| |
ON THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 17th, 1986, Sarah slowly made her way over to the house she would stop by each morning before she left for school, only it was the morning they were to set sail for Spain.
She clutched anxiously onto her manuscript, A Moment in Time, before she began trembling nervously. She stopped, and stood quietly in the shade of an almost fifty-year-old oak tree, from where she eyed the old white house on the hill.
She felt a gentle breeze submerge her, before a mild shudder ran down her spine, almost as though it was welcoming her back, but at the same time, scolding her for being gone for far too long. Almost as though it knew she had been gone, in a whole other time and a whole other life.
She could have sworn that the old oak was much smaller when she used to stand at that very same spot and call out his name, not too long ago.
She could clearly remember how they carved their initials in that very same tree, and when she looked closely, she could see traces of what was once written, and promised in the bark.
Her eyes followed the trail that led up the stairs, and onto the porch that wrapped itself around the entire house. He would someday, not be home, but she would return one last time.
She would come back and ask for her soul to be returned to her. Sarah was ready to plead, beg and negotiate with the house to free her soul now, before Daniel leaves, so she opened the gate and walked up the path she had walked a million times before.
She looked down at her feet and wondered if her footprints were perhaps burned in somewhere underneath her, below a thousand others that would someday, walk the same pathway after her. She wondered if the walls would remember her, and if the rose shrubs would still recognize her when she returned, years from that day?
She beamed slightly when she saw the age-old garden swing, one she could barely remember not being there. Was she seven, or was she nine when she sat there with him, for the very first time? Before she sat down, she gently pressed her hands down on the scuffed and worn swing it would someday become. She couldn’t help but wonder if her hand prints would still be hidden beneath his.
The front door was closed, the windows were shut, and the curtains were all drawn. Almost as though it was defending and preserving the memories that would soon be gone, and almost forgotten. Almost as though it was shielding outsiders from the sacredness of a kind of love, that would soon, no longer live there.
Her eyes caught the upstairs window to the bedroom right at the end of the hall. How often had she strolled down that passage and into that bedroom where he would be playing the guitar or waiting for her to stop by before school. She wondered if those four walls ever whispered their stories to anyone else?
Stories they were dreaming of when she was sixteen, seventeen and eighteen. How many secrets had they branded into the walls of that very same bedroom? She looked over at the Fraser Fir she was sure seemed bigger when she was younger.
Was that where her love for Christmas trees and their magic began? She frowned just a little when she remembered how his beloved dog was buried right below that beautiful tree, and how they both thought that he would live on in that very same tree, forever.
It was so long ago, and yet, it was just the other day. She looked out over the town below the big, white house on the hill, and at once recognized the farm road they had walked each day, hand in hand. She lowered her head, and replayed memories of what felt like a thousand years and a million heartbeats ago.
She reminded herself that she was no longer looking through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old teenager, but through those of a woman who had lived all this once before.
She slowly made her way to the front door, and she wondered how many times she had knocked on that very same door? She was sure that if she listened closely, she might hear the sounds on the other side echo down the hallway, just as she had so many times before. She placed her ear against that heavy, wooden door when she was sure she could hear his laughter on the other side.
She closed her eyes when she heard the ghosts of her past still run wild on the other side of those walls. She could not ignore the sounds her haunting memories of unspoiled and untainted love made, or the promises of forever she could still hear from the house where he would once have lived.
As she made her way down the path and back to the gate, she quickly swabbed at the tears that were threatening to gush from her eyes. It would be her last visit to the house. It would be one final struggle to free her heart, still coldly imprisoned between those walls and under that roof.
It would be her one last chance to walk away, without leaving her soul behind. There, where it continued to dwell in a home that would no longer whisper his name.
When she turned back and reached the gate, she turned around one last time. She whispered a silent goodbye to what was left of the house where her soul would be trapped in forever. A house that would soon, no longer have any stories to tell, except for the collection of souls it would someday, refuse to set free.
A home that would grow cold, abandoned and silenced. The memories of love, laughter and joy that once roamed freely in each room of this home, would soon be carved into the foundation and forsaken. In a few years from that very moment, nobody would want the house where he once lived.
Nobody would want to be reminded of the sorrow or the anguish that came in as an uninvited guest and left a path of destruction on its way out. As though it will stand on sacred ground, the house would be left untouched, in a few short years from that day. Nobody would dare to walk through that gate anymore.
Nobody would willingly want to walk up the trail to the house where Daniel once lived. Nobody would ever forget the anguish of the broken hearts that were left behind, and nobody would be able to fix the fragmented wreck that was once a house where love lived.
The skies turned dark, and the wind howled through the large oak tree as she waved the house goodbye, one last time.
“Sarah!”
She was at once brought back to reality when she heard Daniel call out behind her as she hurriedly headed up the road, and back to her house.
“Sarah! Wait!”
She walked faster, as she hurriedly swabbed at the tears that were rolling mercilessly from her eyes. She heard him come closer, and stopped, desperate to swallow back on the lump that had begun restricting her throat.
He grabbed her hand, and turned her around to face him, “Sarah?”
She looked up, and when Daniel looked into her eyes, he noticed how red and swollen they were.
“Danny ...” She shoved the manuscript in his hands, and hurriedly wiped the tears from her eyes, “I don’t know how this story ends? I don’t want it, if it ends the way it did once ...”
“What story?”
“I started writing this book when I came back in June. I already know how it ended once, Danny, and I, I can’t do it again. I can’t go through this again. I am hoping, I am so hoping that you read this book, and that you find something in there to tell you that I am not imagining any of this, Danny.”
“Sarah?”
“I am begging you, Daniel. Please, please don’t board that ship today. Don’t board The Alicia ...”
Daniel placed his arms around her, and pressed her head against his chest. “Sarah? The Alicia? How did you know?”
“I don’t know anymore how to tell you, Danny so no, I can’t do this. I have done everything I can to make you stay. I have tried for months to tell you and to make you understand. Margie won’t tell you the truth, and you don’t believe me. Turn around, and look at your house ...”
Daniel turned back and fixed a gaze on the home he had lived in for all his life. “Years from now, Danny, it will be abandoned. Nobody will want to live here. Nobody will want to come back here. It will be a reminder of how you suffered, and how you died right here, in this house. It will destroy your parents, and it will tear them apart. Margie will grow up to be so angry someday, and Mark, well, I don’t know about Mark? But this house, Danny, this house will imprison us forever. All of us.”
“Sarah, do you know how you sound when you say these things?”
“Yes Danny, I do know, and I don’t care. I don’t care that you think I am insane. I don’t care how I sound. I have been listening to you tell me for months that I sound like a crazy person. Because you see, I would sound like an idiot any day, if it meant that it would save your life.”
“I’ll be back so soon, Sarah, and you’ll see, nothing will be wrong.”
“Yes, Danny, you will be back. And nothing will be wrong for the next eleven years. I don’t know how the next eleven years will be, because I won’t be here. I have changed. I have lived all of this, once before. I can alter my course and change the path I take. I can stay here in Hazel Creek, and never leave for the city, because I have lived this all once before. I have learnt from this. But what I can’t do, Danny, is change yours. Only you can, and you, you just won’t listen to me. What I can’t do is stay here in Hazel Creek and watch you die a little each day, from the moment you get back.”
He took her hands into his, and firmly squeezed them. “Nobody knows, Sè ...”
“You are wrong, Danny, I do. I know. And I can’t be with you only to lose you, you know?”
“You’re not going to lose me, Sarah ...”
She lowered her head, and freed her hands from his grip, “It’s over, Danny. I am leaving. I am going to the city as soon as I can. I want to be gone from here before you get back. This time, Danny, it’s me asking you not to call me, and not to make contact with me. I can’t go through this again. Perhaps, this is how things were meant to be in the first place. Maybe Danny, maybe, we’re not supposed to change anything.”
She took his face into her hands, “Maybe, I was never supposed to alter anything ...”
He placed his hands over hers, and frowned when he saw the raw expression in her eyes, “You’re leaving Hazel Creek?”
“As soon as I can. I can’t watch you die ...”
“We all die, Sarah! From the moment we are born, we begin to die! You can’t leave because of a hunch, or a dream, or a vision, or whatever you want to call it?” He raised his voice, before he turned away from her.
She walked up to him, and with his back turned to her, she placed her arms around him, “I can, Danny. I have lived a whole other life. It was not a dream, it was not my imagination. It was real. When I left the first time, I never knew, but now, now I know. This time, you can’t hide that you’re dying from me and yet, Danny, at this very moment, I wish I never knew ...” She whispered in his ear, as her tears began to bucket from her eyes once again.
He lowered his head, and glanced down at the manuscript in his hands, “Will you come say goodbye at the harbor?”
She moved away from him, and hurriedly swabbed at the warm tears on her cheeks, “Yeah ...” She turned away, and quickly made her way back to the ranch next door.
WHEN SARAH STRUTTED in through the front door of the ranch she had found safety, security and comfort in, she collapsed to her knees and cried out in anguish while her tears bucketed unreservedly from her eyes. Cindy found her in the entrance hall, and knelt in front of her, before she placed her arms around her daughter.
“It’s too late, mommy ...” She cried out as she clung to her mother. Her heart was hammering so fiercely in her chest, yet at the same time, she could feel it splintering into a million pieces.
“Baby, sometimes, you must just have faith in the knowing that you did all you can do ...”
“Why did I come back then? Why am I here, now? Why have I lived six months here, without being able to change one single thing? I don’t understand mommy!” Sarah yelled out as her tears began drowning out her face.
Cindy was frantic to wipe away them away, and for the first time in her life, there was nothing she could say to Sarah to mend the shards of her broken heart.
Sarah whimpered desolately in her mother’s arms as they sat on the floor in the entrance hall in silence. When Sarah retreated slightly, she was overcome with devastation, “I know I’m supposed to be sixteen, mom, and I know I have two years left here, but, I have to leave here. I have to get so far away from here as I can. I can’t stay, mommy ...”
“Sè? Whether or not you’re sixteen, you are trapped in the body of a sixteen-year-old. I can’t let you go?”
“Send me to a boarding school, mom, just send me far away from here. I don’t ever want to come back. I never want to come back here again. I never want to see Daniel after today again!”
Cindy once again placed her arms around her daughter, and as though her own heart had begun shattering, she realized that she could not go against her daughter’s wishes.
Cindy was crushed and utterly wrecked by the mere notion of sending Sarah away, but at the same time, she could in no way at all, bear witness to the hurt and anguish her daughter was feeling at that very moment. There was no way at all that she could witness the pain her daughter would be compelled to endure in the years to come.
She only hoped, and bitterly prayed that the time apart, and before Daniel’s impending death, will help her adjust and mend her splintered heart. “Alright, my girl ...”
“Thank you, mommy, and dad can never know. Nobody can ever know.”
“Come on, go dry those tears, it’s almost time to meet the Kingsleys at the dock. Pull yourself together, my girl, and remember, I love you so much ...”
“I love you too, mommy. And, I’ll never forget this, here, today ...”
