It was often referred to as the city that never sleeps, and Sarah grew impatient to leave Hazel Creek behind her, and make her mark in the world, much to her parents’ and Daniel’s dismay.
Daniel Kingsley was deeply distressed by the fact that Sarah was so strong-minded in her quest to leave their village behind. He was eager to keep her close, and he was frantic for her to find contentment in their hometown, yet, it constantly appeared as though she was placing undue pressure upon herself to go faster than she was able to run.
He was about to complete his final year as a chartered accountant when Sarah excitedly shared her plans with him. Even though Daniel felt as though he may eventually lose her to the city, he unenthusiastically agreed to let her go in search of the magnificence she thought she needed, and so intensely sought.
“You’re not coming back, Sarah. Once you’re there, we’ll hardly ever see you again.”
“I am going to be gone for a year, Danny. One year! I won’t be gone for longer than a year!” Daniel shook his head when he took her into his arms, and placed them firmly around her. He was much taller than she was, and quite the opposite in appearance.
Daniel’s complexion was darker than Sarah’s. His unruly, shadowy hair always seemed darker at night, but his eyes were so overwhelmingly blue, it almost seemed frosty and arctic at times. Sarah loved Daniel. She had fallen in love with the boy from the ranch next door when she was only a little girl. She would sit on the porch of the ranch she was born in, and watch him pass by each day, before he would disappear through the gates, and down the path of Kingsley’s ranch.
She would stare out into the open fields in front of her, and dream of someday, becoming Daniel’s girl. He was by far the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and when she finally entered her teen years, she was ecstatic and overjoyed when he fell in love with her.
She adored the boy she had met shortly after she had stepped into her grade one class for the very first time. She had met his sister Margie, who turned out to be the same age as she was, and who attended the same grade as she did. Before Simone had relocated to Hazel Creek the following year, Sarah and Margie became close friends almost from their first day at school.
When she met Daniel at Margie’s seventh birthday party, Sarah knew that he was the boy she would marry someday. She fell in love with the schoolboy almost four years older than her, and although their brother Mark was closer to Sarah’s age than Daniel was, it was Daniel who had stolen her heart from the very beginning.
Daniel had dated Kimberly Hossel on and off for most of his high school years. Sarah could never quite understand what it was that had drawn her to him, and when she ran into them on the beach, or at family get-togethers, she despised seeing Kimberly hang brazenly onto him, and onto every word he was saying.
When Sarah began her first day in grade ten, she was delighted to discover that Daniel and Kimberly had finally ended their rocky relationship. Daniel had begun his second year at college, and when she stumbled into him on the beach one Saturday night, she was thrilled that he had joined their diverse group of friends for a casual get-together, and that Kimberly was nowhere in sight.
They spent the evening fixing stares on one another, and by the time the evening had come to an end, Daniel had fallen head over heels in love with Sarah. It was when he dropped her off at home that night, that he kissed her for the very first time.
It was Sarah’s first kiss, and when his lips gently touched hers, she knew it was the only lips that she ever wanted to feel against hers. After that evening, Daniel would rake up excuse after excuse to see her, and by the time her school year ended, they were inseparable.
“I am going to write books Daniel, and when I come back, you will be so proud of me!” She held him protectively against her before she rested her head on his chest. Sarah had graduated from high school only days before and turned eighteen only months earlier.
Daniel was in his final year at college, and was looking forward to entering the working world and starting out his life with Sarah. “I am already proud of you, Sè, you don’t have to prove anything to me or to anyone else. You don’t have to leave to show the world how good you are.”
She gazed up at him, and smiled sadly when she noticed the raw melancholy in his eyes, “I do, Danny, I do. To me, to you, and to the world. I want to be proud of me, and deserving of you.”
“What are you talking about, Sarah? You don’t deserve any less than I do?”
“I want to be deserving of you, Danny, even if only to prove it to myself.”
“You don’t have to do this, you are wonderful. You are fabulous.”
“Maybe someday you’ll understand, Daniel. I love you so much, and I am going to miss you, but I must do this. I know there is something wonderful out there for me. Just please, don’t forget me?” She leaned in closer and hugged him tightly. “I swear, Danny, you’ll see my name in lights someday ...”
When Sarah boarded the flight to Queenstown, Daniel felt a gentle, nagging sensation that he was about to lose Sarah to the glamour of the city life, and to the world that was out there waiting for her. “Danny, I’ll come back for holidays, I swear it. I’ll come home every chance I get.” She whispered as she clung desperately to him. For a moment, Sarah questioned all the plans she had made, and she wondered if leaving Daniel was worth hunting and chasing her dreams.
“Be safe out there, Sè ...” She retreated slightly, before she took his face into her hands, “Come with me, Danny, please come with me?”
He took her hands into his, before he wiped a lost tear that had rolled onto her cheek, “I can’t, Sarah. I can’t leave. The city is just not for me. Go do what you feel you need to do and come home. In the meantime, we’ll call, email and you’ll come visit, okay? And if I can, I’ll visit you in the city. I know you, Sè, if you don’t do this now, you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it, and blaming me for holding you back. I don’t want you to leave but, I can’t go with you.” She nodded reluctantly, before she felt the confines of a hampering lump in her throat, forcing to swallow back on the tears she was desperate to hide from him.
As she stared into his wintry eyes, she felt an unexpected fear grab a hold of her heart, and for a moment, it paralyzed her entire being. For a split second, she was sure that she might never see him again. Sarah held him against her, and for a moment, she considered abandoning all her plans, and rather, remain in Hazel Creek and close to Daniel.
She slowly turned away from him, and made her way over to the checkpoint. Before she handed her ticket over, she turned back to Daniel. She smiled despondently when she saw him standing there. He was making a valiant effort to smile back at her, even though he could not shake the feeling that things were about to change for them.
He watched her hold her ticket and noticed that her hands had begun to tremble. He wanted to shout out for her to stay, that she could write her books right there beside him, but when he looked at her one more time, Daniel knew that he had to let her go. Sarah was missing something in her life.
He wasn’t sure if it was the charisma of the city, or the lights she hoped to see her name in someday. Her dreams had kidnapped her and were relentlessly nudging her to go after whatever it was, she so desperately needed before she returned to him.
He raised his hand and waved at her while forcing a smile for her. Sarah smiled back at him, before she turned away, and disappeared into a corridor that would lead her out to the plane.
Daniel hurriedly made his way to the look-out point two flights of stairs up, and when he looked down onto the runway, he saw her hesitantly ascending the stairs to the plane that was about to take her a thousand miles away.
When she reached the top, she turned back to him, and when she noticed him standing on the other side of the glass window, she lifted her arm and waved to him. She wiped the tears that were escaping from her eyes, before she hurriedly boarded the plane without looking back again.
He caught a glimpse of the tears that had settled onto her cheeks, and could in no way at all, disguise the tears that had begun to shimmer in his own eyes. He wondered for a moment whether he shouldn’t take a year off from Hazel Creek and join her in the city. Daniel shook his head and realized that the life Sarah was running after, was a life he could not imagine living in.
“I love you, Sè ...” He whispered as her plane took off and disappeared into the sky.
