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.
She still occasionally cherished the memory of her father's shocked expression as she'd defied him and the way she did. At the time, she had no way of understanding how much of that expression was laced with lust as he took his last look at her naked body.
Sara's recollections jumped directly from her father's house to the pool beneath the waterfall, with only the vaguest memory of how she'd come to be there. There were unfocused flashes that may have been memories or only her imagination's reconstruction from a journey she'd repeated so many times before. There was no reason she would have varied the route she'd always taken to the waterfall to swim or bathe. She'd have walked along the path from the house that ran alongside her father's fields, then through the trees of the small woods that bordered her father's property. More accurately, the property that Sammy provided them. He was Mr. Fry to them, and her, until he'd insisted Sara call him Sammy.
She would discover it had never been her father's house after all! And it became more hers than her father's early that next morning, after all the wonderous things, unknown until that magic night, that she and Sammy did, that she could never have imagined before experiencing them. Sammy had promised her all that was his was hers, and only a few months later, once she'd learned to sign her name, there were legal papers to make it all official. And her father's house officially became hers.
The significance of her ownership of the house was a realization many years coming. And unfortunately, it came far too many years after her father's death for her to return and demand he get out of her house instead, then watch his sorry naked ass walk out the door, his clothes piled on the floor alongside hers since there was nothing the man had ever owned that wasn't from Sammy's generosity. Nothing which Sammy hadn't told her had since become hers.
Continuing to reconstruct her probable path from her father's house - her house! It had been her fucking house! She'd have gone out to the road from 'her' house, past the estate's front gate, then along the stone wall that had once been the original property line. She'd have crossed the bridge over the stream a hundred yards above the falls. Near enough to hear it and sometimes, depending on the wind, would have blown back on her naked flesh. It was only a short distance from there to the low spot in the wall, which was still the spot she climbed over, then she would have had the choice of either of the two paths to the waterfall and the pool beneath it.
She had no memory of the path she'd chosen that day, the steeper and quicker, or the longer, more gradual, and safer of the two. Had she done what had become her more frequent choice, slipped and slid down the steeper, quicker path, then edged along the narrow ledge to the secret place she'd discovered hidden behind the waterfall? Or had she taken the longer, easier, and safer path since she'd been wearing neither clothes nor shoes? And, if she came from behind the falls, she'd have needed to swim beneath it to the pool it had created, an experience she'd always enjoyed once she'd been daring enough to attempt it. She had no memory of doing so that day, but that didn't mean it hadn't happened.
She'd have walked for miles along the road, barefoot and naked, with no memory of having done so nor of anyone stopping to ask if she'd needed help. She was amazed her feet hadn't been cut and bleeding from something she'd stepped on along the way. Maybe they had. Or her knees weren't scraped raw, as they occasionally week after climbing over the wall, or she didn't have various nicks and bruises on her behind from her naked slide down the steeper path. Again, she may have had all the above but no memory of them.
Before she found herself treading water in the pool beneath the waterfall, her last memory was standing naked and defiant in front of her father, with her mother screaming in the background for him not to dare touch her. Had he tried? Had her father reached out with the intent of touching her naked flesh? She couldn't remember, and she had no recollection of opening the door or walking out of the house, both of which must have happened; unless her father had opened the door and shoved her from the house in defiance of her mother's demand not to touch her. Her mind at that moment had been a bright, blinding white, static blank, which allowed her to retain nothing of what had passed from that instant she'd stood naked in front of her father until she found herself naked in the pool beneath the falls.
Sara's memories of walking with Sammy later that evening along the beach, then up the switchback path to his mansion, soon to be hers, as would everything else, were near as blank. Of course, Sammy's memories of those events, including her naked emergence from the pool, had been shared with her often enough that she felt they were her own. Complete with the pounding of his heart, the surge of confused emotions as she approached, and his futile internal struggle with his awareness of her naked body. And that his body couldn't help but respond. She still hadn't been aware at that moment that there was such a thing as an erection, but she'd always been pleased with the memory he'd shared of the one she'd inspired as she'd emerged naked from the water.
Sara's memories of their conversation, walking along the beach, then up the path to the mansion, were mostly reconstructions from those Sammy later shared, consisting primarily of his concern for her. About what had transpired between herself and her parents. And what could he do to help? Should he speak with her parents? He'd been profoundly concerned about her father's reaction to him seeing and touching his naked daughter.
He had touched her! That Sara remembered. She'd kissed him, not knowing why, just feeling drawn to do it, and he'd instinctively put out his hand as she leaned her body toward him! Yes, he'd touched her breast! And she'd felt the electric thrill of that first physical contact between them without understanding why.
When he'd expressed his concerns about her father, she'd asked, "Why would my father care? He told me that I was dead to him if I defied him and walked out the door. There wouldn't be so much as a memory of me to grieve," which would be a reasonably accurate quote. Of course, Sara couldn't have imagined that he'd have ever felt the slightest grief if she had died. She'd been worthless to him since her birth, except for the opportunity to gaze lustfully at her naked body as she matured and became a woman; otherwise, she was a girl, and only sons had worth. It would have been better for him if she had died at birth.
Once she and Sammy arrived at the mansion, he'd decided everything they needed to deal with could wait. In order of priority, he needed to find her clothes, get her something to eat if she was hungry, and show her where to sleep that night. It was late by then. The only way to contact her parents would be to go to their house. And Sara's mother would be there early the next morning to cook, clean, and do everything she'd done for him for years, to which he'd later confessed he'd never paid the slightest attention. Straightening the situation out with Sara's mother could wait until morning. And figuring out what, if anything, could be straightened out with her father as well.
Then, sometime that night, whatever may have been straightened out became an inextricable entanglement. So much more complicated. Or simpler. She'd asked if what they'd done was the same as married people did at night. And he'd told her he supposed it was. So, she'd concluded they must be married. And that was what her father had wanted, not that it mattered. There'd been no more of a ceremony planned for her and her intended. Her father would have handed her over to whatever fate had awaited her, the man would have taken her home to his bed, and she would be his wife. So, why wouldn't she now be married to Sammy? Her mother had promised that Sammy was a better alternative than what she would have had.
Sara's memories of everything her mother told her were muddled. But she'd felt no doubt her mother would be happy, that Sara was happy, and wouldn't be beaten and eventually murdered by the filthy, evil beast her father had arranged for her to marry. And so much more he'd have likely done that she'd thankfully been too naïve to envision.
Sara wasn't sure whether her memories of touring the house were from that evening or a montage of reconstructions of various other memories, blended later with those shared by Sammy. She recalled the bedroom to be hers and it having several times the space of the entire house she'd shared with her father and mother. The attached bathroom with an inside toilet had been a wonder. She'd used one only once before when she'd been a little girl and come to the house to help her mother, even though she'd been instructed to do her business out behind the bushes a distance from the mansion or wait until they returned home to use the privy.
She'd rarely disobeyed or defied her parents, her father out of fear, her mother out of the fear that she'd be disappointed. But she'd been too curious to resist, so she'd perched herself on the seat, just as she would in the privy behind their house, did her business, then pulled the magic lever and watched it all swirl and disappear. She remembered thinking how smooth the seat felt against her behind compared to the rough wood of their outhouse. And there was none of the noxious sludge and smell from below.
There'd also been another toilet that wasn't a toilet that rich women used to wash their hoo-hah. That's what her mother had explained. Hoo-hah was her mother's word for that place between her legs where she peed and later bled and, like the rest of her body, wasn't to touch any more than necessary to bathe. Of course, as she'd nostalgically recalled that earlier experience, she'd unknowingly been about to discover a whole newly enlightened perspective concerning her hoo-hah.
But that little girl she'd once been must have been curious and had questions. Why would rich women need a special toilet to wash their hoo-hah? Didn't rich women bathe every day? Never mind, her mother had likely told her, there was nothing about which Sara would ever need to worry. Eve was still alive then, so there would have been nothing to lead her mother's imagination to envision a life for Sara in that mansion unless it would be to assist her with cooking and cleaning and, perhaps, in time, taking over those duties herself.
The bathroom had many more wonders. The tub was large enough to swim. And with the turn of a dial, a current ran through it, as gentle as that of the tail end of the pool beneath the waterfall, where the stream continued its lazy flow on toward the ocean, or as fierce as where it ran beneath the bridge above. She'd always been terrified that if she ever leaned too far and fell in, she'd be washed over the falls and die. There'd also been an artificial waterfall that poured into the tub from high up on the wall, rain that fell from the ceiling, as gentle as mist, or a torrential downpour, controlled with more buttons, levers, and dials. She recalled later soaking, many times, for as long as she'd like, the water hers alone, clean and as cool or hot as she'd wanted.
Sara remembered going to bed naked. There were clothes offered that Sammy said would fit her, including pajamas and nighties, not just underclothes and a shift, which were all she'd previously slept in. But the underclothes were nothing like anything she'd seen before. There was so little to some that she didn't understand the point of wearing them, so she'd decided not to.
It hadn't been that another woman had worn them. If they had been, Sara was confident her mother would have laundered them well enough that they might as well have been new. Some likely had been brand new and never worn at all. Had there been tags to leave that impression? Still, they'd been Eve's, and Sara felt an instinctive revulsion toward anything of Eve's. Except for Sammy, who couldn't still belong to Eve, given her rejection of him when she'd stepped from the cliff.
Sammy had promised to buy Sara new underwear of her own, any kind she'd like, even garments it would make sense to her to wear rather than being fashionable and sexy. Until then, she'd said, she'd go without, and Sara had been naked since she'd left her clothes on the floor of 'her' house. Long enough earlier that she'd become numb to her initial embarrassment, and, unlike her father's there was something that felt natural and right about Sammy's shy, covert glances at her body that she'd instinctively enjoyed.
Sara remembered she couldn't sleep in the bed Sammy said was hers. The bed would have been comfortable, she was sure. It would have been wonderful compared to anything she'd experienced before. But the bed was larger than the loft where she'd slept at home. There'd been pillows enough to bury her. Blankets enough to suffocate her. Another dial Sammy had shown her, similar to those in the bathroom, would make the blankets warm enough to sweat, as she had in the summer, or cool enough to be chilled until she shook, as she had every night during the winter. Her old bed had been barely long and wide enough to lie on her side with her knees drawn to her chest, which was all she'd ever known and had felt perfect. The new bed had enough room that her mother and father could have slept alongside her, with plenty of room left for Sammy to join them. She'd had no way to understand the strangeness of that thought at the time.
Since Sammy hadn't returned to her room to say Good Night, as she'd expected he would, Sara decided to find him instead. It took her some time to locate his room, walking barefoot and naked, in the dark, with lights occasionally startling her when they flashed on without her touching a thing. She felt lost several times before finally pushing open a door, hearing soft snoring, and assuming the sounds must be his.
She remembered feeling an immediate comfort from the warmth of his body, his bare skin against her own. And from no longer being alone. She'd never felt alone in her old bed and been the only one in it, conscious of her parents only feet away, even if she had felt an irrational fear of encountering her father if she'd needed to use the privy at night. But her old bed had fit her so perfectly that there hadn't been room enough to feel alone. She gave no thought at first that Sammy was also naked, only that he was warm and smelled good.
Then she instinctively reached her arm around him, and her fingers had curious and exploratory independence as she began peacefully drifting to sleep. She woke to a strange, wondrous dream beyond anything she could ever have imagined. Sensations rushed through her body that frightened and thrilled her that she never wanted to stop. Her mother had told her to trust Sammy and do what he asked. Or maybe it had only been for her not to fear what he'd ask. But she no longer cared what anyone had ever told her. She would happily do anything he asked. And he could do whatever he pleased. But please, please, would he, please, do it again? She'd thought she would die, or maybe already had. And heaven was a wondrous, magical, blissful place.