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SARAH HELD POSSESSIVELY onto Cindy’s hand as The Alicia left the dock of the quaint little harbor in Hazel Creek. She felt numb inside, and although that ever-presumptuous lump in her throat had continuously threatened to silence her for the second time that day, there was not a single tear that spilled from her eyes as she watched The Alicia hold Daniel captive, and leave the safe harbor of Hazel Creek.
Sarah knew that when he returned, he would bring with him a shattering plague that would slowly fester inside of him, and rear its ugly head during what was meant to be, the very best years of his life.
It would inhumanely incapacitate him. It would heartlessly claw at him for three long years, while he suffered through debilitating pain and anguish. It would ravage his heart, the one part of him that loved her unconditionally. It would dismantle his family, and destroy their once functional home. Sarah knew from the very essence of her that Daniel would return, bringing a lifetime of sorrow with him. Her heart had not yet caught up with her fears, and her soul had not yet absorbed a reality of having to lose Daniel all over again.
She gazed over at Daniel who was standing on the edge of the ship looking back at her, until she could barely see him. She waved a final goodbye to the only boy she had ever loved, and she reminded herself to return on the 22nd day of March in the year 2000. The day after he was destined to take his last breath, the day he swore to make her his wife someday.
Daniel and the rest of the Kingsley family waved cheerfully at the Swansons as they set sail for their final holiday in Spain. He tightened his grip onto the manuscript she had given him, and couldn’t help but wonder for a moment, if there was perhaps, any truth to Sarah’s inexplicable fears.
“What you got there, Dan?” Margie glanced over at the neatly typed out pages in Daniel’s hands.
“I, it’s Sarah’s book, she says she doesn’t have an ending for it and wants me to read it.”
“Oh?”
“She ... she is so sure that ...”
Margie frowned when she detected the sudden exhaustion and indisputable fear in his eyes. “What Danny?”
“She’s leaving for Queenstown. She thinks I’m going to die.”
“She thinks you’re going to pick up a virus on this trip, I know. I’ve been listening to her for months! She is deluded and quite a piece of work!”
“Yeah. Wait, what?”
Margie was mortified that she had said it out loud, and instinctively, she bowed her head, unsure of what to say next.
“Margie? What aren’t you telling me? Sarah told you? You know?”
“Yeah, she, she kept saying that I could save you if I tell you the truth ...”
“The truth? What are you talking about, Margie?”
She turned away from him, before Daniel forcefully grabbed her by her arm, “What do you know?”
“Danny, I honestly don’t believe all that mumble jumble, and you can’t tell me that you do either. But ...”
Daniel squeezed her arm tighter, as his heart began thumping profusely. As his breaths grew shorter, Daniel was convinced that someone had reached into his chest and began squeezing his lungs mercilessly. “But?”
“She’s right! I have dreamed of becoming an event planner all my life! I want to plan weddings and parties! I don’t want to teach children. I don’t like kids! I can’t stand them! You just, you just can’t tell dad! Danny, you cannot tell dad! Not yet and not until I graduate, okay?”
Daniel let go of her arm and stepped back as he tried to take in all that Margie had just confessed to. He was at once overcome by a horrendous, eerie quiver that managed to rip through into the very core of him. “What?”
“Don’t tell me that you believe her, Danny?”
Daniel stood staring at her in utter disbelief. He thought back to all the months that Sarah had tried to warn him. He thought about how she begged him to stay behind in Hazel Creek, and not board that ship. She harassed him endlessly, as though her life depended on it.
As he stood there mulling over her words and her endless nagging, Daniel shockingly realized that her story had never changed. Not once did she divert from her story or what she knew to be true all along.
Not for one moment did she alter or amend any fact about her story, and when he paged through to the last typed page of her manuscript, he at once identified the final scene she had written. A scene they had lived only moments before. A scene wherein she was waving him goodbye, for one last time, only it was date stamped and written in August. She couldn’t have known.
He gazed up into the sky, and noticed that the clouds had entirely covered up the sun. They had turned into a ghostly and shadowy darkness, and the thunder that had begun to wreak havoc on the clouds, had sent bolts of lightning that began to crash down all around them.
He looked back over at the docks and saw how the rain had come crashing down on her as she stood watching him sail away from her. Yet, as he stood staring at the girl he had said goodbye to only moments before, he was devastated by the image before him.
She was not the young girl he had placed his arms around, only minutes ago. She was older. She looked vulnerable and fragile, and she appeared defeated and exhausted.
He stared at her and realized that he was looking at a woman so much older than the teenager he was leaving behind, one who had lived a hundred years and one who had fought a million fears, cried a thousand tears, and lived a shattered life. He grabbed onto the rails, and at once realized that Sarah was telling the truth all along, and that she had found a way to come back to him. He was seeing the signs she begged him to pay attention to.
She had found a way to trick time into sending her back to that very moment, a moment she had lived once before. He glanced down at her manuscript, and suddenly, it all made sense to him.
She had travelled through the passage of time, frantic to alter her course, and manipulate the cruel twists fate once had in store for them. She came back for her one more last chance, and yet, he was about to steal it from her. He fell to his knees, and while he clutched desperately to her manuscript, he yelled out in anguish, “I have to be where she is, I want my one more last chance.”
