“You know,” I said, “I have another idea.”
Doc smiled ear to ear. “I knew you would, Samantha. No way I was going to take you home, anyway.”
Fifty-seven
Jennifer,
The Lundstroms were obviously surprised when we arrived at the door of the lodge at nightfall, but they were also glad to see us and they had room. Once we had a key, Doc and I headed up the familiar moonlit trail that was alive with the sounds of the woods. I couldn’t wait to be in Doc’s arms again. We’d already wasted half a day.
I’ll remember this for the rest of my life. Just when we rounded a bend in the path, a shadow crashed out of the underbrush and into the pathway. I didn’t know what it was, but it was bigger than a horse and smelled horribly. The thing brayed at us! I guess we gave it a scare, too. Doc and I froze as the beast clattered across the trail and down the hillside.
“That was a moose,” Doc said, finally picking up our suitcases and the flashlight. We hurried to the cabin. Of course we couldn’t sleep. And late on the Night of the Moose, we finally laughed about our close call at O’Hare. Then we made a plan to make sure it didn’t happen again. From that day on, we spent our lost weekends on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Mike and Marge Lundstrom became our good friends, and the cabin in Copper Harbor, with its fieldstone fireplace in the bedroom and view of Lake Superior, became our hideaway.
No one back home ever knew our secret, Jennifer. No one guessed about Doc and me, and our double life.
And don’t you dare tell.
Don’t put it in any of your columns, either.
Or, God forbid, a book.
Fifty-eight
Dear Jen,
This happened four years ago, but I couldn’t tell you how I really felt about it. Not until now.
It was a chilly March night and snow was falling softly in Chicago, a great deal of snow. The wind was howling like a wounded animal, of course. Your grandfather and I were about to get ready for bed when he asked me to go out for a bottle of anisette. He had indigestion and thought the liquor would settle his stomach. It had worked before.
I had always taken care of Charles’s needs and cared for him as much as I could, given how he had treated me. I had to go quickly because the package store would be closing soon. So out I went into the snow and wind. “Sam the dependable one” Charles called me sometimes, always thinking he was being endearing rather than condescending.
When I came back twenty minutes later, your grandfather was dead in his bed.
Jen, he looked just as when I had left him; wearing his favorite blue pj’s from Henri Bendel, a Macanudo still burning in the ashtray, and the television tuned to the nightly news. It still shocks me when I think about how quickly he was gone. The heart attack must have come on him like a blown-out tire that slams a car into a telephone pole. Total devastation in an instant.
None of us even knew that his heart was bad. But Charles had never been careful about what he ate or drank or smoked, or especially how he carried on late at night. Jennifer, despite all the things I’ve told you in these letters, we had children and grandchildren and many, many shared experiences. When I looked at him in repose, I saw the face of the young man I had known many years before. A quick-witted boy who’d fought in a war, been unloved by his parents, and had struggled greatly to make his place in the world. I remembered the promise I’d felt for us in those early days, the love I’d wanted to give Charles, and certainly would have.
So sad. But some stories simply are.
Fifty-nine
THE NEXT MORNING Ihad a long, emotional talk with Sam about my grandfather, and about Doc. It was the best talk we’d had since she came out of the coma, and she was seeming more like herself every day.
“I read some more of the letters last night,” I told her soon after I arrived. “I’m doing it the way you asked, a few at a time. I read about Grandpa Charles dying last night. It made me cry, Sam. Did you cry? You didn’t say in the letter.”
Sam took my hand. “Oh, of course I did. I could have had so much love in my heart for Charles, but he just wouldn’t let me give it to him. He was a smart man in many ways, but so stubborn in others. I think he was so hurt by his father and his uncle that he never trusted anyone again. I really don’t know, Jennifer. You see, Charles wouldn’t tell mehisstory.”
My eyes welled up with tears. All of this was so sad to hear. “He was always good to me, Sam.”
“I know that, Jennifer. I know he was.”
“He did have a temper, and there were always Grandpa Charles’s rules of behavior in Chicago, and even here at the lake.”
Sam finally smiled. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me about Charles’s rules of proper behavior. I know them by heart. And all about his temper, too.”
I looked into her eyes, trying to understand everything. “So why didn’t you leave him?”
Sam just smiled. “Finish the letters and we’ll talk more. Just remember, they’re not only about me—the letters are about you, too, sweetheart.”
