A Dream to Cling To (22 page)

The Elms Home was quiet when Brittany walked through the front door. This would be her salvation, her peace, she thought. This would help her through.

But deep down inside she knew she’d never be through it completely, because she’d never stop loving Sam as long as she lived.

“Sheila.” She spotted the redhead rounding the corner and tried to push a smile into place. “I’ve brought those field trip plans for you to look over. And the new Petpals schedule.”

“Hey, thanks, Brittany. These folks have had such a shot of adrenaline with this theater and all, I think they’re ready to tackle just about anything. Old Mr. Fitzgerald’s talking about starting a mountain climbing club!”

Brittany smiled. “Can’t keep good folks down.”

“That’s for sure. Those good folks would love to say hello. They missed you this week.”

“We had the retirement gala to plan.…”

Sheila nodded quickly. “Oh, I understand. But they’d love to say hello if you and Dunkin have the time. There’s a group down at the theater.”

Brittany glanced down the hall. “It’s become a hangout?”

Sheila laughed. “Of sorts. Go on down there. You look like you could use a pick-me-up, and there’s no one that can do it to you faster than your friends here.”

Brittany nodded and followed Dunkin down the hall.

She turned the corner just in time to hear Bertha Hussey’s voice ring out. “Well, I’d make some changes, that I know for sure.”

Brittany poked her head inside the room. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Hah!” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “Not you, Brittany. Come on in here and join our little conversation.”

She walked to the front of the room, where a small group of residents had collected.

“What’s up?” she asked. “Sounds like a serious conversation.” She mustered a smile and slipped into one of the chairs.

“Serious and not so serious,” Frances said. “We were talking about what we would do over if we had our lives stretched out before us again.”

Brittany ran her fingers through her hair and thought of Sam. She’d put him right there, right in the biggest part of her life. And she’d leave him there.

“I know one thing for sure,” Mr. Aldrich said in his wheezing voice. “I’d not be so damn afraid of things.”

Frances looked at him. “You, afraid, Irving? I wouldn’t have thought it.”

“Afraid of new things, I mean, Frances. Of trying new things. Fear’s a damn shackle, you know. You have only one life, I say, so why not fill it up for all it’s worth!”

“Sometimes I think I’d like to be much less serious about things,” Frances said. “I’d take more risks, be more risqué …”

Bertha giggled into her lace handkerchief.

“But, Frances,” Brittany said, “you could have brought sadness into your life by taking all those risks. You have—and have had—a
happy
life.”

Frances moved to the chair next to Brittany’s and laid one thin hand on top of hers. “All lives have a mixture of both, dear. But sometimes risks will bring enormous happiness, the kind you’d never have a chance for if you weren’t willing to dare a little.”

Jerry Fitzgerald tapped his cane hard on the floor. “So, folks,” he growled in a deep, resonant stage voice, “let’s treat life more like an ice cream cone. We’ll taste it and love it and eat it up before it melts!”

Tears filled Brittany’s eyes and began to spill over.

“And you, young lady,” Mr. Aldrich said with gruff affection, “you should laugh more and cry less.”

“You’re so right,” she said, slipping out of her chair. “Thank you all,” she added, and hurried up the aisle with Dunkin at her heels.

The tears didn’t stop all the way home. Brittany marveled vaguely at that. She hadn’t supposed there were that many left in her. She felt drained, but slowly, ever so slowly, the vacuum was being refilled.

Sam Lawrence meant everything in the world to her. And dammit, if he needed more time, she’d give it to him, but she wouldn’t be without him in the meanwhile. She
couldn’t
live without him. The thought sent a new wave of tears down her cheeks, but she smiled through them.
Oh
,
Sam
,
I love you!
She wanted to open the window and shout it along the highway, stand atop a mountain and write it on the wind. But most of all she wanted to whisper it into Sam’s ear, again and again and again.

She pulled the van up to the carriage house and ran up the stairs, stopping only long enough to pat Dunkin’s head and assure him everything would be all right. “It’s got to be all right, Dunkin. It’s got to. If he wants to go to France, fine. I’ll be there for him when he comes home. I’ll show him, Dunkin, it’ll be all right.
We belong together, right, boy? And that’s worth any risk I need to take.”

She shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on the coat rack, then headed for the phone.

Fumbling for the book, she found Sam’s number and dialed quickly, then waited. The room was still, except for the wild beating of her heart. She pressed one palm against it and prayed.
Please
,
Sam
,
please be there …

After a few minutes she finally hung up. She bit impatiently on her bottom lip, then grinned. The office, of course! He was burying himself in work. She dialed quickly and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the click on the other end.

“Jill, hello. This is Brittany. May I please speak to Sam?”

“Brittany, hi! Hey, I’m sorry, but he’s not here.”

Her heart sank all the way down to her tennis shoes. “He’s not? Well, have you seen him?”

“Fleetingly. He burst into the office a short while ago, acting kind of strange. Hugged Gary, kissed me on the cheek. Then he made a few phone calls, told us we were wonderful, and then was gone, mumbling something about getting gas for his car and life beginning again. Didn’t make much sense to us, Brittany, but you never know with Sam.”

“No, I guess not.…” Her voice drifted off and she replaced the receiver, her mind spinning.
Oh
,
Sam
,
where are you? I need you, my darling. How can I take a risk if the riskee disappears?

By eight o’clock that evening, Brittany was exhausted. Her calls to Sam had dwindled down to three or four an hour, and with each unanswered call her heart turned over and she felt the same wrenching disappointment. She picked at a cold plate of shrimp her mother had sent over along with other party leftovers, but there wasn’t room inside her for anything. Thoughts of Sam consumed her. He was all she needed.

Finally, hours later, she fell across her bed and dropped almost instantly into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Dunkin awoke first, nuzzling the hand that fell limply over the side of the bed.

Brittany pried one eye open, then shut it quickly against the bright, dazzling sunshine that flooded her room. She was still in jeans and a sweater, and she felt awful.

Sam … She hadn’t found Sam. Suddenly wide awake, she bounded out of bed and headed for the shower. Well, she would today. No matter where he was, she would find him and go to him, and tell him how very much she loved him.

The hot water pelted over her naked body, tingling her flesh, and she smiled up into the spray. Today was a new day. She wouldn’t think about yesterday or tomorrow … only about today.

When Sam still hadn’t answered his phone by noon, Brittany finally called her father. She’d lived alone for too long to drag her parents into her problems, but maybe her father would have some idea where Sam was.

Gordon Winters’s deep voice was slow and thoughtful as he pondered her question. “Well, Brittany, haven’t you talked to him?”

“No, Dad. And I need to. It’s important. And Mother said he stopped by the house yesterday.”

There was the trace of a smile in her father’s voice when he answered. “Well, yes, he did stop by. We … ah, had some business to attend to. But he’s not here now.”

Of course he wasn’t there! she thought, frustrated. “No, I know that, Dad, but I thought you might have some idea where he is, or if he’s on a trip. Did he mention anything like that? No one answers at his apartment.”

“Well, Brittany, I feel sure Sam is around somewhere. Now, don’t you worry. You just keep trying his apartment. Good-bye, dear.”

Brittany stared at the phone. Her father didn’t sound like himself. And he didn’t usually end conversations with her so abruptly. What was going on? But she couldn’t worry about her father, not just now. She paced the living room, dialed Sam’s number one more time, then stopped midstream. The key! Was it still here? She raced over to the hall secretary and there it was, the apartment key he had left with her. Just in case she ever needed him, he’d said.
Needed him?
She’d never known the human animal was capable of such need. It stopped her heart, spun her head, and was driving her crazy.

She stared first at the key, then looked down at Dunkin with a gleam in her eye. “Dunkin, prepare yourself. We’re moving!”

Before she could think about it twice, she pulled an overnight case from the closet and threw in a toothbrush, a box of dog food, and a few other necessities, then slipped into her jacket and surveyed her home. Everything would be fine for a while. A smile slipped across her face. She’d be there for him whenever he came back. She’d be there to love him, no matter what.

It wasn’t until she and Dunkin hurried out the front door that she noticed the weather. It was snowing, a soft light sprinkling that glittered against the bright sunlight. It was beautiful.

She lifted her head, her mouth open, and welcomed the wet flakes that landed on her cheeks and her tongue. “It’s an omen, Dunkin. A good-luck omen.”

They walked down the stairs carefully, Dunkin slipping near the end and skidding down the two last steps on his bottom. “Careful, boy,” she said, laughing and rubbing his head. “We need to be in good shape for Sam.”

The van was waiting, the key was clutched tightly in
her hand, and Brittany felt that finally, at last, all was almost right in the world.

The snow was falling more heavily as she pulled out onto the main street that would take her to the south side of town—and to Sam. She smiled as she maneuvered the van around parked cars, covered with a light frosting of snow. She loved it like this, the quiet, the untouched beauty, the feeling of wonder at the clean snow.

But mostly she loved Sam.

Her eyes were drawn for a moment to a small dog sitting on the sidewalk in the distance. He was infatuated with the snow, trying to catch the flakes in his paw. She smiled at his antics, remembering Dunkin when he was a puppy and how he’d bark furiously at snow. As she drew closer she noticed a little boy of eight or so come out of the house on the opposite side of the street, look around, and just as she came within hearing distance, call out to the dog.

The animal jerked its head around and in a split-second, flew out into the street toward the boy.

Brittany slammed on the brakes and leaned heavily on the wheel, pulling it to the right.

But the slippery surface of the new snow made her brakes useless, and as the dog scampered to safety, the van hopped the curb.

The last thing Brittany heard was the horrible crunch of metal as it folded around the fat trunk of an oak tree.

Sam’s voice. She’d found him at last! He’d been … Where had he been?

Brittany slowly lifted her eyelids, then lowered them again, her hand moving automatically toward a painful spot on her head. As her fingers slid over the mound, she winced. What was happening?

There it was again, Sam’s wonderful, deep voice. And he was saying her name now. Brittany Winters. She lifted her head and looked around, then sank back onto the hard surface and groaned.

An accident. The dog … the snow … and that huge tree that had leaped out in front of her. She tucked her chin down and surveyed her body groggily. It looked all right. She wiggled slightly. Owwww. Her eyes darted to her ankle and she spotted a thick Ace bandage wrapped around it. And her shoe sat next to it on the sheet.

Dunkin!

“Sam!”

The white curtains flew back and Sam was there, leaning over her, holding her and murmuring her name. “You sure know how to scare a guy.”

“Dunkin. Oh, Sam, Dunkin was with me.…”

“Shh, darlin’.” He kissed her forehead lightly. “He’s fine. He came out of this better than you did. He’s a terrific protector, Brittany. Wouldn’t let the paramedics
touch
you until they showed IDs.”

She breathed deeply and her eyelids closed halfway. “I’m so relieved he’s okay.”

“And I’m so relieved you’re okay. If you only knew how worried I’ve been.”

She looked up at him. Everything was so fuzzy, so foggy. She wished she could think more clearly. “Sam, how did you know … how did you know I was here?”

“Because, little lady, the
only
identification on you—you seemed to have left your purse at home—was a key to my apartment! I had tagged it with my address when I gave it to you.” He wedged himself onto the examining table beside her and held both of her hands in his. His voice was husky and strain coated his words. “Brittany, where were you going?”