The Home Stretch

The last two days have been pivotal days in the story. I have been writing with breathtaking speed, and it seems as if my fingers can't type as fast as the words are coming into my mind.
Word count tonight - and its bedtime - is 47, 060. I will probably finish this tomorrow. Wow.

Just tonight, I wrote Tara's death, and have now moved on into the future where we're meeting Samantha as a young woman, her fiance Philip, and seeing Anne as a middle aged mother. They're all at the lake, discussing plans for Sam and Philip's wedding. Sam is reading TT's journal and - well here, just read some....


The little book lay open on the bed, turned upside down so that only the mottled blue and green cloth cover was visible. A breeze from the open window rustled the white curtains, and the cry of gulls sounded from the direction of the lighthouse.

A petite, dark haired young woman stood at the window, gazing out toward the lake far below the house, which stood on a rise above the water. With one hand, she impatiently pushed her long hair behind her ear, while with the other, she fingered a tiny, heart shaped rock with the initials “TT” painted in minute script on one side, and the year ‘84 on the other.

She started at the sound of a voice from the hallway outside her door.

“Hey, honey, are you up here?”

“Hey is for horses, you stooge!” she said teasingly, to the lanky young man that had suddenly wrapped his arms around her.

“Neeeeigh!” he whinnied, nibbling wetly at her neck. “Can I have some sugar please?”

“Stop, you!” she protested half-heartedly, giving herself over to his silly gestures.

He stopped suddenly, eyeing the view of the lighthouse from the window. “It is so beautiful here,” he said softly. “You’re really lucky to have this place in your family.”
“Don’t I know it,” she replied. “I have loved coming here my whole life. In fact, I think my earliest memory is of this place, of sitting in my baby seat down there on the deck, looking at the sun’s reflection on the water and thinking it was just magic!”

“How long has your family owned this house?” he asked, walking over to the built in shelves that were laden with hardcover and paperback books of all vintages. Except for one shelf, that was covered with an assortment of rocks in varying shapes and sizes.

“Only since the early 70’s, when my grandparents bought it. They hadn’t been married too long, and they got it quite cheap and fixed it up over the summers.” She joined him at the shelves, and picked up one of the larger quartz rocks with jagged edges. “My grandmother collected all these just for me,” she told him.

“Really? That’s cool.” He started picking them up, one by one, and studying their unique shapes and colors. “I never realized it, but rocks are kind of like snowflakes, aren’t they? No two are exactly alike.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And, sort of like people, too.”

He smiled at her. “Is that so? I thought you and I were a matched pair.”

“Matched, but not identical,” she answered, tugging lightly at the sandy brown hair that had overgrown his shirt collar. “I have a better haircut, for one thing!”

He flopped down on the bed, quickly pulling her on top of him. She laughed, a ringing sound that floated out the window of the little room and was carried by the breeze over the lake. They kissed hungriliy, entwining their limbs around each other. As their laughter turned to murmurs and sighs, the little cloth bound book slipped to the floor with a quiet thud.

They had drifted off to sleep, when the sound of another voice came ringing through the house.

“Samantha! We’re back!”

“Oh, shit,” Samantha said, scurrying out of Philip’s embrace and scrambling into her white Capri pants. “Get up, you, hurry!” she hissed, tossing a pair of green plaid boxer shorts onto the bed.
“I’ll be right there, mom!” she called, pulling a green T-shirt with the words “Tiny Dancer” written on it, over her head.

Philip looked lazily at her, his green eyes soft with sleep and sex. “Come on, Sam,” he scolded.
“We’re engaged, after all. Your mum must know we’re sleeping together.”

“She may know, but she ‘doesn’t wish to acknowledge it,’ as she put it to me, when she said she hoped I wouldn’t mind that we had separate rooms. Of course I mind, but we’ll manage somehow– obviously!” She grinned and dashed out the door, pulling it slightly closed behind her.
“Mother,” he heard her call cheerily as she pattered bare-footed down the stairs, “you’re back early! How was lunch?”

“Typical club lunch,” Philip heard Anne Henson say, with the bored voice middle aged women seem to use to describe social functions that weren’t up to their expectations.

“Come sit with me on the deck and tell me all about it,” Samantha said, chummily steering her mother toward the front door. “I’ve got a pitcher of iced tea already down there, and some of those butter cookies you like so much.”

“You baked?” Anne asked sarcastically, knowing that Samantha was usually death in the kitchen.

“Well, actually, I found the dough in the freezer and just cut it in little chunks and baked it up. They aren’t exactly perfect looking, but they taste fine!”

Anne laughed, her daughter’s attempts at cooking always a source of amusement. “You’re just like your grandmother,” she said, “always content to make do with whatever came out of the oven.”

“I know, I’m no culinary genius. But I have other talents to make up for it!”

“That she does,” agreed Philip slyly, coming up behind Samantha and Anne as they walked down the grassy path to the lake. Samantha started, and hastily checked to make sure he was dressed, before giving him a wry grin in return.

“Your grandmother used to say the exact same thing,” Anne said, rather more wistfully this time.

The three of them settled into comfortably cushioned wicker chairs on the deck, and gazed out at the lake, the sun perched high in the sky. Philip held out the little book to Samantha. “I found this on the floor in your –upstairs,” he amended quickly, after a fiery warning look from Samantha’s dark eyes. “Is that your diary, darling? What kinds of secrets are you writing about? A secret lover perhaps?”
Samantha took the book from him, and batted his arm with it. “You’re a goof, Philip,” she chided him. “If I had a secret lover, I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to write about him while I’m here with my parents and fiancé!”

Anne looked over to see what Samantha was holding. “Is that your grandmother’s letters to you?”
She asked. “Why, I haven’t seen you reading that in years. Had you left it up here?”

Samantha nodded. “I always leave it here, in the dresser in my bedroom. It seems to me that it belongs here, and I like to read it when I’m here because I feel closer to her.” Samantha looked over at Philip and said, “You know, my grandmother died right here on this deck, just a week before I was born.”

“No way!” he said in protest, feeling a tiny chill run up his spine.

“It’s true,” Anne said, nodding her head. “She was in the end stages of ovarian cancer, and had been up here with her…lover, I guess I might as well call him. I had begged her to come home, and she finally agreed, but on the day before they were to leave, she was sitting here in the sun and apparently died in her sleep.”

“She was writing to me at the time,” Samantha said. “She started this journal for me when she was diagnosed, writing all about herself and her life, so I would sort of know who she was.”

“She knew she wouldn’t live to see Samantha grow up,” Anne said, “but we were all hopeful that she would at least live long enough to see her born, and hold her in her arms. That was heartbreaking to me, that she missed the birth by such a short time.” Anne sighed heavily.
“At first, I was bitter about the fact that she had stayed out here for the last weeks of her life, and prevented me from being with her, taking care of her, perhaps even shortening the time she had left.” She stared out onto the lake, soaking up the view that had been the last sight her mother had seen. “But then I realized that this was the place she loved most, and felt the most at home, so it was right for her to be here at the end.”

“So, tell me about the lover,” Philip said. “If I’m not being too forward.”

Anne smiled ruefully, and Samantha laughed. “My mother and grandmother had some “issues” about the Ian,” she told Philip. “He was quite a bit younger, for one thing, and he and TT had an affair while she was married to Grandad.”
“Really!” Philip exclaimed. Somehow, you never thought of someone’s grandmother in the same context with extramarital affairs. “And, who’s ‘TT’”?

“That’s what my grandmother wanted me to call her,” Samantha explained. “It stood for ‘Tiny Tara,’ a college nickname.”

“So, this Ian fellow, he was with her at the end?” Philip continued, obviously intrigued by this portion of Samantha’s history.

“Yes, they met after a long separation during the Christmas season just following her diagnosis. She and Dad had been divorced a long time by then, and they immediately took up where they had left off 13 years before.”

“Wow,” Philip said. “This sounds like something on Days of Our Lives. My grandmother simply watches that show every day, and your grandmother actually kind of lived it!”

Samantha and Anne both laughed. “Mother was a bit different,” Anne admitted. “A little bit on the edge for her time. I was quite hard nosed about Ian, I guess, and made life pretty miserable for her. The second time around with him, I finally got to know him and appreciate how much he loved her. He took marvelous care of her at the end, and I know that meant everything to her, to have him with her.”

Samantha stared out over the water, following the progress of a flock of Canadian Geese. “I so wish I could have known her. She seems so much like me. When I read her letters to me, if almost feels as if I could have written them myself.”

Anne studied her daughter’s profile – the slender nose, the delicate features, her dark shiny hair and black eyes. “You are incredibly like her, in many ways,” she agreed, almost sadly it seemed.
“It’s funny, because I was a lot like my grandmother Frances – we were great chums, and I think Mom always felt a bit left out. You and she would have been wonderful friends.”

“Was she a dancer too?” Philips asked, referring to Samantha’s position with the Chicago Ballet.

“No, she was a pianist,” Samantha answered. “She founded a piano quintet that was quite well known in Chicago in the late 70’s and early 80’s.”

“So, the book, it’s her diary?”

“Not really. It’s actually letters, addressed to me. Here, look at it for yourself.” She handed the slim volume to Philip, who opened the cover and read, “For Samantha, with Endless Love.”

“How did she know your name?” he asked, puzzled.Anne answered, with a grin at Samantha. “I was driving her crazy because I wouldn’t let them tell me the baby’s sex, and I kept changing my mind about what I was going to call her/him. Mother was determined that the baby was a girl, and one day early on I used the name Samantha, and she liked it, so it stuck.”

“Did you really intend to name me that, Mom? Or did TT influence you?”

“You know, I had pretty much decided on Tara Elizabeth, her name and my middle name. You know, she was a great fan of the history of the monarchy,” she added. “But when I found the letters she had written you, I knew you had to be Samantha. Not ‘Sam,’” she added, “she was very explicit about that on the first page!”

“I remember,” Samantha laughed.

Philip poured more iced tea in Samantha’s glass, and continued glancing through the book.