AT MAISON BLANCHE:

PART TWO

We jump ahead several months in the story to find Sami still captive at Maison Blanche and now 8 and a half months pregnant.

Chapter 1

Sami sighed with contentment as she cuddled with E.J. in the Jacobean four poster bed and nestled the crown of her head beneath his chin before then tilting her head back to look up at him.

“Good morning,” E.J. said as he leaned in to kiss her forehead and Sami shut her eyes.

Yet when Sami opened her eyes E.J. was gone. She pushed the pillows in her arms away in frustration. It had been another dream. Just like the others.

Slowly and warily she sat up in bed, holding her large stomach with her right hand and tried to wipe the sleep out of her eyes with her left. She couldn’t however, wipe away thoughts of E.J. and the passionate night the two of them shared five months earlier and all the lonely nights since.

She still didn’t understand it as many hours as she had spent crying over it. After the night they shared, Sami was in ecstasy but E.J. told her the next morning it could never happen again. That he would never make love to her again. She was married and he respected her vows too much to allow her to break them again, he said.

Sami laughed as a tear trickled down her cheek as she thought about it. E.J. never cared about those wedding vows before. She was certain he didn’t care about her marriage to Lucas even if he still had no memory of it. She decided E.J. just wasn’t interested in her that way any more.

But the strange thing was E.J. hadn’t totally shut her out. In fact, in most ways he was more attentive than ever. He held her hand and beamed with pride as if he knew the baby was his when Lexie performed the sonogram in the home’s makeshift medical room.

He never stopped spending time with her during those months he continued as her “guard” and they shared childhood stories and read books together and he spent many, many hours trying to teach her how to play chess. He was so patient with her as he attempted to impart basic chess strategy even if he would tease her that the way she played chess was much like the way she lived her life, emotionally and recklessly.

As Sami thought about that playful taunt, she decided it was time to prove E.J. wrong. She had stayed at Maison Blanche long enough hoping that E.J. would remember her and remember his love for her, but if he wasn’t going to be there for her completely she needed to develop a rational, calculated scheme to escape so she could get back to Salem. Even if Lucas wouldn’t forgive her or understand or support her raising this child, she knew her mother would.

Sami immediately thought of Stefano’s diary she had found. Tony had not returned to Maison Blanche in the months since Lucas was there so Sami had not had an opportunity to show him the truth about E.J.’s paternity.

She was also more afraid of revealing the truth to E.J. than ever after getting an up close look at the unbelievably close relationship between Stefano and E.J. that she had witnessed as Stefano’s remarkable recovery from the kidney transplant had allowed him to move about the house on his own and spend many hours a day among them, reading books, listening to music and telling stories, even as he waited for her baby’s umbilical cord blood to be fully restored to health.

Bart and Rolf would not care about the secrets contained in the book, she thought, and they might even destroy it without Tony ever seeing it if Stefano asked them to. She sighed in frustration.

But just then a strange idea popped in her head. It was risky, but she had exhausted all other options. She would have to go to Lexie with the diary and ask her help in escaping Maison Blanche, she thought.

Sure, her relationship with Lexie was just as icy as ever, but Sami had perceived a growing softness in her heart toward E.J. in the months she watched the two of them get to know each other and work together in caring for Stefano. And if Lexie knew about this diary, she could get in contact with Tony, who would be so furious with his father that he would allow both of them to return to their husbands and children in Salem even if it meant Stefano would die.

Sami excitedly opened the trunk and retrieved the diary and hugged it to her chest and smiled to herself.

“I’m sorry this is going to hurt you, E.J., but I need to do what’s best for our baby,” Sami said staring into space.

“Just what is going to hurt me, Samantha?” E.J. asked to Sami’s surprise.

AT ABE'S HOUSE:

“Listen, Abraham. I’ve already told you,” Celeste said as she stood inside the doorway of Lexie and Abe’s home where she had lived since Lexie’s disappearance as she helped Abe raise Theo and nursed Abe through recovery of his latest eye surgery.

“I don’t like missing out on it either, but I’ve got many errands to run today so you and Theo will just have to have a fantastic time at the zoo without me,” Celeste said patting Theo on the head.

“Well, all right,” Abe said kissing Celeste on the cheek before turning his attention to Theo and heading out. “Guess we’ll just have to make the most of guys' day out.”

“I’m sure you will. Good bye,” Celeste said shutting the door behind them and leaning against it sighing with relief that they were finally gone.

Celeste had been dying for a moment like this for months – a moment alone to collect her thoughts. But Celeste had never had that chance between all the hours spent caring for Theo with Lexie gone and then also looking out for Abe during his recent corneal transplant from which he had only now fully recovered.

Recently she began to suspect that Abe may have mistaken her motherly nurturing for something else. Or even worse, she thought, was that Abe might not be mistaken about why she agreed to spend so much time caring for him. There were all these passing glances between them that turned into stares. Or a friendly touch of the shoulder that lasted a little too long. The night before he had even brought her flowers and cooked her dinner. Abe said it was just to thank her for all she had done to care for him and Theo, but Celeste was so relieved when he had to leave to go on a police call before they opened the bottle of wine he had brought.

Celeste knew Lexie was still alive. She felt it in her bones. She just had to find a way to prove that her daughter was alive and bring her back to Salem soon, before she and Abe betrayed her. Celeste sighed again.

Looking out the window, she saw that Abe’s car was gone so the coast was clear and she quickly shut the blinds, locked the door and dimmed the lights. Abe had forbid her from practicing her “dark arts” as he called them in his home, because he said they gave him the creeps. Celeste respected that opinion as she knew this dabbling in the occult had many times brought pain for her and her family, but she also knew it was the only hope she had to try to track Lexie down with all the police leads gone cold. She walked over to the closet and retrieved a shopping bag she had stowed away a few weeks earlier for just a moment like this.

Celeste walked over to the table and lit a red candle at its center before she reached in the bag and pulled out a folded piece of purple cloth. As Celeste unwrapped the handkerchief to retrieve her worn and faded tarot cards, she marveled at how she thought she could still catch a light whiff of Stefano’s old cologne.

She shook her head as she tried to put thoughts of that man out of her mind and grabbed a picture of Lexie out of a desk drawer and laid it in front of the candle and sat down at the table bowing her head and shuffling the cards three times before she spoke.

“Oh spirit world, I come to you in need of an answer about the whereabouts of my daughter, Alexandra,” Celeste said. “Has she joined you or does she remain among the living? Please give her mother the peace of knowing.”

Celeste turned over the first card to reveal the Queen of Swords, a card Celeste knew did not just represent a woman sitting on a throne holding a sword upright but also the abstract concepts of personal emotional loss and separation.

“This is Lexie. She’s alive!” Celeste said excitedly. “Thank you, spirits, for your help, but I have more questions if you have the answers. Tell me, why has my Alexandra not come back to me if she is alive?”

As soon as Celeste said the words she knew her answer instinctively, but still she turned over the next card to confirm it as she looked at The Devil card in front of her.