After Hello (21 page)

I had a sudden vision of Lauren summoning her supervisor with the push of a button and reporting us for trying to bribe her for tickets. I wondered if she would demand that security escort us out of the building. I stepped closer to Sam.

“You’re not going to get us in trouble now, are you?” He said it as a joke, but a set of worry lines appeared next to his mouth.

“Of course not,” she said, as though offended we would even consider it. Her voice turned brisk and professional. “My manager always sets aside a few tickets for unexpected VIPs.” She brandished two tickets in triumph before handing them to Sam and smiling brightly at us both. “And since you
are
special guests, please accept these complimentary tickets to the observation deck.” She lowered her voice and patted Sam on the cheek. “Always a pleasure trading with you, Sam. We close at midnight. Have fun.”

She lifted her hand and waved at the next person in line to step forward, effectively edging me and Sam out of line and toward the elevator bank.

It took less than a minute for the all-glass elevator to whisk us up to the top, and when we stepped out onto the observation deck, I felt like the sky had opened up and all the stars had fallen down to light up the city spread out at my feet.

My mouth opened at the beauty before me, and I stumbled after Sam without saying anything.

He led me around the small knots of people crowded close to the edges, the tourists taking pictures of the view and of each other. The small camera flashes glittered like fireflies.

The Empire State Building rose out of the jagged city skyline in all its glory. Proud and majestic, the building was topped with a glow of red, white, and blue lights. Beyond, a swath of black flowed like a shadow—a river, perhaps. Or maybe just more buildings that were closed and quiet for the evening.

Sam leaned against the tall stone wall, his gaze sweeping across the scene before us.

For as dark as the night was, I was surprised at how much light I could see. Light from the cars traveling the avenues and streets—liquid gold in one direction, red lava in the other. Light from the apartments stacked one on top of the other. Light from the office windows and storefronts. I imagined I could even see the glow that rose up from the distant Times Square like a white mist.

I shivered, but not from the warm breeze that blew endlessly across the observation deck.

My dad was down there, just one small person in an entire city filled with people.

I wondered if he felt as alone as I did. I wondered if he cared.

I pulled out my camera and took a picture. It turned out a little blurry—it was pretty dark and I didn’t have a tripod—but I didn’t mind. I liked the way it looked like an Impressionist painting with the lights and colors smeared across a black background.

“Like what you see?” Sam asked, breaking into my thoughts. “They don’t always light up the building with different colors. I wonder what they’re celebrating tonight.”

“It’s beautiful,” I managed, my throat unexpectedly tight.

Sam turned toward me, lounging against the wall and resting his weight on his elbow. He looked down at his hands, his fingers fidgeting restlessly. His brown hair fell over his eyes. “Can I ask you a question, Sara?”

The rest of me tightened up in anticipation and dread. I had promised to tell Sam my story, but I didn’t think he’d want to hear it so soon. And things had happened between when I made that promise and when I found him again that would make the telling even harder. I swallowed. “Yes,” I answered.

“Why did you trade away Rebecca’s angel?”

I blinked. That wasn’t the question I was expecting. “We needed to give Lauren something for the tickets.”

Sam kept his eyes on his hands. “True, but I had given that angel to her as a gift.”

I felt an embarrassed heat rise up in my face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I hadn’t been in the city very long before I met Rebecca. She was new too, and I think we both felt a little out of place. She mentioned once that she wished she had a guardian angel to watch over her, so I found that pin for her.”

“She didn’t say anything about that when we traded.”

Sam waved away my words. “Remember what you said on the subway? That sometimes it’s okay to hold on to the good things?” He swept his gaze back over the city. “I guess part of me thought Rebecca would hold on to that pin as a good thing. That’s why I was surprised to see it in your hand. And then in Lauren’s. But I guess it meant more to me than it did to her.”

I folded my arms across my chest, holding onto my elbows with both hands. “Do you want me to try to get it back?”

The breeze ruffled Sam’s hair. “No. You traded it fair and square.” He lifted his face toward the dark sky, a small, slightly unsettled smile appearing on his lips. “You’ve sent it out into the world. Maybe it’ll come back to you at some point, but maybe not . . .” He looked at me directly, his brown eyes filled with shadows but reflecting pinpricks of light. “Yes, sometimes it’s okay to hold on to things. But sometimes it’s okay to let them go, too.”

Chapter 32

Sam

Letting go. It sounded so easy. He had even tried to make it easy, trading away whatever came across his path, but he knew that letting go of emotions and memories was something altogether different. Harder. He wasn’t sure he had mastered that yet.

But after today, after Sara, he felt like he was getting closer.

“You think I’m holding on to something I should be letting go of?” Sara asked, her crossed arms tightening like a shield. The angles of her body—shoulder, elbow, hip—sharpened, kept him at bay.

Sam shrugged. “You tell me.”

She was quiet for a long time. He stood next to her and they both stared across the city at the tallest building in New York.

“You know,” he ventured into the quiet, “I’ve learned that sometimes you can only see what you want to see by changing where you stand. And standing somewhere unexpected can lead to unexpected discoveries.”

She kept her gaze fixed on the buildings rising into the sky. After some time passed, she said, “He promised he was going to take me there today. After he signed the papers, we were going to celebrate by going to dinner and then to the top of the Empire State Building. ‘Just you and me—just like in the movies,’ he said. But that didn’t happen. Do you know what
did
happen?” She didn’t wait for Sam to respond. “We spent the whole day apart, and every time we talked today, we fought. The minute we were together again, we fought. We stood in Times Square and yelled at each other and screamed and said—” She shook her head once, sharply, as though physically forcing her thoughts in a new direction.

Sam bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep himself quiet. He didn’t want to interrupt the flow of her words and risk her closing down instead of opening up.

“So maybe it’s good that we’re here instead of there,” she said, nodding to the building across the way. “If he comes looking for me, he’ll go there. And I won’t be there.” Her voice held a dark note of pride and anger.

“Do you think he’ll come looking for you?” Sam was keenly aware of the weight of his phone in his pocket. Should he suggest she call her dad, if only to let him know she was okay? Was she okay?

“Not in a million years. Not after what he said. Not after what
I
said—”

There was that sharp shake of her head again.

“I didn’t think it was that much to ask, you know?” she said softly. “I know his business meeting was important, but I guess I thought he’d still be able to get away for lunch—or dinner. Or something. I thought we’d still be able to do a couple of sightseeing things. Explore the city.”

“You did explore the city,” he said just as quietly.

“With you.” She turned her back to the skyline. “But somehow I’m the bad guy for having fun today.”

“Is that what he said?”

“No, but it’s how I feel.”

Sam took a chance. “What
did
he say?”

“That he was worried about me. That he wanted to make sure I was safe. You know—basic dad stuff.”

Sam took a bigger chance. “What did
you
say?”

“During the fight or after?”

“After.” Sam knew from experience the importance of what happened
after.
What you said—or didn’t say. What you did—or didn’t do.

Sara looked down at her feet. Her long hair swept across her face like a curtain. Her body trembled, and her voice, when she finally spoke, was thin and high. “I said that if I had known what kind of man he really was, I would have left with Mom and I would never have come back either.”

Sam sucked in his breath as though he’d been punched.

“I know, right? Daughter of the Year award, right here. It’s no wonder he told me he’d need some time alone after I said that.”

The wind gusted past them. A group of tourists wandered up, talking and pointing out landmarks. Their laughter was light and carefree, but the noise felt abrasive to Sam. He gently touched Sara’s arm and led her down the walkway toward an empty spot. She walked automatically, directionless, willing to be guided by his hand.

“When did your mom leave?” he asked once they were alone again. Or as alone as they could be in the heart of a popular tourist spot.

Sara’s mouth twisted. “When I was eight.”

“Why did she leave?”

A bitter laugh escaped. “You know, it took me half my life to summon up the courage to ask that question, and it took you, like, half a second.”

“Do you know the answer?”

“I do now.” She shuddered and looked away. “Dad told me. He told me everything.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Sam offered gently, remembering when Sara had said the same thing to him in Central Park.

“Yes, I do. We traded—fair and square. You told me your story; I promised to tell you mine if you waited for me. You did. Now it’s my turn.”

She drew in a deep breath. Sam waited, trying to ignore the itch in the soles of his feet that made him want to move, to walk—maybe even to run—away. But no. As much as it scared him, he knew he needed to hear Sara’s story. He needed to help her shoulder the burden of her past the same way she had helped him with his.

“I was a love baby. That’s what Mom and Dad always said. They said that they loved each other so much that it couldn’t be contained in just the two of them, so it spilled over into me. For a long time I thought that was how babies were made. I imagined a hospital full of little empty baby shells and when they were filled up with enough love, they came alive and then the mom and dad took them home to be a family.”

Sam smiled, but tried to keep it small.

She caught him anyway and echoed his smile, though a bit self-consciously. “I know—I wasn’t the brightest kid growing up.”

“At least you had an idea. When my parents gave me ‘the talk,’ it came out of nowhere. It was like they were speaking another language. I was horrified.”

“How old were you?”

Sam shook his head. “Not old enough, that’s all I can say.”

Her shoulders relaxed, and she loosened the death grip she had on her arms, which was what he’d been hoping for.

“We were a good family—at least, I thought we were. We did stuff together: vacations and parties and holidays. Dad was a businessman—suit and ties to work every day—and Mom worked in an accounting firm. She was great with numbers. One of my earliest memories is of being curled up on the couch next to Mom and watching her do her math problems for work.”

“I thought you said you weren’t very bright as a kid,” Sam said with just the hint of a tease in his voice.

She let the comment slide, her eyes focused into the distance. “When Mom did her accounting, something special happened. She made math look like magic. I mean, where else can you take two different numbers and turn them into something else? Something bigger. And together they always seemed stronger than they were separately.”

“Do you still think math is magic?” he asked. It was strange—he had spent all day with her, had opened up his heart a crack to her, but he still hardly knew her at all.

“No. When Mom left, it was like she took the magic with her. No more addition—just subtraction and division.”

Sam rolled his shoulders, feeling the weight of her words settle over him. He wanted to say something, change the subject, change the story, but this wasn’t something he could take and trade. This was something he needed to learn how to take—and keep.

“I thought for sure she would come back.” Sara leaned as far over the wall as she could go, which wasn’t very far.

Sam saw a nearby security guard take note of Sara and shift his weight as though preparing to come over if she needed help. Sam knew that when you invited people this close to the sky, you had to keep them safe and secure, and somehow keeping her safe had become his job for the day. He stepped closer to her, feeling oddly protective of Sara, and the guard relaxed.

“Even though she had said good-bye, I honestly thought she would come back. I made up all these stories about where she was and why she left. Like, maybe she was just on a business trip. Dad took lots of those—all the time, to California, to computer conferences—and sometimes he took Mom with him. Sometimes we all went. But I remember wondering, if it was a business trip, why we all hadn’t gone with her.”

It was easy for Sam to imagine an eight-year-old Sara, her face crinkling up with confusion and worry, her small fists hitting her hips in frustration. He’d seen her do the same thing more than once today.

“Lots of nights, I waited up for her, thinking of all the places she might have gone. The store. The movies. I even dreamed that maybe she’d gone out to a ranch to pick out a pony for me. When she hadn’t come back by morning, I would ask Dad where she’d gone, but all he ever said was that she had gone somewhere she couldn’t hurt us anymore. I didn’t understand that at all. I mean, Mom had never hurt me. She was my
mom.
She loved me, right?”

Sam knew it was a rhetorical question, but the raw pain in her voice compelled him to answer it anyway. “Of course she did.”