Sam's Letters to Jennifer

by James Patterson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Have you ever gotten a letter that changed your life completely?

Sam's Letters to Jennifer is a novel about that kind of drama. In it, a woman is summoned back to the town where she grew up. And in the house where she spent her most magical years she finds a series of letters addressed to her. Each of those letters is a piece of a story that will upend completely the world she thought she knew - and throw her into a love more powerful than she ever imagined could be possible. Two extraordinary love stories are entwined here, full of hope and pain and emotions that never die down.

Release date: June 28, 2004

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 272

Sample

One



MY TWO-BEDROOM apartment was in a prewar building in Wrigleyville. Danny and I had loved everything about it—the city views, proximity to the real Chicago, the way we’d furnished the place. I was spending more and more time there, “holed up,” my good friends said. They also said I was “married to my job,” “a basket case,” “a hopeless workaholic,” “the new spinster,” and “romantically challenged”—to name just a few of their more memorable jibes. All of them, unfortunately, were true, and I could have added some others to the list.

I was trying not to think about what had happened, but it was hard. For several months after Danny’s death I kept having this terrible, obsessive thought: I can’t breathe without you, Danny.

Even after a year and a half I had to force myself not to think of the accident, and everything that happened after it.

I had finally begun to date—Teddy, a tall-drink-of-water editorial writer from the Trib; sportsaholic Mike, whom I met at a Cubs game; Corey, a blind date from the tenth circle of hell. I hated dating, but I needed to move on, right? I had a lot of good friends—couples, single women, a few guys who were just buddies. Really. Honest. I was doing okay, I told everybody, which was mostly crap, and my good friends knew it.

My best friends in the world, Kylie and Danny Borislow, were there for me again and again; I loved Kylie and Danny and I owe them so much.

So, anyhow, my deadline for that day’s incredible, awe-inspiring column in the Tribune was three hours away and I was in a jam. I’d already tossed three ideas into the recycle bin and was staring at a blank screen again. The really tricky thing about writing a “witty” newspaper column is that between Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Dorothy Parker, everything worth saying has already been said, and said better than I could ever say it.

So I pushed myself up from the sofa, put some Ella Fitzgerald on the Bose, and dialed up the air conditioner to high cool. I took a sip of coffee from my Uncommon Ground take-out cup. Found it sooo-ooo good. There is always hope in small things.

Then I paced around the living room in my writer’s outfit du jour: one of Danny’s Michigan U. jogging suits and my lucky red writing socks. I was dragging on a Newport Light, the latest in a string of bad habits I’d picked up lately. Mike Royko once said that you’re only as good as your last column, and that’s the truth that dogs me. That and my anorexic twenty-nine-year-old editor, Debbie, a former London tabloid reporter who wears Versace everything and Prada everything else with her Morgenthal Frederics glasses.

The point is, I really care about the column. I work hard to be original, make the words sing on occasion, and get the work in on time, without fail.

So I hadn’t answered the phone that had been ringing on and off for hours. I had cursed at it a couple of times, though.

It’s hard to be fresh three times a week, fifty weeks a year, but, of course, that’s the job the Trib pays me to do. And in my case, the job is also pretty much my life.

Funny, then, how many readers write to say that my life is so glamorous, they’d like to swap places—wait, was that an idea?

The sudden crash behind my head was Sox, my year-old mostly tabby cat, knocking The Devil in the White City down from a bookshelf. That startled Euphoria, who’d been snoozing on the very typewriter F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly wrote Tender Is the Night on. Or something like that. Maybe Zelda wrote Save Me the Last Waltz on it?

And when the phone rang again, I grabbed it.

When I realized who was on the line, a shock ran through me. I called up an old picture of John Farley, a family friend from Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. The minister’s voice cracked when he said hello and I had the strange sensation that he was crying.

“It’s Sam,” he said.

Two



I GRIPPED the phone receiver tightly with both hands. “What’s wrong?”

I heard him suck in a breath before he spoke again. “Ah, there’s no good way to tell you this, Jennifer. Your grandmother has taken a fall,” he told me. “It’s not good.”

“Oh, no!” I said, and sent my thoughts out to Lake Geneva, a resort community about an hour and a half north of Chicago. Lake Geneva was where I’d spent most of the summers of my childhood, some of the best times of my life.

“She was all alone in the house, so no one knows for sure what happened,” he continued. “Just that she’s in a coma. Can you come up to the lake, Jennifer?”

The news was a jolt. I’d just spoken to Sam two days before. We’d joked about my love life and she’d threatened to send me a box of anatomically approximate gingerbread men. Sam is a comedian, always has been.

It took me all of five minutes to change my clothes and throw a few things into a duffel bag. It took me a little longer than that to catch and cage Euphoria and Sox for an unexpected journey.

Then I was gunning the old Jag up Addison Street, heading toward I-94 North. The ’96 Jaguar Vanden Plas is a midnight blue sedan that was our pride and joy, Danny’s and mine. It’s a handsome thing with a quirky detail; the car has dual gas tanks.

I was trying to think about everything but Sam. My grandmother was the only one I had left now, the only family.

Sam was my best friend after my mother died when I was twelve. Her own marriage to Grandpa Charles made me and everyone else want whatever it was that they had. My grandfather wasn’t the easiest guy to get to know, but once you broke through to him, he was great. Danny and I had toasted and roasted them at their fiftieth-anniversary gala at the Drake. Two hundred friends stood to applaud when my seventy-one-year-old grandfather dipped Sam low and kissed her passionately on the dance floor.

When Grandpa Charles retired from his legal practice, he and Sam stayed at Lake Geneva more than in Chicago. After a while, they didn’t get so many visitors. Even fewer came after my grandfather died four years ago and she moved to the lake full-time. When that happened, people said that Sam would die soon, too.

But she didn’t. She’d been doing fine—until now.

At about 8:15 I got on Route 50 West and took it to 12, a local two-laner that skirts Lake Geneva—the BPOE, “best place on earth.” After three miles, I turned off 12 onto Route NN. Lakeland Medical Center was just a couple of minutes away and I tried to prepare myself.

“We’re close, Sam,” I whispered.

Three



REALLY BAD THINGS happen in threes, I was thinking as I arrived at the Lakeland Medical Center. Then I tried to banish the thought from my mind. Don’t go there, Jennifer.

I got out of the car and started uphill to the main entrance. I remembered that many years before, I had been there to have a fishing hook removed from just above my eyebrow. I was seven at the time, and it was Sam who brought me.

Once I was inside, I tried to get my bearings, taking in the horseshoe-shaped ICU with patients’ rooms on three sides. The head nurse, a thin, fortyish woman with pink-framed glasses, pointed out my grandmother’s room. “We’re so glad you’re here,” she said. “I enjoy your column, by the way. We all do.”

“Thank you,” I said, and smiled. “You’re very kind. That’s nice to hear.”

I walked quickly down the corridor to Sam’s room. I slid the door open and entered. “Oh, Sam,” I whispered the second I saw her. “What happened to you?”

It was so awful to see the tubes in her arms and the banks of beeping medical equipment. But at least Sam was alive. Though she looked diminished and gray, and as fragile as a dream.

“It’s Jennifer,” I whispered. “I’m here now. I’m right here.” I took her hand in mine. “I know you can hear me. I’ll do the talking for now. I’m going to keep talking until you open your eyes.”

After a few minutes, I heard the door slide open behind me. I turned to see the Reverend John Farley. His thick white hair was askew, his smile tremulous. He was still a handsome man, though stooped now. “Hello, Jennifer,” he whispered, and welcomed me with a warm hug.

We walked out into the hallway and suddenly I was remembering how close he had been to my grandparents.

“It’s so good to see you. What have you heard about Sam?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Well, she hasn’t opened her eyes, and that’s not a good sign, Jennifer. I’m sure Dr. Weisberg will have more to tell you tomorrow. I’ve been here most of the day, ever since I heard.”

Then he . . .