"Well…" Lola glanced toward the sky, eyebrows lifted, then smiled at him. "I haven't been struck down with a bolt of lightning or anything, so I'd say so. Sam…"
They had walked back into town by then, past the school and up to the corner of the town square. Lola drew to a stop, gazing up at him, and finally, a little helplessly, said, "Whathappened?"
CHAPTER7
It wasa terrible time to ask, but the question burst out of Lola like she was an impatient child, unable to wait any longer. As soon as she did ask, she shook her head apologetically and gestured around them at their surroundings. "I know. I know, this is hardly the place to talk about it for either of us, but…"
Something pained happened in Sam's blue eyes, and she regretted asking even more. "No," he said, clearly seeing that regret in her face. "No, I want to explain. I have to, obviously. Just—the very simplest way to explain it is…" He faltered again and ended up chuckling, a faint sound. "There is no simple way. The plane went down, you know that. No one else survived. I only did because…" He exhaled again, looking momentarily lost. "Because I was very lucky, but for a long time after that I couldn't rely on anything or anyone but myself. I was trying to get home again, but…"
His smile went soft and tired as he looked down at her. "It would have been so much easier with today's tech. Being able to just call you from a phone I had on me. But back then, and where we were… it was weeks before I got anywhere near a phone."
"And by then we'd held your funeral," Lola said softly. "And I left Virtue the next day. It was too late."
"I'm so sorry, Charlotte. Lola. I would have done anything to get back to you. I've never really stopped looking."
Lola put her hand over Sam's heart, feeling its gentle thump even through his winter coat. "I did a good job disappearing. I didn't want anyone to find me, Sam. It didn't occur to me there might be even the slightest hopeyouwould come home to look. If I'd known…"
He gathered her into his arms, warm protection from the icy wind, with one hand nestled against her lumpy hat as he bent his head over hers. His scent was still familiar, even after all these years, and a knot of loneliness that she hadn't even known she carried unravelled with his hug. She was safe, safer than she had felt in a long, long time, and for all Lola cared, she could stay right there, arms wrapped around Sam Todd, for the rest of her life. "You couldn't possibly have known," he mumbled into her hat. "True love conquers all, but Iwasdead."
"That didn't stop Westley and Buttercup."
Sam released her, looked down into her eyes, and laughed. "Well, if either of us had had Miracle Max or Inigo and Fezzik to call on, things might have been different, but we had to make do without storybook heroes."
"And," Lola added, thinking of it for the first time herself, "Buttercup didn't go anywhere. Westley knew where to find her."
"You always were a bit more proactive than Buttercup," Sam said dryly, and Lola laughed.
"Well, yes. She was a bit of a drip, although she did all right for herself in the end. The problem is I don't really want to go back to Charlee's apartment to talk. I don't want to go somewhere public, but I also don't want to be in her space. Even though she says she's hardly there, really." Lola chewed the inside of her cheek indecisively.
"The world isn't going to come to an end if we don't get every answer to every question we've got in the next half hour," Sam said with obvious sympathy. "I'd offer to buy you coffee, but you just had some, and I don't know if it's the same foryouthese days, but?—"
"Coffee after four will keep me up all night," Lola agreed. "This getting old thing is not for sissies."
"Or caffeine addicts. But we can't keep standing around out here in the wind." Sam was smiling at her like he'd actually be perfectly happy to do that, and Lola understood it to the bottom of her soul. As long as they were together, the rest of the details didn't matter that much. "Why don't we at least go see if Charlee is home? If she is, you can introduce me. If she's not, at least we'll thaw."
"No pressure," Lola murmured, feeling like she was echoing something he'd said, though he hadn't spoken the words out loud. Sam nodded agreement, and Lola gazed up at him, lost in thought for a moment. Lost in memorizing him, in seeing the crags and wrinkles that hadn't been present before, although they fell into the lines that she remembered seeing when he smiled. "You really haven't changed."
"Excuse me." A child's polite voice interrupted whatever Sam had been about to say in response, and they both turned to see a boy of about six, bundled against the cold, standing on the other side of the street. "Are you practicing to be some of those statue people? Because if you are, you have to stop talking. I can see your breath on the air. Otherwise you were doing a pretty good job."
Lola cast Sam a startled glance and laughed as he met her eyes with as much surprise as she felt. "No," she said to the child. "We were just being lovey-dovey old people, gazing into each other's eyes."
"Oh. Well, I bet you could get jobs being statues if you wanted to. That would be cool." The boy turned a critical gaze to the town square as a whole, as if envisioning it filled with statue people. "Maybe we could have a contest!"
"A…statue people contest?" Lola asked cautiously. The kid nodded enthusiastically, and she couldn't help a grin. "Why don't you see if you can set that up?"
The boy's gaze snapped back to hers like he'd heard a challenge that he was fully capable of meeting. "Okay, but you have to come be statues if I do."
"I don't even live here," Lola said, amused.
"Then you'll have to comeback," the kid said, exasperated, and Lola laughed, looking up at Sam.
"Apparently this will not be my only visit to Virtue."
Sam grinned and said, "Tell you what," to the kid. "Maybe we can run daily statue contests so she'll have to stay."
The little boy's eyebrows lifted and he gave Sam an up-and-down sweeping examination, then turned an absolutely charming smile on Lola. "Iwould take you out for ice cream, not daily statue contests."
Sam clutched his chest and staggered back with a shout of laughter. "I've just been outplayed by a six year old."
