A Dream to Cling To (8 page)

Except there she was. Brittany Ellsbeth Winters, her eyes bright, her voice edged with laughter. And the mere tilt of her head and flip of that mass of fiery-edged hair lit his desires to rival an Independence Day display.

The harsh blare of a horn behind him brought Sam’s attention back to the road, but the nagging feeling remained, a relentless reminder that Brittany Winters was different, and that a friendly, amicable affair was not a part of her vocabulary. Nor should it ever be.

He switched on the radio. Easy strains of a symphony filled the car and smoothed out his thoughts until he felt comfortable and easy again.

It was Brittany who broke the silence several miles later. Sitting up straight, she looked out at the passing houses and small stores, the people on foot hurrying home from bus stops. “Sam, where are we? I’ve never seen this part of Windemere before.” She craned her neck to glimpse a street sign in the fading light, but it only told her she was in the northeast section of town.

“What?” Sam seemed pulled from a daze. He looked around, then sucked in a long, deliberate breath. Only after a minute had passed did he allow a half smile to ease the tightness of his mouth.

The houses lining the road were as familiar to him as the back of his hand. So were the shady streets, the people hunched against the cold as they walked, and the kids in worn jeans doing wheelies on their bikes. Why had he come back here? He shook his head slowly.

“We’re in Shadyside, Brittany. It’s a small little cocoon
that’s officially a part of Windemere but never claims that aloud. Memorial Cemetery and the Blue River separate it from the city, and Shadyside folks like that just fine.”

“Shadyside … Of course. I’ve heard of it and knew it was up here somewhere. I guess I just never had occasion to come this way.”

“No, probably not.” He turned a corner and slowly drove down a shaded, quiet street. “And people here don’t have much need to venture into the rest of Windemere. At least my parents didn’t.”

Brittany swiveled on the seat in surprise. “Your parents? Then this is where you grew up?”

He nodded.

She turned again to look out the window and her voice grew thoughtful. “Funny, I guess I assumed you were from somewhere else, not Windemere. I don’t know why.”

“Actually. I
wasn’t
from Windemere. I was from Shadyside.” He smiled crookedly and ran a finger over her cheek.

“Semantics,” she said.

“No, truth.” He gestured to the houses they were passing. “This was my family’s whole world. Shadyside had everything they needed. Grocery stores, a movie theater, a couple of churches, and its own red brick VFW building, where they had meetings every Friday, bingo every Saturday, and poker for the guys on Thursday nights.”

“Sam, it’s a charming place.”

“Homey.”

“Whatever. But it is picturesque.”

Sam turned another corner and she gazed at the rows of houses. They were all of the same vintage, one hundred years old or more, she guessed, and had the same flavor about them, as if they’d been scooped out of the same batter and dropped neatly onto the land. Small square parcels of yard were meticulously kept,
and bunches of brilliantly colored marigolds and late-blooming flowers lined walkways and porches. “Sam, let’s stop.”

He shrugged. Hell, they were here, he thought. For what bizarre reason he could only begin to guess. Maybe he unknowingly wanted Brittany to see it all, and to understand him better through the seeing. So she’d know what he was all about, why he didn’t stay put for long. Know it all, right from the start. And then again, maybe
he
wanted to figure out what he was all about … And then again …

He raked a hand roughly through his hair and laughed at himself and the tangle of thoughts vying with one another inside his head. It was a beautiful day, Brittany was beside him; what more mattered for the moment? “Okay, Brittany. Sure, why not? They even have a few eateries in Shadyside. Including one that makes the best hamburgers in the known world. You’ll love it.” He drove a few blocks farther and pulled over to the side of a street lined with small stores.

“Shadyside’s main drag,” he announced ceremoniously as they both climbed out of the car. “My parents’ house was that one right off Main Street.” He pointed beyond the car to a side street and Brittany spotted a neatly kept house with deep blue shutters that looked just like all the others.

Sam’s house
. A giant old oak tree shadowed one of the upstairs windows and she could picture him climbing its tangled branches, his blue jeans torn and a mischievous grin spreading across his youthful face.

“I used to sneak out my window and shimmy down the tree,” he said, pointing, and she laughed.

“I knew that.”

He looked down and grinned at her. “Oh, you did, did you? And what else do you know about me?”

“More each minute.” She smiled back, her heart feeling strangely full.

His gaze lingered on her face a moment longer, then
shifted to the signs and storefronts along Main Street. He could close his eyes and picture each one with the details a child records. The peeling paint, the plants in an upstairs window, the dentist’s lopsided tooth hanging proudly next to his sign.

Brittany’s soft voice filtered into his memories. “Has it changed much since you lived here?” She stood close, and her shoulder gently touched his when he moved.

He looked at her and took her hand. “Changed? No, not one bit. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

The street was nearly empty as they walked along hand in hand, the crisp leaves crackling beneath their footsteps and the cool breath of dusk quickening their step.

“Where is everyone?” Brittany asked.

Sam glanced at the large clock that decorated the front of Christenson’s Variety Store. “It’s dinnertime. Everyone is home eating. In an hour or so there’ll be movement again. It’s Thursday night.”

“Poker at the VFW. I see.” She laughed.

He pointed out a large building with a flag hanging from an angled rod and a huge porch stretching across its front. “That’s it, the VFW building, and the building next to it is the post office where my father worked for thirty-five years. And over here”—he took off across the street, pulling Brittany along with him—“is the store that gainfully employed me for … oh, forever, it seemed.”

They were standing in front of a grocery store with a painted sign that read
WASSINK’S GROCERIES
in faded red letters.

Brittany peered through the dusty windows at wooden counters and tall shelves crammed full of packages and cans, and tried to imagine the man beside her as a young boy spending hours in this store. She couldn’t. “Sam the Renaissance man, in an apron, slicing up bologna … I think I need time to adjust to all this.”

He laughed and pulled her close, his hand moving up to rest on her shoulder.

“I delivered groceries sometimes, and clerked and soothed hurt feelings when Gus Wassink scolded girls for buying lipstick and boys for hanging around and reading his magazines and housewives for talking too softly.”

“He was something of a character?”

“You might say so, but not a bad sort of fellow if you looked deep enough.”

She studied Sam’s face as he talked and listened for words that weren’t spoken. His eyes were bright with memory, but they didn’t tell her what she wanted to know: Had he had fun here? Had he joked and laughed and entertained, like he did with the folks at the Elms? Had he charmed the girls and had they hung around to flirt with him?

But he caught her hand again, wove his fingers through hers, and moved on. “The church is around the corner, and there’s a local hospital that all the people here use, St. Francis Xavier. Both my brother and I were born there.”

“Your brother?”

He nodded. “Baby brother Joseph. Joe Lawrence. He’s a nice person and about as different from me as any mortal could be, which, I guess, is a blessing. He was perfectly content here and left only because he wanted to go to a teacher’s college and Shadyside didn’t have one.”

“Did he come back?”

“No, but almost. He married a fellow teacher from a tiny little town in northern Pennsylvania and they live a replica of Shadyside life there.”

“Were you and Joe buddies growing up?” She was listening intently to his answers, trying to sort through these new views of Sam, trying to see how they fit together. It was all a surprise to her, and she couldn’t say why, but Shadyside and Sam seemed an uncomfortable match.

“Not buddies,” he answered, “Not exactly.” He once
again led her across the street and headed for a sign with
HUGE HAMBURGERS
outlined in neon lights. “Joe was several years younger and I was kind of responsible for him. That made being a buddy hard. Mom worked at a department store and I was the one around most. When I was working, I took Joey with me.”

“He was pretty dependent on you, I guess.”

“Yep. Which is why I stayed around here as long as I did.” He glanced at Brittany. She was listening so carefully, but was she hearing what he was saying?

Her eyes grew larger and she squeezed his hand. “It must have been difficult as a teen, being responsible for someone else like that.”

“Oh, you do what you do. And I would never have shirked it, not for a minute. I loved Joey. But having someone that dependent on me kept me here, and also taught me some important things about myself.

“God made certain people certain ways, and He must have given me an extra set of wings, because no matter what happened, I never felt comfortable here. It was claustrophobic. I was always looking for the rainbow, wanting to taste the rest of the world, to move on, to learn new things. I never resented Joey, but I knew I wasn’t cut out to have someone dependent on me like that—forever. Sometimes, just because of the way I felt, I thought I was cheating Joey.”

“So you finally got away,” she said softly.

He nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t mean it was the people here I was getting away from, Brittany. They were fine people. But no one understood, no one felt that same pull to explore and digest that world out there with the same intensity I did. And when I finally was able to move on, well, it was
wonderful
. Like a parched spirit finally finding water and nourishment. I went off to Penn State, a little late but no worse for wear, and the world opened up for me. Things I’d never touched before the way I wanted to—music and art and plays. Different kinds of people and philosophies.
And after college I plunged into every opportunity that came along. I guess I’m still catching up, moving on to each thing life has to offer.”

“It seems to me you’ve done a pretty good job, Sam. You’ve experienced so many things.”

He wove his fingers into her hair as they walked and considered her words. “There’s a
lifetime
of different things out there, Brittany.”

The smile in his eyes spread across his whole face, and Brittany found herself caught up in the magic of the moment. He was lost in a dream, flying away. Making sure his parents’ kind of life didn’t settle upon him and hold him fast.

“And speaking of tasting different things …” He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, his eyes fixed on the garish neon sign. A crooked grin curved his lips. “We have here Jake’s famous hamburgers, guaranteed to fill even a teenager’s bottomless belly. What do you say, Brittany? Doesn’t the smell alone lift your spirits?”

She looked at the cafe-curtained windows, then grinned up at Sam. “At this point, raw hot dogs would be welcome! Let’s try it.” She tugged on his hand and they pushed their way through the heavy glass door.

Settled in a shadowed booth and fortified with huge mugs of hot chocolate delivered by a short-skirted teenager, Brittany and Sam smiled tiredly at each other.

“What a day,” she said. “My mind feels nicely full.”

He leaned his head against the back of the booth and concentrated on the golden flecks that danced in her eyes. “Full of what?”

“Oh, thoughts of you mostly. And now I need to digest all this and see what I can make of it.” Her light laughter only partially hid the jumble of emotions their afternoon together had stirred up. It would take a while to sort it all out. And for what purpose? She shook her head slowly and looked up into Sam’s thoughtful eyes. “Maybe I ought to digest some food first.”

He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table,
and cupped both her hands between his. His head bent close enough for her to feel his breath and smell the autumn cold that clung to his jacket.

The smile was there, and the laughter and light flowing from his incredibly dark eyes. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and met his gaze.

“Brittany, don’t think too hard about any of it. It’s just background, like your having gone to Sarah Lawrence.”

She nodded, smiling, but knowing just as surely as Sam did that the past
did
matter—and one’s reaction to what had happened there mattered—and that it
was
worth thinking about. In sifting through the past, the present often became more clear. And sometimes even the future …

Platters were slid between them, and she sat back and stared at a burger large enough to feed six. “Sam!” She laughed, relieved to concentrate on something as easily analyzed as food. “How did you ever manage to keep in shape eating stuff like this?” She eyed the crisp hard roll and the butter dripping in yellow puddles along the plate and felt her stomach growl.

“Isn’t it great?” He lifted a golden fried onion ring from the basket and held it up to her mouth, one finger crooked gently beneath her chin.

She took a tiny bite, looking over the onion ring at Sam. The faint stirring was back. And the rushing warmth in her arms and legs as well as other places she dared not think about right now. She swallowed the bite of onion.

He wiped a tiny crumb of batter from the corner of her mouth with his finger. Her lips were petal-soft and he could barely keep from tasting them right there in the middle of Jake’s Burger Shop. His chest was tight and the only thing in the room that he could see with clarity were Brittany’s lovely green eyes.