Sam left without saying good bye to Dave. After reading Sarah’s note to Ed, about her wanting to return home, there was no need to talk further with him.

That wasn’t the real reason he left abruptly, and he knew it. He detested Dave. As he drove away he wondered how Sarah could have allowed herself to be taken in by this helicopter pilot-dog trainer.

When he reached the end of the lane and was about to turn onto the highway, he stopped. “Who am I kidding?” he said aloud. “I’m the one who made Sarah’s life so desperate that it took a guy like Dave to bail her out.” He gripped the steering wheel and closed his eyes. “Sarah, forgive me. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t I wake up sooner? None of this would have happened.”

He sat there for some time. Then, fearful Dave’s truck might come roaring up behind him, he started again. He drove aimlessly, turning off on roads that meandered over hills, through woods and sometimes down to the water. The day was warm and he drove with the windows open. He saw a sign for the Pemaquid Lighthouse, and followed the road until he came to the end of the point. The lighthouse was exactly as he remembered from the summers they had rented the cottage. He got out and walked around the whitewashed lighthouse to stand on the rocks above the ocean. He recalled times when waves had sent spray all the way to the tops of the embankment, when he and Sarah had to warn the children not to get too close to the edge. Today the waves were quiet with only the ocean swells rising and falling against the rocks.

He thought about calling Annie, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. There would be time for that later. He’d come so close to finding Sarah, but he’d missed. “Don’t kid yourself,” he said aloud. “You were no closer to finding her today then you were in Saskatchewan.” And yet, there was something about this place where they had vacationed and where Sarah had been two years ago that brought her near. He lay back on the sod above the rocks and let the sun warm him. He was tired but not discouraged. There was too much of Sarah in this place to give up. He closed his eyes. Half asleep he dreamed he heard his children's voices and yelled to Sarah to get Russ and Kathleen away from the rocks. When he awoke, two young girls were clambering down the smooth rocks, laughing and calling to each other, while a mother and father, arm in arm, watched from above. Sam watched them, envious, then went back to his car.

He decided to see if he could find the cottage they had rented some twenty odd years before. He knew it was off one of the main roads south of Damariscotta, so he headed that way. He searched for more than an hour and finally gave up. Too much time had elapsed and too many brain cells had worn away. It was too late to drive back to West Hillton, so he got a lobster roll and some salad from the super market and returned to the motel. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go home the next day, either. Thoughts of facing Russ and Kathleen, even Annie, were more than he could handle. Anyway, there was something nice about being by himself, about being close to Sarah.

Sam had a cup of coffee with the Damariscotta natives in a local coffee shop. The Indian Summer persisted, so he decided to take a drive down to South Bristol. There used to be a restaurant there with a deck that looked out over the harbor. He and Sarah had sipped martinis and eaten lobster there more than once. He wondered if it was still there. He left the motel and headed south on Highway 129. Taking his time, he got to South Bristol about lunch time. There was the restaurant just as he’d remembered.

He parked and walked into the main dining room. He was early and the only person there, so he called into the kitchen to see if they were open. A young woman in a blue cotton dress wearing a name badge that said “Julia” came out.

“Sure, we’re open. Where would you like to sit?”

“On the deck, if that’s all right.”

“Help yourself. What is it, breakfast or lunch?”

“Lunch if it’s ready.”

“I’ll bring you a menu.”

The deck was one story above the docks and afforded a view of the boats in the harbor. Sam ordered a cup of coffee and a bowl of clam chowder. He ate lunch watching the lobster boats return and unload their catch.

“Sarah,” he whispered, “it’s just like it used to be.”

To the left of the commercial fishing dock was a sail boat rental dock. Three of the small boats had their sails up in what appeared to be a vain attempt to attract the few remaining tourists. A boy stood on the dock with a stiff broom scrubbing gull droppings off the rugged boards. Sam didn’t remember there being boat rentals there when he was last here, and yet there was something familiar about the boats. Then it hit him.

Passing through the restaurant, he told Julia he’d be right back. He went to his car, got the book, Newfies And Their Friends, and came back to his table on the deck. Toward the back of the book in the section dealing with Cowan’s helicopter rescue dogs, he found what he was looking for; the picture of Condor sitting in the bow of a small sail boat.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said aloud.

“What?” Julia said. She was standing behind him.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there.”

Cocking her head to the side, she asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, but look at this.” He pointed to the picture in the book. “That’s the same boat as the one down there, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it to me. You ought to show it to George. He’s my great uncle. Those are his boats. He’d get a kick out of seeing a picture of one of them in a book.” She hesitated. “Oh, he’s not here now. He took Mildred to Bath for a doctor’s appointment.”

Sam was excited. He’d found another link with Sarah. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I’d say late this afternoon. They usually stop off to see Mildred’s sister.”

“Thanks. I’ll stick around and show him the picture.”

Sam finished his chowder and walked down into the town. He wanted to tell Annie about his discovery. Finding a pay phone, he called her collect.

“Hi, what’s up?” she asked.

“A lot. I wasn’t going to call you. I was just going to come home. But another one of those coincidences has happened.”

“Coincidence, huh? I don’t think anything that’s happened has been coincidence. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I went to Dave Cowan’s house . .”

“Oh Lord.”

“Yeah. We didn’t hit it off too well, but I met his dad, too. He was okay. He showed me a letter Sarah had given him just before she left to come home, that’s right, come home. Annie, she said she loved us, me the kids and you, too. Then she took off and he doesn’t know where she went.”

“Oh hell, I thought you’d found her.”

“No, but something else has happened. It still doesn’t tell us where she is, but . .”

“Sam, I’m coming up there. I should have gone with you in the first place.”

“I want you to. That’s why I called. If you leave right now, you can be here by five thirty.” Sam told here where he was and said that he’d be waiting for her in the Harbor View Motel in Damariscotta.

The afternoon hours crept by. Sam went down to the dock where the sail boats were and talked to the boy cleaning gull droppings. He was one of George Miller’s grandchildren and looked after the boats when George was away. Then Sam went back to the motel in Damariscotta and waited for Annie.

When Annie sailed into the parking lot at five after five, Sam was waiting in his car by the motel office. He got out and Annie ran to his car. He hugged and kissed her like a sailor returned from the sea.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.

She got in his car. “Okay, fill me in.”

As they drove to South Bristol, he began by telling her about Jenny Anderson coming to the house and asking for his forgiveness.

“That little bitch,” Annie said. “The nerve of her coming to see you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. But I’ve mellowed since then. She must have some good qualities or Sarah wouldn’t have liked her so much. And I think Jenny really did love Sarah, but that was before Jenny’s asshole boss, Farwell, bewitched her. Farwell assured her that no one would see the harassment complaint except Sarah. Also, Jenny was carrying his child. She was afraid he’d leave her if she didn’t do what he wanted. So she wrote up the sexual harassment complaint and Farwell threatened Sarah with it.”

“But why didn’t Sarah laugh in his face?”

“I think the accusation was so sudden and humiliating it caught her off guard. Vera made sure the news of the complaint was all over the company. I think it was too much all at once and Sarah bolted.”

Annie was shaking her head as he spoke, “Ohh, God!”

“And there may have been something else. When Sarah was staying at Dave Cowan’s place, she talked a lot with his father. From something she said to him, I think she worried that she’d actually fallen in love with Jenny: that unconsciously she’d led Jenny on into a relationship that had sexual overtones. Guilt can work in strange ways.”

“Could be. There’s a lot of people in their fifties still confused about their sexuality. Like these right-wing guys who get so enraged by gays. They’re not afraid they might get screwed by them. They’re afraid they might enjoy it.”

Sam laughed. Damn but he was glad to be with Annie.

She went on. “To tell you the truth, I was pretty enamored of Sarah myself. She was a couple of years older than me, but so much prettier and so much fun. I’m sure neither of us would have gone to bed together, but I loved to hug her and sit on the swing with my arm around her. But, what the hell! When I was in the army some of us girls liked other girls and some liked boys. So what?” Sam laughed again, but Annie grew serious. “You mentioned a letter Sarah gave Dave Cowan’s father.”

“She said you were a friend she really missed and wanted to see you again, that you were like sisters.”

Tears filled Annie’s eyes. “She remembered me,” she said and started to cry. A minute passed before she dried her eyes and turned back to Sam. “Okay, what’s this latest coincidence that’s brought me up here?”

Sam told her about having lunch in the same restaurant where he and Sarah used to eat and seeing the same boat that was pictured in the book.

“But that was taken two years ago when she was still staying with the Dave. What’s that got to do with finding her now?”

“I know, but it could be one of these things like the branches beating on the window that got me to look outside and see Sarah standing in the rain. I don’t know what it means. I only know it’s the way Sarah’s been acting lately.”

As they entered the town of South Bristol, she said, “Well, I can go along with that.”

Sam parked behind the restaurant, picked up the book and the walked with Annie to the Millers’ front porch. He knocked and George Miller opened the door.

“Mr. Miller, I’m Sam Langley and this is my friend Annie Haas.”

He eyed them for a moment, then said, “What can I do for yah?”

“I had lunch today at the restaurant and showed your grand niece, Julia, a picture of one of your boats that’s in this book.”

“Come on in. It gets cold when the sun goes down.” Then he turned to call his wife. “Avis, we got company.”

Sam and Annie followed him into the living room. Avis came from the kitchen drying her hands on an apron. “My name’s Sam Langley, Mrs. Miller and this Annie Haas.” She shook their hands.

“What’s this about a book?” George asked. Sam opened Newfies And Their Friends to the back page and held it for George to see. He adjusted his glassed. “Ayah,” he said, “that’s one a mine all right. See the insignia of an osprey on the sail?”

“I do,” Sam said. “Do you remember when it was taken?”

“Nope. We get hundreds of people through here in a year. Can’t keep track of ‘em all. Don’t try.”

“How long have you been renting boats here?”

“Ever since I quit lobstering.” He ran his arthritically gnarled fingers through his gray hair.

“And how long would that be?”

“Four years.” He paused than added, “Can’t keep track of everybody comes here to rent a boat. Nice book though.” He thumbed through some of the pictures and closed the cover. When he saw the author’s name on the cover he drew in a sharp breath.

“Good Lord!” he said, and almost staggered backward into the wood stove. “Susan Lang,” he exclaimed. Sam couldn’t tell if he were excited or frightened. “Susan Lang. Oh Lord, oh Lord.”

Avis rushed to his side. “George. You all right?”

Breathless, he said, “Look at this.” First he showed her the picture of the boat and then Susan Lang’s name. Avis’s reaction was the same as George’s. Clutching her throat she sank into a chair.

George turned to him accusingly. “Where’d you get this book?”

“I bought it. What’s the problem?”

George, still holding the book by his side, took several deep breaths. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He took another few seconds to calm down. “This woman,” — he tipped the book so he could see the author’s name — “she rented one of our boats two years ago.”

“I thought you couldn’t remember the people who rented your boats.”

“Ayah,” he said, “I remember this one.”

Now Sam was excited. “I’ve got some pictures of her. Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.” He walked and jogged to his car and returned with the pictures of Sarah.
“Have a seat, Mr. Langley and Miss Haas,” Avis said. She had loosened the top button of her dress and was fanning herself with her hand. Both she and George were probably Sam’s age, but their hard life at the edge of the ocean showed in their deeply lined faces.

Sam sat down and handed the pictures of Sarah to George who looked at them shaking his head sadly.

“Don’t hog ‘em,” Avis said brusquely. “Pass ‘em on.” George gave her the two he’d finished with. “That’s her all right,” Avis announced.

“How’d you know her?” George asked Sam when he’d passed the last picture to Avis.

“She’s my wife.” Sam had held back the picture of him and Sarah which he now gave to George. He looked at it and passed it on to Avis.
“She is your wife, you say?” He gave Avis a knowing look and turned back to Sam. “Then you’re Mr. Lang?”

“No. My name’s Sam Langley. Her real name is Sarah Langley. Susan Lang is a pen name.”

“Well,” Avis asserted, “that explains it.”

George lifted his hand to his wife in a demurring way. “Let’s not be too hasty, Avis.” She seemed to understand and lowered her eyes. Then to Sam, “Hope you two aren’t in any rush. We’re going to be here for a while. Call us George and Avis. Can I call you Sam and Annie? ”

“Sure.” Sam said calmly, but he could hear his blood pulsating in his ears. “Do you know where she is?”

George nodded. “We’ll get to that in a minute.” To his wife he said, “Why don’t you start when you first met Susan?”

Avis closed her eyes, then lifted her head and opened them. “I was sitting on the porch when she came up wheeling her bicycle and leaned it against the railing. She said she wanted to stay in town for a few days and wondered if I might have a room to let. Said she’d rented one of our boats a couple of months earlier, but neither George nor I remembered her.”

Annie interrupted, “That must be when she took the picture of the boat that’s in the book.”

“I suppose,” Avis said, then went on. “I could see she was a refined person, so I rented her a room. It was just this time of year, past tourist season. We could use the extra money. She never gave me her full name, just Susan, but that was all right. She paid in cash and was no trouble.”

“She helped me some, too,” George said. “One day she said she’d clean out the boats if I’d teach her how to sail. Fair enough, I said, and we spent the morning in the widgeon. That’s what the boats are called. She got pretty good and could tack and run though the boats here in the harbor without hitting anybody. The next day she rented one of the boats and started off with a packed lunch and her two cameras. I told her not to go out too far because a cloud bank can roll in before you know it. She said she’d be careful and I watched her disappear through the gut there that goes out into John’s Bay.”

He was silent for a few seconds as he stared out the window in the direction of the narrow slip of water through which she’d departed. “About three that afternoon the fog rolled in, not bad at first, but in minutes I couldn’t see the gut. I worried about her, but I told myself that she was a careful person and would put ashore when she saw the fog coming.” His voice caught and he stopped talking.

“Dinner time came and went,” Avis said, “and we still hadn’t heard from her. I told George he’d better call the Coast Guard and he did. The boats were out all night looking for her, but the fog hung on and they didn’t find anything.”

George raised his head. “Sam, Annie, I’m sorry to tell you this.”

Sam’s voice faltered. “I . . I understand.”

George cleared his throat. “The fog lifted about ten the next morning and we found the boat way out by the lighthouse on Pemaquid Point. It was tipped over and had washed up on the rocks. There wasn’t a life preserver, so we still had hopes that Susan was out there somewhere afloat. The Coast Guard helicopter searched the ocean beyond the headlands and boats were all over the bay. About four in the afternoon we found the life preserver, but that was all.”

Sam had lowered his head and shut his eyes. Annie was wiping her eyes. George reached out his hand and touched both Sam’s and Annie’s hands. “Three days later a body was washed up on shore. The police called us, and Avis and I went to identify it. We could tell by the clothes and the earrings it was Susan.” He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

With eyes closed, Sam heard the words like echoes down the corridor of his mind. He had prepared himself against this moment of knowing, and now that it had come, he felt only listless fatigue. Annie gripped his hand tightly.

Avis got up and moved a dining room chair next to Annie. Putting her hand on her shoulder, she said, “I know how that can happen. I was out in one of the widgeons once when the fog came. I was just beyond the gut so it wasn’t so bad. The fog’s a menacing thing. Looks like a huge creeping monster as it comes at you. I headed for the shore but before I got there it enclosed me. A sudden gust of wind caught the sail and flipped the boat over and me into the water. I’d been using the life preserver as a cushion. When I saw it floating away I swam for it. It stayed just out of reach and with each second I got tireder and tireder. When I was almost exhausted, I reached it and clung to it. I made it to shore.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “I told George that that’s what I think happened to Susan, except she didn’t reach it in time.” She gently patting Annie’s shoulder.

In the darkness of his mind, Sam saw Sarah frantically swimming toward the life preserver as it slowly, tantalizingly drifted away, farther and farther from the boat. He saw her lose sight of it in the fog, then turn back toward the boat, but unable to find it in the heavy, gray blanket. He could hear her gag as each breath was more ocean water than air. He felt her overwhelming exhaustion and terror as she fought vainly to stay afloat. Then he watched her sink into the depths, her hair floating about her head, her eyes closed in sleep.

“Ah, Sam,” Avis said. “I’ll get us a cup of tea.”

Sam took several deep breaths and asked, “What happened after you identified the body?”

George answered. “The police wanted to know who she was so they could notify next of kin. Avis went into her room and found her knapsack and her wallet. We gave them to the police. The next day they were back. They’d found her driver’s license in her wallet. It was a California license and had a San Francisco address. They said it was fake. There was no such person as Susan Lang and no such address. That’s what Avis meant a little while ago when you said her real name was Sarah Langley. There was also a debit card from a San Francisco bank with Susan’s name on it. That seemed to be legitimate. The State Police in Damariscotta still have her stuff hoping somebody might come looking for her.”

Avis returned with the tea and listened to what George was saying. She handed Sam, Annie and George their tea and said, “I wanted to give her a decent burial and asked the police to release her body from that place in Portland. After two months they did, and we had her buried in the town cemetery.”

The four of them sat there quietly drinking their tea. They seemed to know what Sam would ask for next, but they were in no hurry. Neither was Sam. He had found what he’d come for.

Finally George said, “Shall we go?” Sam agreed. “It’s not far. We can walk. I’ll bring a flash light.”

They headed up the road in the growing darkness to the cemetery, Sam and Annie walking arm in arm behind George and Avis. With the compassion and understanding that comes with seventy years of living, they led them through an old iron gate. On a hillside beneath a barren maple tree was the grave. George knelt and brushed away the brown leaves, then turned his flashlight onto the flat stone. The spot of light moved from work to word.

Sam and Annie returned to the Harbor View Motel. Sam uncapped his bottle of Scotch while Annie got ice. Then they propped up pillows against the head board of one of the two double beds and lay down. She put her arm around his shoulder so his head could lean against hers. Sam could feel his sadness simmering like the tiny bubbles that gather in the bottom of a kettle before it comes to a boil. He tried to brave them away and to blink aside the moisture in his eyes. But his dam of old fashioned manliness was no match for his gathering grief. “She’s gone, Annie. All the time we were looking for her, she . . she was . .” He began to sob uncontrollably. Annie held him like a child, comforting him, kissing his wet cheeks and encouraging him to let out all the tears. Then she too was crying. It was several minutes before the sobbing died away. Sam took out his handkerchief and dried both their faces.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know I had all that in me.”

“I’m sure there’s more where that came from, so don’t play the macho man. Let it out when you feel like it.”

“You, too, sergeant.”

As they sipped their drinks, Annie began telling Sam about the times Sarah had come to visit, and he reminisced about the vacations he and Sarah and the children had taken in there Maine. When conversation lagged, Annie refreshed their drinks, each of them uncertain about how to face bedtime. They talked about dinner but said they were too tired to go out. When they ran out of excuses for stretching out the evening, Sam said, “I’m about to drop,” and Annie said, “Me too.”

She started to get up, but lay back down and turned toward Sam. “I want you to hold me. I’m too sad to be away from you.” Sam put his arm around her and pulled her to him. “Not out here. Under the covers.” They got up, shed their clothes and crawled back into bed.

They were quiet for several moments drinking in the warmth of the other’s body. Then Annie said, “Every time we’ve been together she’s been with us. I don’t mean in a bad way. In a loving way. When you’ve held me, her arms were around me too. When you kissed me, she kissed me too.”

“I know. I felt that too.”

“She’s gone now,” Sam said.

“She’s gone,” Annie said. “There’s only the two of us.”

Sam turned Annie’s face toward his and kissed her. Annie returned his kiss, and with closed eyes they continued kissing.

Gradually the tired, shabby room began to glow with a soft light that filled the corners and played across the ceiling. The unmistakable sound of laughter danced about their heads and crept beneath their sheet.

With a start, they opened their eyes, but the room was quiet and dark.

Sam looked at Annie. “Did you see it?”

“Uh huh. Did you hear it?”

“I did. Close your eyes, Annie.”

She did. “I love you, Sam.”

And again the room was filled with joyful laughter and pirouetting colors.

end