Fluke (36 page)

15.

I woke up, unable to breathe, at ten the next morning.
 
Sara giggled.
 
She had been holding my nose shut.

“Hey, what’s the big idea, gorgeous?” I said to her, laughing, surprised by her improved mood.

“I was getting bored…you’ve been sleeping for hours,” she told me.
 
“Did you go somewhere last night?”

“Yeah, I sure did,” I told her, trying to think, mind still foggy from sleep, “I went for a little drive.
 
Couldn’t sleep.”

“I found your note when I woke up,” she said, grabbing it from the nightstand, and waving it back and forth in front of my face.

“
Ahhh
, my note.
 
Good thing I left that, eh?
 
You probably didn’t move a single inch while I was gone.”

“Oh, Adam.
 
I was so tired.
 
Yesterday…” she trailed off, not needing to finish.
 
I thought again about our visit with her mother.
 
Then, I thought about my visit with Frank, my visit with my father.

“Sara, I’ve been thinking…” I said to her, slowly, taking her hand.
 

“Yeah?”

“Well, Sara, let’s just go back to Florida.
 
We don’t need to know any more, right?
 
I love you, I am happy with you.
 
Let’s just leave it like that.”

“I don’t know, Adam,” she replied, pulling her hand from mine and crossing her arms.
 
She turned her head to the side and stared at the sun-filled window.
 
I waited for her to say something else.

“Please, Sara,” I prompted her.

She turned and looked at me, her arms remaining crossed in a posture of defiance.
 
I was aware by her demeanor alone that trying
to talk her out of it was pointless.
 
“Adam.
 
You know what this means to me.
 
After coming all this way, how could I deny myself …how could
we
deny
ourselves
… the truth?”
 
The way she said it brought a shiver to my spine.
 
I already knew, and the last thing I wanted was for her to know the truth.
 
Yet, now there seemed no way around it.
 
A silent prayer went out from my heart, to whatever god there might be, that the truth was going to be okay with Sara.

“Sara, do you love me?” I asked, thinking I knew the answer, but suddenly uncertain.
 
Uncertain of so much.

“Of course I do, Adam.” She replied, exasperation in the words she spoke.
 
“But I have to know,” she added, after a few moments.

I looked at her.
 
Her gaze left mine and went back to the window.
 
The sun was smashing against the window now in all its brilliance.
 
I couldn’t take my eyes from Sara.
 
I wondered how much longer I would have her.
 
How much longer would this beautiful woman be a part of my life?
 
I had to tell her, I was pretty sure of that.
 
But I didn’t want to.
 
The time tested Adam-of-old was gnawing at my innards, worried as always, that this was going to be the point where I blew it.
 
Or, not even me, but my blood, my genes, were going to sap the very life of our relationship.

“Sara.
 
I have something to tell you, but I’m not sure how…” I began, but faltered.
 
“I’m not sure
how
to tell you.”

She turned and looked at me, curious what I had to say.
 
The tremor in my voice probably gave away the fact that what I had to say was important.

“What is it, Adam?”

“It’s about where I went last night.
 
While you were asleep, I got to wondering if Frank Chance could possibly still live around here.” I told her, pausing.
 
“I did some searching around on the web, and, well, I found him.”

I shifted my weight on the bed and moved as close to the edge as I could get, closer to Sara.
 
She watched me, saying nothing.
 
“I found him, Sara.
 
Last night.
 
I went, and I found him.” She recoiled a little when I said this, but didn’t turn her attention away.
 
I got up then, and went to her side.
 
She was watching me as I came down on one knee, and situated myself directly in front of
her.
 
I moved my hand up, and pushed some of her hair back from her face, and her eyes got a little moist as I did it.

“He
is
my father, Sara.” I said, my own eyes stinging a little as I tried to force myself not to be weak.
 
Not now.
 
“I talked to him, face to face, and he is my real father.
 
But, I don’t care about him.
 
It’s you that I care about.
 
It’s you that I love.
 
I just want us to leave this place, and go back to Florida and just love each other.”
 
I tried to hug her, to pull us close to each other, but she pulled away from me.
 

“Adam, please, just give me a minute, okay?” she told me, standing up and pushing by me, moving away from me.
 
I sat down on the floor and watched her walk towards the bathroom.
 
I felt like I was losing her already, and I had no idea how to control this situation any more, or if I ever had any control to begin with.
 
Sara walked into the restroom and shut the door behind her.
 
A sudden, overwhelming need to get back to Florida as soon as possible hit me.
 
I never wanted to be home so badly than I did at that minute.
 
Texas had brought nothing but confusion and pain to us; I wanted old familiar, mellow Florida.

I sat down hard on the thinly carpeted floor and moved so that I could lean my back against the bed.
 
I waited for Sara, the “jury”, to come back with a verdict as to what was going to happen next.
 
I waited and waited, my mind turning the reels back to my conversation with my father once again.

“Does Sara’s mother or father know what you did?” I had asked him, one of the few times I was able to speak to him at all.

He had looked at me painfully for a long time before finally replying, “No.”
 
He told me he had just left one day without telling anyone.
 
He admitted himself into full-time care, put his house up for sale, and watched their lives from a distance.
 
He went through a world of psychiatric treatment, trying to make himself “right”.
 
To this day he still went through therapy, although lighter, and took medication for what was basically an imbalance (“Basically, things don’t work right, but seeing someone and medication help”).
 
He was considered a recovery by the doctors he had seen, and he felt that he was recovered himself.
 
It took him his entire life to get there, he told me, “and I’m still working on it.”
 

But he had never spoken with a
DuBeau
again.
 
Not Charles, not Maggie, and especially not Sara.
 
Shame stopped him.
 
Guilt
stopped him.
 
He could never look a single one of them in the eyes again.

The question in my mind had been
why aren’t you killing him right now, Adam-boy?

It was a legitimate question.
 
When Sara first revealed the abuse, I was so disgusted and horrified that all I wanted to do was find the abuser and destroy him.
 
I wanted to erase him from the world and hopefully use that as a step to erase the pain inside Sara.

And there I sat, right across the table from the scumbag who had killed a part of the woman I loved oh-so-long ago.

I sat across from my father.
 
My father, who had spent the last third of his life wallowing in regret, in sorrow, in guilt.
 
My father, who left before he hurt anyone anymore.
 
My father, who seemed genuinely remorseful at the damage he had inflicted.

I felt sorry for him, and as much as I wanted to, I realized I couldn’t hate him.
 
It was an unsettling feeling.

I glanced at my watch and realized that Sara had been in the restroom for fifteen minutes or so.
 
Sara, one corner of a strange triangle, the others being myself and Frank Chance.
 
I wondered, as I did last night, if I was betraying her by believing my father.
 
My guilt for believing him and my love for Sara might as well be the North and South poles.
 
They just didn’t seem to jibe, and they only served to confuse me more.
 
I shook my head and sighed.
 
I slumped down to the floor and curled up there, trying to just not think about anything.
 

Eventually, I heard water running and sat back up.
 
Sara came from the restroom and sat down on the end of the bed within reach of me.
 
 
Once again, her eyes were puffy and red.
 
She had been crying, but wasn’t right now.
 
She looked tired, and I felt bad for having dropped the bomb on her good mood just minutes after waking.
 
We both stayed where we were for a few minutes, and I tried not to watch her like I wanted to.
 
Finally, she spoke to me.

“Adam, I don’t know what to do.
 
I don’t know what to do, and too much has come out on this trip for me to handle with a clear head right now.”

“I know,” I added, feeling exhausted myself, after only 40 minutes of being coherent.
 

“I want to visit my mother again…except I think I want to go alone,” she said.
 
I nodded my head, slowly, okay.
 

“I won’t be too long, and I owe her at least that,” she finished.
 
I lifted myself off the floor and got on the bed, watching Sara move around the room as she got herself together.
 
She finally stopped and looked around the room and then at me.
 
She was so beautiful.
 
I stood up and went to her.
 
I put my arms around her and brought her to me.
 
We hugged each other, and near the end, her grip was tight around my neck.
 
We pulled away from each other, and without a word, she left the room.

I went to the window and popped open the curtain just a little to watch her go down to the car.
 
Soon enough, she was driving out of the parking lot, and I opened the curtain wider, thinking vaguely about the fact that she never looked back…if just to see if I were watching, and wave good-bye.
 
I stood there like that, in my boxers, staring out of the window, until I realized that I had been there quite some time.
 
I didn’t need anyone reporting me to the old timer at the front desk, so I shrunk back in to the hotel room and looked around, wondering how to kill some time.

I dug through my things and came up with a pair of shorts.
 
I hadn’t brought any swimming trunks, but these were close enough.
 
I decided to just go lay by the pool and soak up some sun.
 
Maybe I would see if they had some beer in the lobby, or grab some at the little store down the road.
 

Just try to relax, Adam, old boy
.

I quickly threw on my shorts, T-shirt, and sandals and left the room, stopping only to make sure I had the spare key card in my wallet.
 
I thought to myself as I walked down the stairs about how some things in life were truly amazing, but most were just confusing or stomped on your heart and tested your drive to continue moving.