The Ghostwriter's Words

Sara: All She Owned and Owed

Sara's awareness snapped back to the present and the realization that she was rapidly running out of time. Whatever else might happen, she couldn't justify missing Sammy's birthday. Not when it was such an inexplicable milestone. Not when she owed Sammy everything.

Everything.

Money: She'd rarely lived extravagantly on her travels in the past, especially since the word 'extravagance' meant nearly nothing to her. And for the past fifteen years, spending her days posing and making love cost her nothing. Even with the upkeep of the house and property, the income from the paintings covered those expenses and more. By nearly any standard, on that alone, they'd be regarded as a wealthy couple, maybe even rich.

But there was rich, even Rich, and then there was RICH! And Sara was RICH enough to be extravagant beyond comprehension when she decided to show off a little or give her lover, her beloved artist, some special gift. But, even with Sammy insisting, time and again, that it was all hers just as much his, to Sara, the money was his.

Sammy's money had paid for the studio, where she stood a few minutes later, dressed and nervous, her travel bag packed and waiting by the front door. And Sammy's money had purchased anything and everything that had lit up her lover's eyes for the past fifteen years, eyes that Sara was suddenly terrified to have looking back into her own.

But money was the least of all that she owed Sammy. Everything she had, everything she was, she owed to him. Every part of her life that began late that afternoon, turning to evening, when she'd waited beneath the waterfall, watching the path for Sammy to appear, she owed to him.

Far too much transpired, and changed forever in so short a time for her to remember every detail of that day, evening, then night, blending into the nights that followed. But parts remained too vivid ever to be forgotten. She remembered crouching, naked, in the water in the pool beneath the falls, with its roaring sound behind her. She would have been nearly invisible, but she hadn't been hiding. She hadn't intended to surprise him. She hadn't known him well enough to do anything of the sort. She'd hardly known him at all. She'd only known that she would soon be praying he would provide her a place to live. To feed and clothe her unless he preferred her to remain naked - which she would have had no choice but to do, and her mother told her to do what Sammy asked. Although, on reflection, those weren't her mother's exact words. More, not to be afraid of what he asked her to do. He would be good to her.

Sara had waited, hoping it wouldn't be one of those occasional evenings when he fell asleep in the gazebo with a glass of Scotch near his hand. She wouldn't have known what to do then. She'd never been to the mansion alone, without her mother, and couldn't imagine being bold enough to walk to the beach, then up the switchback path. Then what? Wake him? Or sit quietly nearby and wait? Or she would remain where she was and spent a long night, naked and alone, huddled in her secret alcove behind the waterfall.

She'd been naked. That much was a certainty. Her father had threatened that she'd have nothing if she listened to her mother and defied his authority. She would leave his house the way she came into it. Without even the clothes she wore. Naked as the day she was born.

She'd shocked him, her mother, and herself - abruptly shedding her clothes, dropping them on the floor without a care where they fell, refusing to turn from her father to hide an inch of her naked flesh, even as the chill of humiliation raged within her body. She'd had no idea what fascinated him about her body, her nakedness, but it felt wrong and caused her an instinctive sense of shame. Then she'd thrown shame and humiliation from her, as she had the clothes she'd dropped on the floor. She'd determined to take the man literally and shed 'everything' that the man could claim as his, including every word he'd ever spoken, all the terror of him she'd ever felt. She'd rejected it all. She'd allow no residual, except for her love for her mother and her knowledge of her mother's love in return, neither of which had ever been his to claim. But Sara couldn't help retaining her deep hatred for him. Not for what he'd done to her, but what he'd done to her mother, before and after. That would never be left behind or forgiven.