The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(109)

We raised our glasses. “Is that the best you can do?” I asked. “Thank God you didn’t give the valedictorian speech.”

“Don’t start with me, you red-eyed son of the devil.”

“Here’s to life,” I said. “And the three people in mine who helped to make it extraordinary. I love you all.”

“You’re not going to kiss me, are you?” Ernie asked.

Michelle hit him with a piece of tomato.

At just after ten, Michelle nodded to Ernie, who was falling asleep on my couch. “Well, I better get Romeo here home before he passes out on me. Our first weekend without kids, and he’ll be snoring before his head hits the pillow.”

Ernie perked up suddenly. “Did someone mention sex?”

Michelle looked at Mickie. “Ah, the romance,” she said.

After Ernie and Michelle left, Mickie and I snuggled on the couch under a blanket to watch Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. Douglas and Blue curled up beside us. I didn’t regret asking Mickie to marry me, but it troubled me when she put herself down and discounted who she was as a person. I knew it had to be an old and deep scar, one I was sure was inflicted in childhood, too deep, perhaps, for me to reach. I resigned myself to our arrangement and promised I would not ask the question again.

That night we made love with a passion ferocious even for Mickie, and afterward she clung to me as never before, as if she might lose me if she let go.





14

Wednesday afternoon I took Blue and Douglas for an afternoon walk, and I realized that I had not heard from Mickie in nearly twenty-four hours, though I was uncertain of the time change, if any, in Puerto Vallarta. I was consciously trying to give her some space, mindful of my mistake of asking her to marry me, but I couldn’t get out of my mind the way Mickie had clung to me that night, or the memories of the other times in my life when Mickie had spooked and left.

When I returned home, I got the dogs water. Then I called her. The call went straight to voice mail. I took to the task of making dinner, listening to jazz with the doors open, enjoying a gentle, cool cross breeze, and waiting anxiously for my phone to buzz or ring. Three hours later there had been no call from Mickie.

I tried calling her again but got no answer. I started to worry that something could be wrong and went to the fridge and retrieved the piece of paper detailing the conference and the hotel. I dialed the number. “Mickie Kennedy’s room, please.”

I heard the desk clerk’s fingers striking keys. “I’m sorry, sir—we do not have a registration for anyone under that name.”

My heart started to sink. “Could you check Michaela Kennedy?”

After another beat, this one shorter, the clerk said, “I’m sorry, sir. There is no Kennedy registered.”

“Could she have checked out early?”

“I can’t give out that information, sir.”

“Please. This is her husband. I’m worried about her. She was to check in Monday night, and I haven’t heard from her, which is unlike her. I haven’t been able to contact her on her cell phone.”

I heard a pause, the desk clerk debating with himself. “Hold on,” he said. My mind was racing, and I could not still my thoughts. Then the clerk came back and said, “We had a guest here by that name, sir, but she canceled her reservation after one night. She checked out Tuesday morning.”

I closed my eyes, a stabbing pain in my chest.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”

“No,” I said, disconnecting, my heart continuing to sink.

In my mind, I replayed our conversation when I’d asked Mickie to marry me. She’d said she couldn’t, that she had given away a part of her she couldn’t get back, that I deserved someone better. And then she had clung to me as if she would never see me again. I wondered if Mickie had already made plans to leave but couldn’t bring herself to tell me, if that had been the reason she’d clung to me. She’d stayed to help me get through the heartache and pain of my mother’s and father’s deaths, but Mickie was still Mickie, at times rash and unpredictable. Marriage frightened her, which meant I had frightened her, and Mickie no doubt rationalized that she could never make me completely happy, and therefore she was doing us both a favor by leaving.

I shut the doors and turned off the lights. I contemplated calling Ernie, but he and his family were in Europe to celebrate Mr. Cantwell’s seventieth birthday. My mother and father were dead. There was no one. I was alone.

I slumped on the couch, grief stricken and anxious. Douglas and Blue, sensing my anguish, curled up beside me.

And then I heard her—my mother.

Have faith, Samuel.

I raised my head, almost expecting to see her standing in my living room. “Have faith in what?” I asked. “Have faith in what, Mom?”

But the voice in my head would not be silenced.

Have faith, Samuel. We don’t always know God’s will.

“Is his will to make me miserable?” I asked.

But this time there was no answer.

I went upstairs and sat on the bed, uncertain what to do, feeling my anxiety starting to spread. My eyes were drawn to the top drawer of my dresser, but I fought the urge to open it. I had contemplated putting my mother’s rosary in her casket, but at the last moment I held on to it, remembering how she had walked across the courtyard at the baths in Lourdes to hand it to me, her dying act.