“Come away with me,” Sam pleaded. They had finished dinner and stood in the parking lot by Gwen’s car. “Why don’t you just go home, grab a few things, and meet me at my place in the morning. We can spend an extra day in Philly, hit a museum, peruse the galleries and shops, and—”
“I can’t, Sam. I have an appointment for a mammogram tomorrow.”
“Are you all right?” Samantha swallowed against her sudden worry. “I’ll go with you if you don’t mind company. I can drive down to DC in the evening instead of the afternoon.”
“I’m fine, Sam. Hopefully fine. It’s just a six-month checkup. I’ll probably meet Carol for lunch afterward. She can’t wait to talk about the party.” She rubbed Sam’s chest with her hand. “Go in the daylight, Sam. I don’t want you driving at night. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“See me where? You met me here because Rosa thinks I’m possessed and doesn’t want me at the house. And you didn’t want to come to my house because—what—you thought I’d want to be intimate, and you’re having second thoughts about us, right?”
Gwen looked almost pained. She hugged Samantha, and Samantha held her tight. “Oh, Sam,” she said into her neck. “Everything has happened so fast.”
“Everything? You mean us?” And when Gwen didn’t answer, Samantha grasped her arms firmly and pushed her back enough to see her face clearly. “What’s going on?”
Gwen looked away and held her head up, as though looking up at the sky would keep the tears from rolling out of her eyes.
“Talk to me,” Samantha said with growing impatience, and for the first time she understood Liz’s frustration in getting Isabel to communicate. She supposed the apple didn’t fall far…
“I’m so confused, Sam.” Gwen dabbed the corner of one eye with a pinkie.
“I know I went against your wishes and lied to you. I’m sorry. Really I am, but…what can I say? I write ghost stories. I got carried away. Maybe it was the…the splendid sublime, the awe-inspiring sight of a real-life ghost that got the best of me. But I haven’t lied about anything else, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Samantha put a finger under her chin and forced Gwen to look at her. “Hey, Professor,” she said, trying to make light of things, “don’t I at least get a pass for correctly using the word sublime in a sentence?”
Smiling seemed to take some effort, but Gwen managed a small one. “I’ll take that into consideration when giving you your final grade.”
“I think you’ve already given me a final grade. And I feel like I somehow failed.” She pulled her close again. “I love you,” she said. It was the first time she’d said it aloud. But when Gwen didn’t say it back, Samantha felt her heart begin to break and let go of her.
Gwen looked away again, fumbled through her bag for car keys. “Maybe when you get back we can think about seeing someone?”
“What?” Samantha knew where this was leading and frowned. “Who?”
“Maybe…maybe a team of paranormal re—”
“Like an exorcist?” Sam scoffed and stared at her. “If you’re that frightened of being with me, you could have saved yourself a trip tonight and just broken up with me over the phone.” She walked away, upset now and shaking her head as she went. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “An exorcist, huh? Nice, Gwen. Sounds like great fun. After that we can swing by the witch doctor’s house. And if the witch isn’t home we’ll call Ghostbusters.”
“Sam!” Gwen cried.
But Samantha didn’t stop. When she reached her car, she opened the door and turned back. “Just tell me one thing. Is this just about the ghost, or does something have you questioning our age difference again?” And when Gwen didn’t answer, Samantha waved a hand at her. “Fine. You know what? Take all the time and space you need. I’ll call you in, say, a couple of months. How does that sound? Maybe by then you’ll have come to your senses.”
Samantha didn’t wait for a response. She got in, slammed the door, and started the engine. She hadn’t meant to be so sarcastic, but sometimes feeling angry was easier than feeling so deeply hurt. She had no idea what or who had gotten into Gwen’s head, but she’d been unwavering, resolute, and Samantha suspected that Rosa had a hand in it. Damn that nutty woman’s histrionics!
By the time Samantha got home, an odd feeling of malaise fell upon her. Packing could wait until morning. She made a cup of lemongrass tea, carried it up to the bedroom, and face-planted on the bed. Her sheets still smelled of Gwen’s perfume, of her body, their blended bodies, and it made Samantha crazy. They’d made love here just three days ago. Would they ever be together again? To think they might not was so upsetting that when the phone rang she couldn’t even speak. She waited for the answering machine pick up.
“Sam…I…I should have said I love you…because I do, and…Sam, are you there? Please pick up…”
But Samantha didn’t. Everyone was entitled to a little pouting and self-pity every now and then. When Gwen hung up, Samantha moped into her study, pulled a box from an oak file cabinet, and started flipping through an assortment of blank greeting cards she kept. Finding one of an English garden she liked, a thatched cottage surrounded by flower gardens, she put it aside and pulled out one more—a murder of crows gathered in a tree, silhouetted against a sunset. She slipped that one into her computer case and took the other one back to her bed with a pen and paper on a clipboard. After some thinking, sighing, and scribbling a draft on paper, she opened the card and wrote:
If the age difference is still part of what’s worrying you, I have only this to say on the subject, and I’m saying it in a poem because I promised at the Waldorf that I’d write you one.
Lovers’ garden sown by fate
The lilac blooms, the aster waits
One born too soon, the other late
’til ivy creeps and tangles seasons
Fragrance wafting past all reason
To carry far the lilac’s call
So that spring might know the fall
She addressed, stamped it, and on her way out of town the next day dropped it at the post office and headed straight for Washington DC. She had arranged to start at the farthest point, two hundred and fifty miles away, then work her way back to Baltimore, Philly, and straight home.
Four hours later she was in Maryland. Miserable the whole way, she had listened to music, thought about the readings she’d give, and kept a recorder handy so she could narrate the book she was finishing, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything except Gwen. And just as she crossed into Washington, a deep apprehension rose in her without warning, and her heart began to pound.
Samantha had never had a panic attack, but out of nowhere one assaulted her with such intensity that she almost jumped out of the car right there on the thruway. Spotting a rest area up ahead, a sign for Starbucks, she struggled to contain herself until she could veer off and come to a quick stop near a grassy area. An escalating sense of imminent disaster gripped her chest and brain, as she nearly rolled out of the SUV, and for a moment she felt she’d either go completely insane or simply drop dead—right there in the grass, smack in front of Starbucks. Feelings of depersonalization overtook her. Her hands, her whole body felt as though they weren’t her own. Even her thoughts seemed strange. Where are you taking us? Where is this place? Why so far? Too far. We need to get back. Gotta get back!
Back to Gwen… Samantha held her head and walked in circles, trying not to hyperventilate, until the unexplained dread passed as quickly as it had descended on her. It left her drained, shaky. When her breathing returned to normal and she felt she wouldn’t pass out, she went inside for a bottle of water and settled on self-soothing with a venti mocha Frappuccino.
She drank it in the car while blasting the AC and intermittently holding the cold water bottle to her neck and forehead. This book tour couldn’t end soon enough, and she fought the pressing need to turn back as she continued on her trip. Relief finally came when she reached the Four Seasons Hotel. She’d rest for a while. And then maybe relaxing with an early dinner would help her regain both her physical strength and mental stability.
That evening she sat alone in the hotel’s restaurant, pushing the food around on her plate mostly, and when a call came in from Liz, she motioned for the check and walked to the lobby. Liz was in la-la land over the turn of events with Isabel, and Samantha wasn’t about to spoil her joy with a woe-is-me story. When Liz asked how things were, Samantha assured her that everything would turn out fine.
“You don’t seem fine,” Liz said. “You sound depressed.”
“Just tired. And you sound like you’re on top of the world.”
“Yep. I am. On top of the world, on top of Isabel…same difference.”
“So love doesn’t suck after all,” Samantha said, although she herself was beginning to think it did.
They chatted a few more minutes, and as they were hanging up Liz had a sudden revelation. “I was just thinking…if we both end up marrying Laraway women, you and I will be twice-related by marriage. How about that?”
Liz’s zany thinking made her laugh. “Let’s make that our goal,” she told her.
In the time she’d been on the phone, two text messages had arrived from Gwen, the first asking where she was and what she was doing, the next asking how she was feeling.
I miss you was all Samantha texted back. There seemed nothing else to say. Besides, Gwen should have known how miserable Samantha was. A minute later came Gwen’s reply: I miss you, too, Sam. So much.
After getting her clothes ready for the next day, Samantha settled at the desk in the room with a glass of wine and the other greeting card she’d brought along. If she mailed it from the hotel early in the morning, Gwen would get it by Saturday and know that she was alive and well. Well, maybe not well, but alive. She missed her more than so much; this sense of separation, of loss, was excruciating, and she tried to express the sentiment in another poem:
In riddles and rhymes,
Over oceans of time,
My spirit birds wait tethered.
Quill dipped in red wine,
Signature signed,
I free them to fly you this letter.
They circle the moon,
Deliver by noon,
I touch you with their feathers.
Oh, could hands become wings,
This plume would then sing,
My whispers would serve you much better.
Being in bookstores the next day was the only thing that made her feel herself. Speaking, reading, and joining a group of readers at a local coffeehouse in the late afternoon was a welcome distraction. By the time she backtracked to Maryland for Friday’s signing in Baltimore, her feeling of malaise seemed to lift a little. And when she left Baltimore on Friday evening to continue up to Philly, it lifted even more. It seemed the closer she got on the map to Gwen, the better, more steady she felt.
Samantha grabbed dinner on the road, and when she checked into the Hilton Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing, she passed the pool. It was dinnertime and not a soul was in sight. She had packed her bathing suit, as she always did, and decided a few laps would do her good. Writing two books at once had kept her sedentary this past month. Aside from dancing and, well, sex, she hadn’t enjoyed her usual aerobics.
Samantha loved the water. The heated pool felt wonderful, and having it to herself was relaxing. She did three laps without pause, then floated in the deep end for a while. It was quiet, except for the sound of water rippling around her hands, and she started thinking how nice it would have been to have Gwen with her. She hoped her doctor’s appointment had gone well. If something went wrong, if Gwen got sick again…she couldn’t bear to think of it. She closed her eyes, imagined swimming with her, laughing, holding her wet body, kissing her wet lips…making love to her right here in this warm and private ocean. Her mind drifted with her body, and soon she felt as though she could fall asleep floating…just floating. But out of nowhere that sick uneasiness descended on her again. Without warning it gripped her chest with such force that she panicked and started sinking. Frantically, she flipped over and swam to the steps, coughing up the mouth full of water she’d swallowed and struggling to breathe.
The sensation was physically unnerving, something she’d never felt before in the water, and she quickly got out. Something wanted her out. The pool that had been so inviting seemed suddenly dangerous, a death trap. She’d never feared drowning, but she did now, and she grabbed a towel and hurried back to her room.
In her sleep later that night, she did drown. In the dream she did.
After that first crack in the ice, she knew it was too late with the same certainty as anyone who has made a fatal mistake and, in that final moment before death, knows the mistake cannot be corrected. The terrifying sublime…
Her legs were splayed, her belly frozen on the ice, and though she tried with all her might to bring her legs together, to stand, to push herself away from the hole, her efforts failed. She heard another crack then, deep and resounding, petrifying, and then the ice groaned like a sleeping monster woken from its winter slumber. Her body shook violently as its dark and petrifying mouth opened and in one gulp swallowed her whole.
The frigid water took her breath away, stole her strength, but she fought—fought to keep her eye on the circle of light. It was her only way out. She gasped, breathed in lungs full of water the way a hooked fish fights to breathe the air. As she pawed at the ice, she shifted and lost direction, lost the light. In one last effort to surface in the dark, her head missed the mark and only bumped against the frozen ceiling of the pond.
Samantha woke up tangled in the sheets, flailing, hyperventilating, fighting for her life. And when she sat up the dog was standing on the bed, looking down at her. Alley looked like she had that night on the patio, outside the ballroom—a photographic negative.
Disoriented in the unfamiliar hotel room, she stumbled out of bed, groped in the dark for the lamp switch. When it came on the apparition was still there, drenched, solidifying, taking on the lifelike colors it had shown her weeks ago. The soaking-wet dog shivered, its eyes pleading, full of terror, and so was Samantha. Slowly she backed up until she hit the wall by the door. She saw no point in opening it and running; after all, their energies, their particles, seemed entangled now, didn’t they? If she ran the ghost would only follow. She slid down the wall, drew her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them.
And then she cried—cried in fear, cried in sympathy for the kind and gentle dog who had died this cruel and suffocating death. She cried for disobeying Gwen, for ever thinking she could touch a ghost without consequence. When she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked up, the apparition had dissolved into thin air. Samantha slowly stood and walked back to the bed, expecting the covers to be soaked, but they were dry. The whole watery mess was gone. But not Alley. Invisible, yes, but ever-present. Samantha knew that now. She’d been forced to take this road trip with Samantha, to hitch a ride, and as sure as hell she’d be hitching a ride back.
Samantha couldn’t say if she fell asleep again or not. One minute she was lying there with the light on, and then hours had passed and it was morning. The last thing she remembered was changing her mind about seeing a paranormal expert. An exorcist, a witch doctor, she’d agree to anything Gwen thought was necessary. What she needed was a real-life version of Detective Crowley.
She was physically exhausted, emotionally drained. How she’d pull off her gig in Philly without collapsing she didn’t know. But she did. She stopped in a coffeehouse afterward, grabbed a hot vanilla latte for the road, and checked her messages. Four missed calls from Gwen. She decided to call her as she drove.
Gwen didn’t even say hello. “I’ve been worried sick, Sam.”
“I’m sorry. I’m in Jersey now, heading home.”
“I received your cards…I love your poems, Sam…they’re very special.”
“Inspired by you, my new and very special muse. How was your doctor’s appointment?”
“Great. Everything looks good.”
Samantha sighed in relief. “I’m so glad. I’ve been worried, you know.”
“I know. And how are you? You sound exhausted.”
“I am. I think I’m getting sick…a cold maybe.”
“Oh, Sam, just…just come straight here and let me take care of you. I hate that you’re not feeling well and driving alone. I should have gone with you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like such an ass for—”
“I’m the ass.” Samantha didn’t want to go into detail and worry her even more, but she had to say something. “She’s here with me, Gwen.”
“She who?”
“Alley.”
There was a pause on the other end. “My God, Sam…are you sure?”
“Uh-huh. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll go see anyone you think can help.”
“Where are you now?”
“Jersey.”
“How far from the bridge?”
“Oh, I don’t know…maybe ten miles as the crow flies. Of course, crows aren’t subject to Saturday traffic heading into Manhattan.”
“Drive here to me, Sam. Just bring her back and we’ll figure out what to do.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Well, if you don’t want to come here, I’ll come to you. I can meet you at the house.”
“No. Don’t. It’s better this way. She’s desperate to get to you, Gwen. Maybe when she realizes that I won’t bring her back, she’ll let go of me, try to find her way back to you, and hopefully get lost and find the light instead.”
“And what if she can’t separate from you? I should never have left you alone with this…this burden. Never.”
“Gwen…I can’t think now. I’m trying to stay awake. I feel like the life’s being sucked out of me. I just want to get home and take a nap.”
“Okay.” Gwen was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “I do love—”
“Don’t…you don’t have to say it.”
“But I do love you, Sam. Please know that.”
“We can slow things down and see what happens Whatever you want. Let’s get through this ghost thing first…okay?”
Gwen sounded as though she might cry. “Promise you’ll call me the minute you get in the door?”
“Sure.” The call ended. Samantha gripped the steering wheel and drove on, but a few minutes later, before she approached the bridge, she was filled with an overwhelming desire to see Gwen. Right now. The sudden compulsion seemed to automatically override her previous decision. Her finger, as if pulled by a puppet string, reached for the GPS, tapped the screen, tapped Gwen’s address, and off she went on a mindless change of course.
* * *
Gwen spent the next three hours on the porch with her laptop, searching documents, looking up contacts. Pete Russo, an anesthesiologist she’d once interviewed, was particularly interested in NDEs, near-death experiences. He wholeheartedly believed in them and was well respected by people in the field of paranormal research. Maybe he’d be able to recommend someone. She found contact numbers for a few others whose brains she had picked while writing her own papers.
If all else failed, she’d speak with the minister at the United Church of Christ. It was the family’s church and she knew him. Not that anyone there would believe any of this. Or maybe Rosa could sneak home holy water from the Catholic church—a gallon or so might do the trick. It was worth a try. Who knew. Maybe dousing Sam would dislodge Alley’s spirit. If it did, Alley might still be here, earthbound, but she’d return to the parameters of the pond. And Sam, having learned a hard lesson, would know better than to ever attempt physical contact.
Whatever she had to do, she would make things right. It was her dog, her dog’s ghost that was haunting Sam. She’d find a way to fix this. And when it was over, she’d make things right between the two of them, unless Sam herself was having second thoughts. After pushing her away, she couldn’t very well blame Sam for not wanting to come around anymore. She’d probably send Liz to collect her crow and belongings and become nothing more than a memory—the memory of the most wonderful affair with the most wonderful woman she’d ever known.
Gwen picked up Sam’s cards on the table, read the poems again, and smoothed her fingertips over Sam’s handwriting. The first card had arrived yesterday, and when she received the second one in today’s post, she’d broken down. Yes, whispers would serve her much better. Hearing those whispers, feeling the brush of Sam’s lips against her ear, was all she wanted right now.
Everyone else on the property was happy today, and the joyous sounds of that happiness were beginning to grate on her nerves. Rosa was in the kitchen, making salsa and talking to Eugene on speakerphone. Every few minutes the two of them laughed their heads off over something apparently funny and spoken in Spanish, and Loosey was happily barking in the distance. Gwen guessed she was in the cottage where Isabel and Liz were working. They had music playing, and every once in a while, laughter erupted from there as well. Happy sounds. Normally she would have been elated to hear the happiness, but right now it was aggravating her no end. She wanted to think and suffer in silence. And when she couldn’t take the joyous noises anymore, she looked down at Blue sitting beneath the table. The Scottie looked as solemn as she felt. “You and me, kiddo. How about getting out of here and taking a walk?” she asked.
Blue’s ears perked up. She stood and shook herself in the affirmative.
“I thought so. Let’s go.” Gwen went into the house, came out with a leash, and they were off for a long trek down the road. Walking always calmed and helped her think clearly.