“Fido?” Sam called, listening for the familiar trot across the kitchen linoleum.
She knew she had left the sliding back door open, as families in the safe suburbs often did on a nice spring day. Who needed locks when you had nebby neighbors? But when Fido didn’t immediately show, Sam dropped her train case with a soundless thump and headed to the answering machine.
A white Message Received flag appeared across the reel-to-reel tape that claimed the potential to hold twenty messages, although Sam hoped to never find out. No one with that many friends had freedom to do as she pleased, and doing as she pleased was the one thing Sam valued most. Clicking the knob to Playback Calls, Sam secured the earphone in place and listened as a familiar treacly voice filled her ear canal:
“Is this recording? Hello? Oh, hello, Samantha! This is your mother calling. Am I your first message? How exciting! I knew you would eventually find use for the answering machine. Rather than jot down a note, I figured I would leave you a personal message saying I stopped by to collect your mail and water your plants, which are getting out of control, I must add. The house looks like a jungle, Samantha. Really, it’s ridiculous!”
Minnie Stanton never could understand her daughter’s draw to botany, or how an eighth-grade science fair project studying the effects of chebula on wrinkles could turn into an obsession with alternative medicine. Not that Minnie hadn’t been happy to let thirteen-year-old Sam experiment on her aging skin, the Polaroids showing clear signs of smoothing those fine lines after a mere four weeks.
A science fair project was one thing; the joy of youth lost to weekends filled with experiments and research instead of friends and discos was another. Not that Sam could ever relate to the “youthful joy” her mother referred to. Girl gossip bored her, and loud psychedelic rock paired with pulsating bodies didn’t appeal. But the silence and solitude found in her garden… now that was joy!
As much as Minnie wanted her daughter to fit in, she couldn’t deny the fact that Sam was gifted. The grapefruit Sam prescribed had lowered her father’s blood pressure. And the aloe vera Sam lathered on Minnie’s arthritis soothed the inflammation. Sam had even gotten her article on local honey curing allergies published in a little-known medical journal that no one but her best friend, only friend, Raul Smothers had read. He owned fifteen copies of the journal, which he never told Sam about but she had discovered hidden on his bookshelf one evening as he cooked spaghetti on a hotplate, the “fanciest” dish he knew how to make.
Maybe if Sam had ended up saving her father’s life, perhaps Minnie would have become a believer in the homeopathy Sam offered, but as it stood, it was a pastime that Minnie felt was past time to give up on.
The message continued as Sam’s mother picked up steam: “I should also mention I locked Fido outside. I know you think it’s sanitary to let that awful beast wander in and out of the house as he pleases, but honestly, Samantha, you need to find him a proper home.”
It was the same song every time Minnie stopped by or called—or now left a message—which was far more often than Sam preferred from her mother who simply refused to cut the umbilical cord: a plea for Sam to be someone she wasn’t.
Fido, much like his human housemate, also preferred to do as he pleased. He was not some unwanted stray that didn’t deserve a home just because he wasn’t a typical pet. In fact, that was exactly what had appealed to Sam about him in the first place.
“Anyway,” Minnie continued, as if chatting over coffee, “an old friend of yours contacted me trying to locate you. A gentleman by the name of Raul Smothers? The name rings a bell, but I cannot for the life of me remember why. What is he—Puerto Rican? Now that I think on it, with a surname like that, maybe British? Perhaps from Cheshire? Even so, he sounded quite handsome on the phone, a real charmer. He gave me his phone number to pass along to you, and I told him where you worked. I would have instead provided your home address, but I didn’t want to scare him off if he happened to stop by. God forbid he sees what you’ve done to your grandmother’s house, God rest her soul. She’d be rolling in her grave.”
Apparently Raul had picked up on some stalker tips during the four years since they’d last spoken—the day after Sam’s father’s funeral. Although, who needed to invest the energy in stalking when Minnie Stanton was handing out personal information like it was trick-or-treat candy?
No matter. Sam had no intention of returning Raul’s call. Not after what he had done.
“I’ll keep this short and sweet, darling.” Except Minnie Stanton kept nothing short and even less sweet. “Let me know when you arrive home from New York and I’ll bring by a casserole. You’re getting too thin, Samantha, and we don’t want Raul to think you’re one of those girls who starves herself, now do we? Oh, and I know someone who works at a dog food company and might be willing to take Fido off your hands—”
Click.
Perhaps the PhoneMate was a good investment after all, intuitive enough to cut her mother off from rambling and threatening Fido’s life, which convinced Sam that she would keep the machine after all.
Sam slipped into the kitchen, a quandary presenting itself. She examined the rows of potted herbs along the Formica counter wrapped in shiny chrome, which replaced Grandma Stanton’s every color of Tupperware, bread bin, and butter molds that had once filled the space. A decision had to be made. Four years had passed since she’d last spoken to Raul, and for good reason. To Sam, betrayal was an unforgiveable sin, and that man was exceptionally talented in the fine art of treachery.
Raul didn’t start off that way, as no one ever advertises such a trait from the get-go. In fact, from the first moment Sam stumbled into the downtown New York deli and Raul Smothers, literally knocking the triple-decker club sandwich out of his hand, she sensed he was someone special.
It wasn’t his status as an up-and-coming New York Times reporter that impressed her, even after he’d arrogantly mentioned it twice, as if she cared about such things as status, having none herself. What did impress her was the way he had ignored the salami splayed across the floor and instead smiled. At her. Which was a rarity when surrounded by the Sophia Lorens and Audrey Hepburns waltzing around every corner of the most beautiful and arrogant city in the world—as long as Raul lived there.
What Sam lacked in beauty she made up for in smarts and a doggedness to educate others in alternative forms of medicine. Homeopathy offered hope and healing. Health remedies that didn’t come with a side effect of death. But as is often the case with an outspoken woman, the proper ladies avoided her, the single men slandered her, and her own mother disapproved of her.
Until Raul Smothers came along and turned her heart inside-out.
Chapter 6
Within six months of meeting Raul Smothers in a New York City deli, Sam shared her ardor for ashwagandha. The charm of chamomile. Why she went gaga over ginseng. Raul was the first to listen, to ask questions, to even take her unsolicited advice and apply her methods—with success! Cured was his pesky cough. Gone was his painful gout. Raul Smothers became her guinea pig, her cheer captain, and eventually her dream come true.
Except…
Except Sam didn’t allow herself to dare dream of anything more than friendship. There was a long and complicated backstory to why, but she never found the courage to share it with Raul. So they remained more than friends but less than lovers until Minnie’s phone call came and inevitably broke them up and dragged Sam away from the city that never sleeps to take care of her ailing father. The autumn of 1965 was her and Raul’s first official fight, but it wouldn’t be the last.
“Something’s wrong,” Raul had stated plainly the moment he opened his apartment door to find a sodden, shivering Sam.
New York City had four days in a row of nonstop sleet, which Sam had trekked through with a postman-like determination to bring news that could only be bad in this weather. Sleet was nothing to this lake-effect-snow Pittsburgh native, as she had spent many a winter’s night as a child shoveling the snow off her roof.
“My mother called.” Sam offered nothing more than that as she stood in the hallway.
Raul held his breath. “And…?”
“And… I have to go home to Pittsburgh. My dad’s heart is failing and they need my help taking care of him.” Her voice faltered. “Apparently Dad’s been getting worse ever since he started his new medication. I’m sure his poor diet isn’t helping. Anyway, I’m going home to try to cure him.”
“I’m so sorry, Sam.” Raul pulled her into his apartment that was twice the size of hers, and into a hug that put Sam’s neck at an awkward angle. The cramp was worth feeling held. “Can I do anything to help?”
Raul was a problem-solver by nature, often offering his own version of a “solution”—sometimes solicited, but more often not. Sam was one of few who liked that about him, but her father’s condition was beyond his knowledge base. She shook her head against his chest while Raul held her like her life depended on it. Sometimes it felt like it did.
