Her Loving Husband’s Return

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Sarah Wentworth sat on the edge of her bed and wept, her husband’s letter fallen to the floor. Even with the heavy black marker censoring some of his words, this note from James in his curling, calligraphy-like hand was the first message she had from him. She had been without him twenty-four days, twelve hours, and seventeen minutes. Was it only that long since they sat huddled in the Boston train station, pressed together against the madness? Was it less than a month since he leapt from the speeding train like the graceful hunter he was, when he rushed back to her, held her close, and kissed her passionately because this kiss had to last?

The first days were the hardest since she didn’t know where they were taking him. After public debates and private posturing, social media finger-pointing, and reality show name-calling, it was decided the undead, as they were called, would be held in relocation camps similar to the ones used for 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. After numerous frustrations of the bureaucratic sort, Sarah learned that James was sent to a location close to the old Manzanar site in eastern California near the Nevada border. Now that she knew where he was, now that she had a sense he was safe, she thought she should feel better. But it was too hard, looking for him in the night, expecting to hear his sweet, strong voice, wanting to feel his hands on her, but he wasn’t there. She clutched James’ wedding ring, hanging from a gold chain around her neck, glad she kept it since she was afraid they would take it from him in camp and he would never get it back. She grabbed James’ letter and reread it, savoring every word as if for sustenance.

“Even gone you’re up to your old tricks,” Sarah said aloud. “Of course you were at Manzanar during World War II. And of course I knew nothing about it until now.” She held the letter closer to her face, searching again for any sign there was more to find. James hasn’t changed in over three hundred years, Sarah thought. He’s always so literal, always the professor searching for rationale and reason. Would he add a secret message somewhere in that letter? The camp authorities probably blocked out nothing, paranoid for whatever reason, and this is all there really is.

For now, she reminded herself. For now.

Sarah survived life without James one day at a time, reminding herself to eat, sometimes reminding herself to breathe. At night, she wore James’ t-shirts to bed, allowing herself to feel closer to him by wearing clothes that had touched his body and lingered with his scent. She was still wearing his sky-blue t-shirt though it was nearly two in the afternoon. She couldn’t bring herself to take it off. She touched the cotton, long and wide on her since James was so much taller and broader, and it was thinning in places from frequent washing—it was his favorite t-shirt after all—but she didn’t care. She realized she had been functioning in perpetual numbness since James was gone. On the outside she seemed fine—taking Grace on long strolls around the historic streets of Salem or sitting with her in Winter Island Park near Salem Harbor by the rocky shore bordered by green grass with white and yellow wildflowers. Some days they examined the fort or admired the scenic view of Pickering Light House. Other days they enjoyed the soothing bay breezes under the umbrellas at the outdoor tables at Pickering Wharf. Sarah kept busy with mundane tasks as well, going grocery shopping, cleaning the old wooden house from the overhanging attic to the new modern kitchen, normal things at normal times. During the day she was mostly all right. She was used to being without James then, used to looking at their closed bedroom door, checking the sky to see how much more the sun had to drop before their bedroom door opened and he was there with his ready “Hello” as he took her into his arms and kissed her lips.

The nights were nearly unbearable. After Grace was put to bed, after Olivia turned in to her makeshift lodgings in the great room, then the loneliness was overwhelming. To fill the empty hours, she turned to her old comfort—reading. She was working her way through the classics, many of them first editions from the vast shelves of books in the great room. Now she was rereading Romeo and Juliet, an odd choice, maybe, for the sad ending, yet she found comfort in Shakespeare’s most beautiful love poetry. Some mistook the phrase star-crossed lovers as something positive—we’re so in love we’re star-crossed—but Sarah knew the phrase referred to Romeo and Juliet’s certain deaths at the end. In Shakespeare’s day, people believed the position of the stars when you were born determined your destiny. The star-crossed lovers were fated for destruction—it was written in the stars after all. But Sarah and James weren’t star-crossed, she knew. While they had their share of difficulties along the way, no matter the obstacles, they were destined, not for destruction, but to be together. In the darkness, in the lonesome hours when she was reading in their bed, Sarah knew this separation would pass and she would see her husband again. Maybe Romeo and Juliet reunited in another life in another way, Sarah thought. Maybe they found their way back to each other again the way James and I did.

Sometimes, in the sleepless hours when she lay awake, she was haunted by horrors—a finger-pointing, pock-faced monster wielding a heavy chain over his head like a cowboy lassoing cattle, a gloom-infested dungeon, death and dying, not just her own, but her daughter’s too. She was afraid for James, still not entirely sure what he faced in the camp, and she couldn’t escape the vision of some military guard sticking her husband’s paranormal chest with a wooden stake or depriving him of the blood he needed. There were nights when she felt hell, all the stages of it, grasping at her with sharpened claws, ready to drag her back into the nightmares. Other nights she dreamed that she stood over James while he sat at his seventeenth century wooden desk while he worked, reading something or writing something, while she rubbed his neck and shoulders and he said how human he felt when she touched him. She dreamed she felt his hands under her nightgown, touching her, everywhere, and she dreamed she felt his mouth on her, everywhere. Sometimes she would reach for James in her sleep and in the mornings she awoke clutching his pillow close to her body as though it were him.

She sighed as she set the letter aside and stood from the bed, her legs and arms tingling as she stretched toward the gabled ceiling. She peeked around the door of her daughter’s room, needing to check on Grace even if she were napping. Sarah walked to the crib, on her toes so she wouldn’t creak the three-centuries-old wooden floor. She smiled at her angelic baby with the golden curly halo so similar to her father’s, still awed whenever she thought of how she and James were reunited with the Grace they had been missing. Sometimes, Sarah wondered where the note came from, the one that pointed out that this was their Grace, but at that moment all she could think of was her husband and her daughter and she was amazed at the pure love she felt for them.

Content that her daughter was sleeping peacefully, Sarah slipped into the great room. She looked around the gabled house, saw the wooden walls, the remodeled stainless steel kitchen, the fireplace where the cauldron used to hang. She saw the flat-screen television, the vast collection of books on the shelves, James’ seventeenth century desk. She sat in his chair and sighed. She could feel him suddenly, as though he were there with her. She looked out the diamond-paned casement window, opened the door, and let the cooling Massachusetts sea breeze wash over her, soothing her unsettled nerves. It was June now, and the looming humidity was a guess in the air. She stepped outside, checking back to make sure her tailless black cat didn’t run past the open green door, close enough to hear Grace if she cried. Sarah was at home in Salem near the coast among the historical buildings and the landmarks from colonial days, but nothing felt right without James. The crooked oak tree near the curb slumped toward the grass, weighted and heavy. While it was always gnarled, now it looked sickly, as though it had seen its time, it had done its work, it had lured Sarah when she first came to look at this house nearly two years before, and now it could go home. Sarah wasn’t ready to lose the tree, and she decided to call a tree doctor to help it.

She went back inside, closing the door behind her. She had that restless leg syndrome again, a permanent fixture since James was gone. She wanted to go for a walk along the Salem streets, her usual panacea to deal with the excess energy, but she didn’t want to wake Grace and she couldn’t leave the baby alone. Instead, she paced the great room—to the bookcase and back, to the kitchen and back, to the ladder leading up to the attic and back. If she climbed to the attic she could dig through the seventeenth century artifacts from her previous life with James, thinking it would bring her some comfort. True love never dies, she thought. Look at what we survived in the past. We will survive this too.

She jumped at the sudden knock. She looked through the window, but there was no chain-wielding monster, only Thomas Masters, the Maine doctor who treated her after the car accident. The doctor who put his own career on the line after he learned James was James. Sarah opened the door, and Thomas stepped inside.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Back to normal, at least as far as my injuries go. I’m not sore any more, and I’m not dragging through the day. The scar from surgery is healing.”

More than her own injury, more than her own pain, she remembered James’ anguish at her suffering, his thought that he could save her by turning her. For that moment, with Thomas standing beside her taking her pulse, she wondered if she should have let James have his way that night. Then she would be with him now and they would be together. But she thought of Grace sleeping peacefully in her crib, and she knew she made the right decision. She had to be there with Grace. She had to be human. And if James had turned her, she could never go back to before. Even delicate, even fragile, even struggling through every night without James, she had to stay as she was. She nodded at her own thoughts. She was right to say no.

She noticed the stethoscope around Thomas’ neck when he pulled the knob from under his shirt collar. He listened to her chest and nodded. “I’m officially releasing you from my care as of today, which is a joy, Sarah. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it when they first brought you to the hospital.”

“You’ve done more than your part,” Sarah said. “You promised James you would look after me when he was gone, and you have.”

“That’s why I’m here, Sarah. I wanted to tell you in person that I’m leaving for California today. My wife and kids are in the car outside. My mother-in-law is driving us to the airport. I have a new position in San Francisco at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. I found a supervisor from the hospital in Maine willing to give me a good recommendation even after the stunt I pulled with the ambulance.”

“I’m going to miss all of you,” Sarah said. She waved at Thomas’ family waiting outside. “Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is go somewhere new. It’s a chance to start over. That’s why I moved here from Los Angeles. I wanted to begin again after my divorce.”

“I didn’t know you were married before James.”

“It’s a long story.” Sarah sighed. “I know James would want me to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

“I’m sure James will be home soon.”

“I hope so.”

Thomas reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a crumpled post-it note, and handed it to Sarah. “This is our new address in San Francisco. Please keep in touch, Sarah.”