Strangers in Paradise (41 page)

“They don't hurt anymore, honey,” Sam said with obvious difficulty. “They're all better. And they're looking down at you now, glad that you're better, too.”

“Are you sure, Sam?” the child whispered.

“Absolutely sure.”

Cassie knew there were some grueling counseling sessions ahead for the little girl, and for Sam, too. But Mariah could resume her life now.

And Cassie could finally get on with the rest of
her
life.

Whatever that was going to be.

* * *

Two weeks later, Cassie was reading her favorite section of the Sunday morning paper—the comics—when she stopped short, chills spreading through her body.

The folks at Borough Bantam had been in a furor for weeks now, with the newcomer in their midst, and the little mouse appearing from nowhere, being adopted by the king and queen. Cassie followed her favorite comic strip religiously, had since its inception, though she couldn't explain, even to herself, what made it so special. She just knew that her week wasn't complete without it.

And now, here she was, sitting alone at her kitchen table in her pajamas on a Sunday morning, wondering, once again, where she was going to find the strength to be happy. With Mariah no longer needing her help, Cassie had only seen her and Sam twice. Once when they picked up “Teddy” from the clinic, and the second time when they brought her back in to be wormed.

Mariah was thriving. Though there were still shadows in her eyes, times when she was very quiet, she was well on the way to recovery. She was certainly thrilled to have her new puppy, and held her very tenderly. And she obviously adored Sam.

Cassie wasn't surprised. He'd be a wonderful father. She'd always known that about him.

He barely spoke to her. And never met her eyes. At first she thought it was because of her, because he was angry with her, but as soon as she'd had time to think—and talk to Phyllis—she'd figured out that it was himself he couldn't forgive.

For something he could never change.

Cassie understood that. She'd been hating him for a long time. And hating herself, as well.

And, oddly enough, this little comic strip had expressed not only the feelings she'd been struggling with, but the resolution she'd finally arrived at.

Ripping it out, Cassie hurried back to her bedroom, and quickly got dressed in a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt. She brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair, though she didn't take the time to pull her hair back or put it up. Then she went to find Sam before he left for church.

* * *

Sam was sitting out front in cutoff shorts, waiting for his mom and dad and Mariah to leave for church, before he headed up to his office above the garage. The only remedy he knew for what ailed him, the only way to cope with the unending regret, was to work.

He recognized Cassie's Taurus, as she pulled into his parents' drive. His heart going into overdrive, he strolled down to meet her. Something must be wrong for her to come roaring up here like that.

“We have to talk,” she said, her door open before she'd even put the car in park.

“Sure,” Sam said, forgetting for the moment that he'd taken himself out of her life—because the only way to lessen her pain was to stay away. Not to be a constant reminder of everything she'd lost.

She got out and shut the door. “In private.”

“My office is over the garage,” Sam said, leading the way. “We'll be alone there.”

When they reached the office, she took a cursory look around, seeming to approve of the big metal desk, the bookshelves covering one whole wall, the easels and tools stacked neatly in a corner. “I'm also taking over the fourth stall in the garage downstairs,” he told her, “as a supply house and storeroom for the renovation business.”

Cassie nodded, took a seat on the leather couch he'd brought over from his parents' attic, and slapped his comic strip down on the wood-slatted coffee table.
Borough Bantam.

“Have you read this?” she demanded.

Things were coming at him so fast, Sam's heart was about to beat out of his chest. He hadn't seen Cassie like this since before he'd betrayed her all those years ago. So full of spunk and confidence.

What was going on?

“Yeah, I've read it,” he said warily, circling the table. Did she know? Was she angry with him?

“Well, read it again,” she told him. “Especially that last frame.”

Sam didn't need to read it. He knew it by heart. He'd written the damn thing. But because he wasn't sure what she knew or where she was going with any of this, he picked it up and read it, anyway.

He'd written the strip shortly after Mariah's near-seizure in the gym. The king and queen had just discovered that the newcomer was the knight who'd run out on them years ago, leaving them undefended and defenseless when the kingdom, for the first time in its 600-year history, came under attack. The newcomer had returned to the Borough, to his home, to protect its inhabitants. In his years of wandering, he'd learned much. And he'd realized that there was nothing to be had worth having that he couldn't find at home. The king and queen, upon identifying him, didn't scorn him as he'd expected. They welcomed him home, like the prodigal son. They saw into his heart and knew that he'd never have left them if he'd thought the Borough would ever be at risk. He'd have given his life for them, if he had to. At the end of the strip, the stupid magistrate still didn't seem to realize that the newcomer was in the Borough—had no idea that his position was being usurped. That he was going to be replaced by someone relatively new to the Borough, a long-lost brother of the king. And he'd managed, with carefully chosen words and pictures, to convey all of that in one week's episode.

The ending was, as always, the magistrate in his little circle, a worm going round and round.
I am. I am. I am.

“Don't you see?” Cassie said, when he looked up. “It's us, Sam. Not
exactly,
of course, but this is like you and me. You left, Sam, but you wouldn't have if you'd realized how much I needed you. You'd have given everything to be here with Emily and me. Just like that wild kingdom would have—to protect the kingdom.”

His breath caught in his throat. Did she know? Or didn't she?

He wasn't sure what to say. Wasn't sure what
she
was saying.

“We have to forgive ourselves,” Cassie said. “Both of us—we have to forgive ourselves and each other.”

Sam frowned. What did she have to forgive herself for? And there couldn't possibly be anything
he
had to forgive
her
for.

“We've made some pretty serious mistakes,” she said, looking up at him, her beautiful brown eyes beseeching. “I know you're hating yourself for what happened after you left town, and part of me has been hating you all these years, too. Or at least trying to.”

He'd figured that out at the cemetery; hearing her give voice to the words were a knife to his heart. Cassie's hatred was the worst form of torture. But one he deserved.

“Mostly, I was so badly hurt, I couldn't do anything but try to cope with that—not to care—but when you came back, I was scared to find out that I
did
still care. And that all the hate I thought I'd stored up wasn't really there. I couldn't understand that. Until today.”

She'd definitely lost him now. As her eyes reiterated what her words had just told him, his heart gave a hopeful lurch—but he knew there was no hope. Not for him. Not with her.

“What happened today?” he asked.

“I read this.” She picked up the comic strip. “I wasn't just hating you, Sam. I was hating me, too. I should've known I was pregnant. I'd always been so regular, I should've suspected—”

“How could you be expected to keep track of
anything
after what I'd done to you?”

Cassie shrugged. “I should have been stronger, more...more my own person, able to handle having you gone. If I'd realized sooner, who knows what might have happened differently? Maybe if I'd taken vitamins sooner, gotten more sleep, better nutrition...”

Sam couldn't let her go on. “Cass, don't do this to yourself. You did the best you could.” He sat down beside her, took both her hands in his. “Look inside yourself, honey. Listen to the truth. You know you would never have put our baby in danger, would have given your life to save her.”

“I know,” Cassie said, grinning through a sudden spurt of tears. “Just like in this strip,” she said, waving it in front of him. “The knight would have stayed, given his life, if he'd known how badly he was needed.”

Sam sat back, stunned, as he started to suspect what she was trying to say.

“You would never have left if you'd known I was pregnant, Sam. You'd have stayed, gone to law school, become the mayor of Shelter Valley in a heartbeat, if you'd known the cost of your leaving.”

Of course he would have. But Borough Bantam was just a damn comic strip. Emily Carol Montford was his
daughter,
for God's sake.

Cassie stroked a finger across the back of his hand. “You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I can see now that I was to blame, too, long before you left town.”

“No!” Sam said sharply. “You were the best wife a man could ask for, Cassie. So loving. Unselfish. Doing special little things every day to let me know you loved me.”

“But I stopped listening to you with my
heart,
” she whispered, her eyes shadowed. “I promised to love and cherish you forever, and then, after we were married, I—I didn't hear you, Sam, because I wasn't listening. You tried to give me clues, I can see that now. That time when you asked me to look at model homes in Phoenix. You said for decorating ideas, but then you went on and on about the community center there. You were looking for a way out, and I never even gave it another thought.”

He had really liked that community center. It'd had a full-scale basketball court. An entire floor of exercise equipment. An Olympic-size swimming pool. And acres and acres of parkland.

“I should've tried harder to explain.”

“Maybe you didn't come right out and tell me what was wrong,” Cassie continued. “But you didn't
know
what was wrong, so how could you make it clear to me?” Sam was moved by how much thought she'd given all of this. Moved, but not surprised. This was his Cassie—the woman he'd been loving for as long as he'd known what love was.

“You needed my help to figure things out, but I'd been too busy living the life we'd already chosen, the life people expected us to live.”

“You're being very generous—you know that, don't you?” Sam asked, a wry grin on his face.

He was afraid to hope, but it felt damn good to be able to talk to her again. To really talk. With no battle-scarred walls between them.

Cassie shook her head. “I'm not, Sam,” she said. “I'm being honest. With you, and with myself. I've been blaming you all these years, because without you here, it was easier to do that. But I've known, deep inside, that it was my fault, too.”

Perhaps, although most of the blame was still his, he told himself. Yet she might have found a way to set him free. Because she was right. He would never have left this town if he'd thought, for one second, that tragedy would follow in his wake.

He'd left for Cassie. Because he'd been afraid, after his betrayal, after sleeping with another woman, that his staying would destroy her. He couldn't trust himself not to hurt her.

Acting purely on instinct now, Sam leaned forward, placed his lips against hers and, in the best way he knew how, begged for her forgiveness. Her lips opened to him and welcomed him home.

When the kiss turned into more, when Sam knew that if he continued he was going to have her naked on this old leather couch, he stopped. But he couldn't make himself pull away. He sat back on the sofa, pulling her close to him, instead.

If they were going to find a second chance—and he was completely determined that they were—there had to be a little more honesty. Another revelation.

“Cass? About Borough Bantam—”

“Oh, Sam, have you ever read that strip?” she interrupted.

Sam nodded, looking for the right words to tell her that he'd read every single episode that had ever been printed. Would she lose some of her faith in him if she knew he'd been using Shelter Valley all these years?

“Did it mean to you what it meant to me?” she asked him, almost eagerly.

Sam hesitated. “I don't know. What did it mean to you?”

She laughed a little self-consciously. “You're going to think I'm crazy, but I almost feel as if that strip saved my life, Sam. You have no idea how many times I was at the end of my rope, and then I'd read that thing and some simple little truth would pop out—as though it was written just for me. It always seemed to be what I needed to hear.”

His throat tight, Sam fought back the overwhelming emotion that threatened to overcome him. The true freedom she'd just given him.

He hadn't deserted her, after all.

“You do think I'm crazy,” she said, her shoulders settling back against the couch.

“No—” Sam started, and when his voice broke, had to start again. “I'm thanking God there was a way for us to be together even when we were worlds apart,” Sam said. “If ever I needed confirmation that you and I were ordained to find each other, confirmation that what we have is stronger then either of us, this was it.”

Cassie turned, frowning as she looked at him. “What are you talking about? The strip helped you, too?”

“I wrote that strip, Cass. I am S.N.C.”

She jumped up. “No way!” And sank back down, her hand on his chest as she stared at him. Then, grabbing up the comic strip, she stared at it. “You're S.N.C. What does S.N.C. stand for?”