“Come on, Sam, sit down and make yourself comfortable.” And then, as she did, the older woman smiled at her again. “Welcome home.”
For the second time that evening Sam's eyes filled with tears and she reached a long graceful hand toward Caroline. They held hands for a moment, as Sam held the bony fingers tight.
“Thank you for Jetting me come here.”
“Don't say that.” Caroline let go and handed her the hot chocolate. “I'm glad that you called me. I've always loved you…”She hesitated for a moment, glancing into the fire and then back at Sam, “Just as much as I loved Barb.” And then she sighed softly. “Losing her was like losing a daughter. It's hard to believe it's been almost ten years.” Sam nodded silently, and then Caroline smiled at her. “I'm glad to know that I didn't lose you too. I've loved your letters, but for the last few years I've been wondering if you'd ever come back.”
“I wanted to, but… I've been busy.”
“Do you want to tell me about all that, or are you too tired?” It had been a five-hour flight, and then a three- hour drive. By California time it was only eight thirty, but by Sam's time, in New York, it was eleven thirty at night. But she wasn't even tired, she was just exhilarated to see her old friend.
“I'm not too tired… I just don't know where to start.”
“Then start with the hot chocolate. Then the sandwiches. Then talk.” The two women exchanged another smile, and then Sam couldn't resist reaching out to her again, and Caroline gave her a warm hug. “Do you know how good it is to have you back here?”
“Only half as good as it is to be back.” She took a big bite out of a sandwich and then sat back against the couch with a broad grin. “Bill says you have a new Thoroughbred. Is he a beauty?”
“Oh, God, Sam, he sure is!” And then she laughed again. “Better even than my green boots.” She looked down with amusement and then back at Sam with a sparkle in her eye. “He's a stallion and so full of fire that even I can hardly ride him. Bill is terrified I'll kill myself riding him, but when I saw him, I really couldn't resist. The son of one of the other ranchers near here bought him in Kentucky, and then needed some quick money so he sold him to me. It's almost a sin to ride him just for pleasure, but I can't help it. I just have to. I don't give a damn if I'm an arthritic old woman, or what kind of fool anyone thinks me, he is the one horse in my lifetime I want to ride till I die.” Sam flinched again at the mention of death and old age. In that sense both she and Bill had changed since the last time. But after all, they were both in their sixties now, maybe it was indeed a preoccupation that was normal for their age. Nonetheless it was impossible to think of either of them as “old people,” they were too handsome, too active, too powerful, too busy. And yet, it was obviously an image of themselves that they both now had. “What's his name?”
Caroline laughed out loud and then stood up and walked toward the fire, holding out her hands for warmth. “Black Beauty, of course.” She turned toward Samantha, her exquisite features delicately lit by the fire until she looked almost like a carefully etched cameo, or a porcelain figure.
“Has anyone told you lately how beautiful you are, Aunt Caro?” It was the name Barbara had used for her, and this time there were tears in Caroline's eyes.
“Bless you, Sam. You're as blind as ever.”
“The hell I am.” She grinned and nibbled at the rest of her sandwich before taking a sip of the hot chocolate that Caroline had poured from a Thermos jug. She was the same gracious hostess she always had been in the days when Samantha had first visited the ranch and all the way back to her legendary parties in Hollywood in 1933. “So.” Sam's face sobered slowly. “I guess you want to know about John. I don't suppose there's much more than what I told you the other night on the phone. He had an affair, he got her pregnant, he left me, they got married, and now they await the birth of their first child.”
“You say it so succinctly.” Then after a moment, “Do you hate him?”
“Sometimes.” Sam's voice fell to a whisper. “Most of the time I just miss him and wonder if he's all right. I wonder if she knows that he's allergic to wool socks. I wonder if anyone buys him the kind of coffee he loves, if he's sick or healthy or happy or freaked out, if he remembers to take his asthma medicine on a trip… if -if he's sorry-” She stopped and then looked back at Caroline still standing by the fire. “That sounds crazy, doesn't it? I mean, the man walked out on me, cheated on me, dumped me, and now he doesn't even call to find out how I am, and I worry that his feet itch because his wife might make a mistake and buy him wool socks. Is that crazy?” She laughed but it was suddenly a half sob. “Isn't it?” And then she squeezed her eyes shut again. Slowly she shook her head, keeping her eyes tightly closed, as though by closing them she wouldn't see the images that had danced in her head for so long. “God, Caro, it was so awful and so public.” She opened her eyes. “Didn't you read about it?”
“I did. Once. But it was just some vague gossip that you two were separated. I hoped that it was a lie, just some stupid publicity to make him seem more appealing. I know how those things are, how they get planted and don't mean a thing.”
“This one did. You haven't watched them together on the broadcast?”
“I never did.”
“Neither did I.” Samantha looked rueful. “But I do now.”
“You ought to stop that.”
Samantha nodded silently. “Yeah, I will. There's a lot I have to stop. I guess that's why I came out here.”
“And your job?”
“I don't know. I've somehow managed to keep it through all this. At least I think so if they meant what they said when I left. But to tell you the truth, I don't know how I did it. I was a zombie every waking minute I was in the office.” She dropped her face into her hands with a soft sigh. “Maybe it's just as well that I left.” She felt Caroline's hand on her shoulder a moment later.
“I think so too, Sam. Maybe the ranch will give you time to heal, and time to collect your thoughts. You've been through a tremendous trauma. I know, I went through the same thing when Arthur died. I didn't think I'd live through it. I thought it would kill me too. That's not quite the same thing as what happened to you, but in its own way death is a rejection.” There was a vague frown in her eyes as she said the last words, but it rapidly flitted away as she smiled again at Sam. “But your life isn't over, you know, Samantha. In some ways perhaps it's just begun. How old are you now?”
Samantha groaned. “Thirty.” She made it sound like eighty and Caroline laughed, a delicate, silvery sound in the pretty room.
“You expect me to be impressed?”
“Sympathetic.” Samantha spoke with a grin.
“At my age, darling, that's too much to ask. Envious, perhaps, that would be more like it. Thirty.” She looked dreamily into the fire. “What I wouldn't give for that!”
“What I wouldn't give to look like you do now, age be damned!”
“Flattery, flattery…” But it was obvious that it pleased her, and then she turned to Sam again with a question in her eyes. “Have you been out with anyone else since it happened?” Sam rapidly shook her head. “Why not?”
“Two very good reasons. No one decent has asked me, and I don't want to. In my heart I'm still married to John Taylor. If I went out with another man, it would feel like cheating. I'm just not ready. And you know?” She looked somberly at the older woman. “I don't think I ever will be. I just don't want to. It's as though part of me died when he walked out that door. I don't care anymore. I don't give a damn if nobody ever loves me again. I don't feel lovable. I don't want to be loved… except by him.”
“Well, you'd better do something about that, Samantha.” Caroline eyed her with gentle disapproval. “You've got to be realistic, and you can't wander around like a mobile dead body. You have to live. That's what they told me, you know. But it does take time. I know that. You've had how many months now?”
“Three and a half.”
“Give it another six.” She smiled softly. “And if you're not madly in love by then, we'll do something radical.”
“Like what? A lobotomy?” Samantha looked serious as she took another sip of hot chocolate.
“We'll think of something, but I don't really think we'll have to.”
“Hopefully by then I'll be back on Madison Avenue, killing myself with a fifteen-hour workday.”
“Is that what you want?” Caroline looked at her sadly.
“I don't know. I used to think so. But now that I look back at it, maybe I was in competition with John. Still, I have a good shot at becoming creative director of the agency, and there's a lot of ego involved in that.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
