“I don’t,” Sam said with a smile, but she didn’t respond back with one.
“I stood there today in my wedding dress imagining I was marrying Henry. That Hazel and Hanna were my bridesmaids. That that day had never happened. I wanted it to be true so bad. I had Mia make sure that Hazel was there today. I couldn’t get married without her there. But I wanted them all there. I miss them.” Tears started running down her face.
Sam reached over and pulled her into his arms. Maybe that was why he hadn’t wanted to go to the wedding, because he would look for them too. The four of them had been together all the time until the accident. When he had first heard that there were four in the car, he was convinced he knew who they all were. He was sure the triplets had all been there, not Hanna’s new boyfriend. That they were all gone.
Letting her cry, he ran his hand over the wet, black curly hair that hung down her back, letting his mind go back to the day he was convinced he would never teach again. Ever. The day he would never forget.
When he had moved to Landstad, he had been asked to join the volunteer firefighters. Wanting to be involved in his new community made him jump at the idea. There had been nothing big but grass fires until early November. He was up in his apartment downtown when the call came through. A car accident not far from town. He was closest, so he got there before almost anyone else. A single car had rolled, ejecting all of the passengers.
At the time, he had never dealt with that kind of scene. He wasn’t prepared for it. The couple whose yard the accident had happened in were both EMTs, and Natalie wouldn’t be alive had it not been for those two.
When he arrived, the couple had car headlights flashing over the scene. The wife called him over as she was working on Natalie, blood everywhere. The woman was shoving a tube down her throat. She was unrecognizable except for the letterman’s jacket she wore that said Henry on it. It was Natalie. She had worn that coat since the cold weather of fall had set in.
After being instructed to do chest compressions, he started and looked around the yard. The husband had come back to them and said the rest were gone—three others. In his mind, he knew Henry was one of them. He knew Hanna was probably another one. He was sure that Hazel was the fourth. They were always together. Always. He was glad for the darkness, so he couldn’t see the others. Natalie had been enough.
It had taken too long for the ambulance to show up. They were not that far from town. More firefighters came, and more headlights illuminated the scene, something Sam would never get out of his mind.
Though the ambulance came, it wasn’t until he heard a helicopter approach that they started talking about moving her. Natalie was being airlifted to the hospital. He knew she needed to be.
As he did his compressions, he tried not to touch the large piece of glass sticking out of her stomach. The rule was that you left it in, and doctors would remove it. But all he wanted to do was take it out—it had to be hurting her. But his hands had to do the compressions to keep her heart beating.
The helicopter landed, with more lights and EMTs flooding out of the machine and swarming him. Pushing him aside, they took over and got her on a stretcher and into the helicopter. From his spot on the ground, he watched it go up in the air and head south. He ran his hands through his hair, not caring that they were covered in blood. Was she already dead? Would she be dead by morning? Would her dad get to see her one more time before she died?
Unable to move from the spot that held so much of her blood, he went into shock. He looked around the yard as the EMTs and firefighters loaded a body into an ambulance with no sirens on. No rush for the dead. He knew that was one of his students, no matter which one it was.
One of his firefighting buddies came to him and asked if he was okay. Sam asked who the others were. All names were what he thought until his friend said Jamie Smith, not Hazel. It was like God had given him back Hazel. Like he couldn’t take all three of the triplets in one night.
Sam had made it home but was still in a daze. There was so much of Natalie’s blood on him that when he had taken a shower, the water ran red for a while. He silently wept, letting his tears run for the kids who had lost their lives in a single moment. All were in the senior class, and half were siblings. Until that moment, he had never thought life could be so cruel.
Natalie had lived through the night, then through the next day, then a week. Four months later, she woke up from the coma. Patrick didn’t come back to school until the following year since she was in the hospital until late in the summer. Then she didn’t come back to Landstad but had stayed in Fargo due to extensive operations still needed and physical therapy.
When the new year began, he started to have lunch with Patrick and heard all about Natalie and her slow recovery. Since she had broken a dozen bones in her body, she had gone through many surgeries. The broken bones had healed before she had woken from the coma, but they hadn’t wanted to do some of the surgeries until she woke up, so for two years, she had surgeries on and off. Around the Christmas after the accident, Patrick had taken a month off so that Natalie could have a complete facial reconstruction.
Through all that, she had to learn to live with the fact that three people had died that night—her boyfriend, her best friend, and another. The facts slowly came out about the accident, that the group was drunk and not wearing seat belts, speeding along the gravel roads.
The morning after the accident, Sam had quit the volunteer firefighters. He didn’t stop at accidents when he saw them along the side of the road. Movies sometimes bothered him now. Every now and then, he would even have nightmares.
Natalie had stopped crying on his chest. Her breathing had smoothed out, and he wondered if she was asleep. The even breathing continued until the movie ended, but still, he rubbed her back and ran his hands over her hair. He was glad he had been able to rescue her today. A far easier rescue than years before.
CHAPTER3
Familiar pain woke Natalie,dragging her from the sleep she hadn’t been getting for days. But her back would never let her sleep too long in one position. It had been almost six years, it shouldn’t bother her so much, but it still did now and them.
There was a body curled around hers, a body she knew wasn’t Jason. Jason didn’t like to touch when they were sleeping. Blinking into the dark, she realized it was Sam Sullivan, the sexy history teacher from her past.
How was she ever going to get up without waking him? Just because she was forced to get up didn’t mean he needed to. Biting her lip against the pain, she sat up and stretched. Of course, the movement woke him up.
“Are you okay?” he mumbled, his eyes not even opening.
“I’m fine, I just need to move. My back sometimes bothers me.” She got up and headed to the bathroom. The hallway one this time. When she had walked through the house naked, she hadn’t noticed this one. Her mind couldn’t get beyond Sam Sullivan’s abs. Holy cow! Shouldn’t teachers’ bodies be less yummy than that? It caused her to miss the hallway bathroom completely, and she found herself in his bedroom. When she heard him start moving, she dashed into the closest bathroom. What must he think of her just using his shower?
After a few minutes of stretches, she knew she had to get her medicine. So, she needed to run home and get that. When she got back to the living room, he was curled on his side and fast asleep, so she pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and tucked it around him, smiling. It was the least she could do.
She slipped out of the house and walked through the backyard into her dad’s backyard. It was almost dawn, so the town was quiet. Not even a dog barked. Her dad never locked the back door, so she easily got into her childhood home; one too many lost keys when she was younger had taught him to just leave it open. In the living room, she saw that her dad had taken off his suit there, so she picked up the white starched shirt from the floor and hung it on the back of a chair, then picked up his pants, wondering why he would even take them off in the living room. As she laid them on the chair that held his shirt, she noticed a blue pile on the floor. Picking it up, she saw it was a dress. Her dad did not wear dresses. Nor did he ever date. Not once since her mom had died.
She laid the dress over the chair and went to her room with a smile on her face. Her dad had gotten lucky. Good for him. He deserved to be happy again.
The suitcase she had packed for the honeymoon was there, still packed. Grabbing it, she knew everything she would need for a few days was in the bag. Then she went to her top dresser drawer and pulled out a small picture storage box. Taking the two items, she headed out of the house, hoping not to wake her dad or his friend.