Her Loving Husband’s Return

Chapter 1-2

“I will. James is in California now.”

“It’s three hundred and forty miles from San Francisco to the Owens Valley. It’s a seven hour drive. I’d offer to go, but I heard they’re not letting them have any visitors.”

Sarah nodded. “I tried to get permission to see James but they said no one with a pulse is allowed near or past the gate.”

“You definitely have a pulse.”

“Thanks to you.”

Sarah walked Thomas outside. She hugged Thomas’ wife and children, greeted Thomas’ mother-in-law, and said her heartfelt good-byes. As Thomas walked toward the car, Sarah grabbed his arm.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “You didn’t have to protect James after you realized he wasn’t breathing. You didn’t have to commandeer an ambulance to help me escape the hospital. Why did you help us?”

“Because you needed help.”

Thomas shrugged as though it were the most obvious answer in the world. He sat in the passenger’s seat beside his mother-in-law, waved at Sarah, and as they drove toward Derby Street Olivia pulled her silver Prius up to the curb and got out of the car. Sarah marveled at her Wiccan friend with the close-cropped, silver-threaded red hair, her hoop earrings, her ringed fingers, her coin necklace, her peasant-style skirt, her Greek sandals. Always the gypsy, Olivia looked every bit the fortune teller she could be, and she grabbed Sarah’s hand and led her into the house.

“What are you doing out here, dear?”

“I was saying good-bye to Thomas and his family. He has a new position in San Francisco and they’re leaving today.”

“San Francisco? I thought they settled here after they left Maine. Why would anyone want to leave Salem to live in San Francisco? I suppose San Francisco is a nice enough city—I’ve been to Wiccan gatherings there—but Salem has everything you need, the soothing sea, a quiet, small-town pace, Boston, one of the greatest cities in the world, just twenty minutes away by train. I would never leave Salem. It’s the best place in the world.”

“Sometimes people need a fresh start,” Sarah said. “Thomas gave up his position at the hospital in Maine to help James and me after the car accident. Maybe he thought it was a good idea to put some distance between himself and the East Coast.”

“People try to escape their past by running away, but it never works. Wherever you go, there you are. Unless you make peace with your past, it will always follow you.”

“Are you saying I was trying to escape when I came here after my divorce?”

“You weren’t running from anything, Sarah. You were running toward James.”

Sarah looked once more down the road where Thomas and his family disappeared.

“All right,” Olivia said. “Maybe California isn’t that bad. Maybe.” Her steel-gray eyes narrowed, and she studied Sarah with that detective seeking clues look. She pulled Sarah closer. “Is everything all right?”

Sarah saw the motherly concern, and she was thankful for her wise, wonderful Olivia. Olivia put her arm around Sarah, and they walked into the wooden gabled house together.

“Before Thomas left, I asked him why he helped us,” Sarah said. “He took a huge risk. He didn’t have to care.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he helped us because we needed help.”

Olivia nodded. “That’s right.”

“But how does someone give up everything, his job, his reputation, possibly risking jail, to help two strangers who happened to end up at his hospital?”

“Think about the way James helps others, Sarah. For centuries he has helped those in need. He helped the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. He helped my family during the Great Depression and World War II. And he did what he could for the Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during World War II.”

“He could never make peace with the way I was treated during the Salem Witch Trials,” Sarah said. “He still feels the injustice of it.”

“Which is why he helps others who have been treated unfairly. And, as a result, whenever he’s needed help he received it. It’s the law of karma. You get back what you put out into the world.”

“I know about James’ involvement with the Japanese-Americans during World War II,” Sarah said. “I got a letter from him today, and it was the first time he told me about being at Manzanar.”

“A letter from James? Let me see.”

Sarah grabbed the letter from the dresser in her bedroom, and Olivia read it slowly, savoring every word as Sarah had done earlier.

“Why is some of this blacked out?” Olivia asked.

“I thought maybe there was a hidden message, but James wouldn’t leave cryptic clues.”

Olivia held the letter close to her face as she inspected it. “It looks like he was pressing down with his pen when he wrote,” she said. “Let’s see if we can find what’s under the marker.” She held James’ handwritten letter up to the light bulb in the lamp near his desk in the great room. She turned the letter over to the back and tried to read James’ words under the censor’s thick marker, squinting at the lines. Sarah looked over Olivia’s shoulder, hoping to see something, anything, but James’ handwriting was too faint under the black boxes. Olivia opened the long top drawer in James’ desk and pulled out a sharpened pencil. “How about this?” She turned the letter over to the blank side and rubbed the pencil over it. Like the black magic messages Sarah used to send in crayon when she was in elementary school, the imprint of James’ handwriting was faint but visible. It was backwards since the letter was turned over, so Olivia pulled her mirror from her bag and held it to the paper.

“You’re so sneaky,” Sarah said.

“I saw it on a television detective show.” Olivia winked at Sarah. “I always wondered if it worked.” They read James’ letter in its entirety, and neither saw anything that should have been censored. James mentioned the buses at Manzanar. He described the mountains. He said he realized more strongly how he cannot live without her, and to be patient a while longer. He will return to her. He will. What was there the authorities didn’t want her to see?

“Do you see anything else?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t, and I’m disappointed. I was hoping for a code to a vault or a safe. You know, a million dollars hidden somewhere forbidden and we could go on an adventure to find it.”

“You’ve been watching too many of those detective shows,” Sarah said.

Olivia folded the letter and placed it in the drawer. “At least he’s settled enough to write to you, Sarah.”

“James has always been good about writing to me. Even when he thought I was gone from him forever, he wrote to me.”

Olivia took Sarah’s hands in hers. “I have a feeling before long you’ll have more letters than you’ll know what to do with.”

“I’ll have everything but him.” Sarah dropped her head into her hands. “I know now, Olivia. I know how James felt all those years he missed me, thinking he would never see me again. I don’t know how he survived the loneliness for three hundred years. It’s not even a month, and I…”

Sarah did her best to shake her sadness away. Grace would wake from her nap soon, and Sarah didn’t want her daughter to see her that way. She needed to stay strong for Grace.

“All in good time, Sarah.”

“This is not a good time.”

“I know, dear, but everything works out right in the end. If it’s not right, it’s not the end. Your love for James and his for you has survived centuries. It will survive this.” Olivia kissed Sarah on top of her dark curls and hugged her close. When she pulled away, she studied Sarah, her detective seeking clues look again on high alert. She must have decided Sarah was all right because she nodded. “How is vegetarian chili over a baked potato for an early supper?”

“That’s perfect. Thank you.”

“It’s only supper, dear.”

“Thank you for everything, Olivia. For your support. For your love. For moving in here to help Grace and me.”

“Jennifer, my ever-stubborn daughter, doesn’t want my help now. She says she can handle it, which I question, but she pushes me away whenever I try to help. That frees me up to be here with you.”

Sarah smiled as Olivia disappeared into the kitchen. She sat in James’ chair again, pulling his letter from the desk drawer, studying it more, wishing she had his hunter’s sense of smell. She knew he could smell her scent from a distance, and she wished she could do the same.

“Maaaaaa!”

Sarah rushed to Grace’s room and peeked around the open door. She saw her daughter standing upright in her crib. Grace was pulling herself up now, and she smiled at her mother.

“Maaa,” Grace said.

Sarah scooped her daughter from her crib, smothering the little face in kisses, brushing the silky golden curls from her flowery, jewel-like blue eyes, laughing and smiling and not even having to pretend because this was pure joy for Sarah, holding her daughter in her arms, making her giggle, watching her grow. They would celebrate Grace’s first birthday the following week, and they would have a little party. Sarah decided. She needed to maintain this normalcy for her daughter. Nothing was really normal with James gone, but Grace would suffer as little as possible in the meantime.

Sarah carried Grace into the kitchen where Olivia stood over the stainless steel stove, stirring the chili in a black pot.

“You look like a witch stirring your concoction,” Sarah said.

“I am a witch.” Olivia winked at Sarah, then pointed at the empty fireplace. “Too bad you removed the cauldron. I could have brewed a concoction or two in there.”

“You are one of the most powerful witches.”

Olivia swatted her hand in the air, sweeping the idea away. “Nonsense. Every witch is as powerful as she wishes to be, no more and no less.”

“Another Oliviaism,” Sarah said.

“A what?”

“An Oliviaism. I’m keeping track of all of your wise sayings, and I’m going to compile them into a book called Oliviaisms.”

“Oliviaisms. I like it.” She tasted the chili in the pot. “Are you hungry?”

Sarah nodded. She sat Grace in her high chair, then seated herself at the long wood table near the fireplace. As Sarah tasted the vegetarian chili, she thought fondly of the night she made blood soup for James, Christmas Eve. She stared dreamily out the window, remembering how James loved the soup and how Geoffrey intruded in his boisterous way. She wondered how Geoffrey was doing in California along with Timothy, Jocelyn, and Chandresh. Her world was hard enough without James, and it was even smaller without her friends.

“Thinking about James?” Olivia asked.

“How did you know?”

“You always get that dreamy, far-away look when you’re thinking of him. And you have this sweet smile on your lips.”

Sarah mashed some cooled chili on her plate and fed Grace a small spoonful. “I thought you were reading my mind.”

“I can’t read minds, Sarah. I read energy. It’s a good thing I can’t hear everyone’s thoughts. I have a friend in Louisiana who’s telepathic, and it’s a dreadful thing, I can tell you. You don’t need to know everything about everyone standing around you. You certainly don’t want to know what everyone is thinking. People think the strangest things at the strangest times.”

“But when I first started working at the library, Jennifer knew what I needed before I knew I needed it. And you always know what to say to help me. Isn’t that reading minds?”

“It’s intuition, Sarah. My intuition tells me things I don’t catch with my five senses. Jennifer listens to her intuition too.” Olivia gathered the empty bowls and put them into the sink. “Your intuition is strong, Sarah.”