Chapter Twenty-Five
Samantha
“This isn’t going to be easy. Not for you or for me.”
“Just tell me, Jack.”
“It’s about Carrie. We listened to the conversation Jingles recorded. We also had Billy break into your old house and grab a few items we could fingerprint.”
“What? Why?” I didn’t understand why they needed fingerprints.
“Baby, Carrie isn’t who she says she is.”
I looked at Jack. I heard his words, but I didn’t understand them. I have known Carrie for years.
“At the party, the sheriff saw Carrie.”
“He asked me about her. He seemed interested,” I recalled.
“He was, but not for the reason you thought. He recognized Carrie, but he couldn’t remember where from. He knew her name wasn’t Carrie, though.”
“Jack, that doesn’t make sense.”
“Let’s sit down. I have a blanket in my saddlebag. This is going to take a while.” Jack took a deep breath before walking to his bike and digging through the bag attached to the side.
He walked back over and spread the blanket down in front of a large rock. He sat down, leaning his back against the rock, and held his hand out to me. Taking it, I sat down with him. He guided me to sit between his legs, with my back against his chest.
“What do you know about Carrie’s past? Before you met her?” he asked.
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “She told me she was from up north. Her parents passed away after she graduated from high school, and she had been on her own since then.”
I sat forward and turned to Jack.
“Oh God, what did you find?”
Jack told me everything they had found on Carrie. Or rather, Marsha Wade. I sat there, unable to form a sentence. I had left my daughter with a woman who had tried to kill her own child.
“Oh God, Jack. She was with Charlie every day. What if she was hurting her? I have to be the world’s worst mother.”
“I think we know for a fact that isn’t true, Sammy.” He deadpanned. “We can talk to Charlie if we need to, but first, how often did Charlie need to see the doctor?”
I thought back over the past four years. Trying to remember anything that seemed suspicious.
“Her first two years she went every few months, but I think that’s normal. It was the doctor’s office that made those appointments. By the time she turned two, they had slowed down, and she had a checkup once a year.”
“What about illnesses, injuries?” he asked carefully.
“She hasn’t been sick enough to require any extra visits, nothing more than a cold or a stomach bug.”
“That’s good,” he said, “What about injuries?”
“She has had bumps and bruises, but I think that’s normal, too. Most of them were when she started walking. Cuts and scrapes from playing outside.”
Jack released a deep sigh. “Thank God.” He wrapped his arms around me tight. I felt his breath on my neck as he breathed deeply.
“I don’t think she has done anything to Charlie. Her motivation would be attention.”
“She never wanted attention. Carrie hates being in public more than me. She never wanted Charlie around others.”
“We’re working on the premise that it’s Charlie she’s obsessed with. Otherwise, when you got close to the girls, she would have wanted to move on. Plus, it wasn’t until I found out Charlie was mine that the notes started up again.”
“The notes? The notes were from Derek,” I reminded him .
“Baby, did you ever see any of the notes?”
I stared at him, confused.
Of course I had, I…wait, hadn’t I?
I thought about all the places we had been the last four years since leaving Arkansas. Carrie told me about the notes, but she never actually showed them to me.
“No,” I whispered.
“In the recording from the coffee shop, Carrie told you that Derek had been in Nebraska for weeks. That was a lie. Nav has been keeping track of him and he hasn’t missed a day of work. He isn’t here.”
I understood the words he was saying, but they didn’t make sense.
“Carrie has been manipulating you,” he continued. “Any time she felt like Charlie would be taken from her, she told you a note came and you moved.”
“I never questioned her. I thought she was my friend. That she cared about me.” My words were for me. I spoke them out loud, but I wasn’t talking to Jack. Sometimes you had to hear the words out loud for them to register in your brain. “I was so stupid. I just blindly trusted her. Oh God, she could have hurt Charlie; she could have hurt me to get Charlie.”
“Sammy.”
Jack’s voice was as thin as a whisper. My focus wasn’t on him. I was stuck in my head with my guilt. I felt like guilt was the only emotion I had been feeling for the past five years. I knew what I did with Jack was wrong. I did it anyway.
“He was right. I was selfish. I only thought about myself and my feelings. Not how my actions would affect others,” I muttered.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Who said you were selfish?”
The sudden anger in Jack’s voice pulled me from my self-deprecation. I turned back toward Jack.
“What?” I asked.
“Who said you were selfish? ”
“Jack, no, you can’t be mad at him. He was right.”
“He doesn’t get to talk to an old lady like that.” He growled.
“Jack.” I placed my hand on his cheek. “I’m not an old lady.”
“I don’t fucking care. He doesn’t get to talk to you like that.”
“Let it be. Promise me you won’t make an issue out of it.”
“Sammy—”
“Promise me, Jack.”
He took a deep breath and looked at the sky. I could see the battle he was fighting. He wanted to give me what I asked for, but he also wanted to punish his brother. He couldn’t have both.
“Jack.”
With his eyes focused on mine, he sat there, just looking at me. Saying nothing. After a minute, he finally spoke.
“You know I don’t want to tell you no, but I can’t promise that, Sammy. There are rules.”
“I didn’t mean to tell you,” I mumbled.
“I know.” He let out a deep sigh. “You need to tell me. It’s about respect, Sammy.”
“I won’t tell you, Jack. I won’t tattle because someone said something that was true. Let it be.”
“Sammy.” He growled.
“Jack, please. If I have any hope of becoming your old lady, then I need to prove myself to them. Telling you that someone said something mean but true, is not how I earn their respect.”
I saw the moment he relented. I watched his eyes soften at my words.
“Ok, Sammy. I get it.” He pulled me back into his chest and wrapped his arms around me.
“What are we doing, Jack?”
“We talked about it in church this morning. We’re working on a plan to find Carrie.”
“No, Jack. I mean, you and me, what are we doing?” I asked.
I felt him stiffen behind me. I didn’t know how to read that. I laid there against him and waited for him to answer.
“I love you, Sammy,” he whispered.
“I love you too, Jack. But is that enough? ”
“I don’t know, Sammy. No one ever taught me about love. I didn’t have parents to teach me right from wrong.”
“I had parents, Jack. They didn’t teach me about love,” I explained. “Charlie taught me about love. From the moment I knew she existed, everything I thought I knew about love was wrong.”
I sat forward and turned back to look at Jack. I wanted him to look into my eyes when I told him this.
“My whole life, I had been told that the love you feel for your partner differed from the love you feel for your child. But it’s not true, Jack,” I said, shaking my head.
“Once I knew she existed, my whole life became about her. I took a backseat to her. Her wants, her needs, her emotions, they were all more important than mine. I would sacrifice my entire world to make sure she was happy and loved and wanted.”
I turned around more and sat on my knees between his legs. My hands rested on his thighs.
“That is how I feel about you, Jack. I would give up everything to make sure you felt happy, and loved, and wanted.”
“I’ve never felt wanted,” he whispered solemnly. “My parents didn’t want me. They left me at a fire station. None of my foster parents wanted me, either. Every time I got sick, they gave me back. I learned early on that if I made people feel good, they would keep me around. So I became the funny guy.”
“I wanted you, Jack. I chose you.”
“You chose me because I looked like your husband.”
Huffing, he stood up and walked toward the edge.
I closed my eyes, dropping my chin to my chest.
Standing up, I walked over and wrapped my arms around him from behind. I laid my head against his back.
“You’re right, Jack. I did pick you because you looked so similar to Derek. That was what drew me to you, initially. That wasn’t why I went through with it, though. And that isn’t why I am standing here with you now.”
Jack turned in my arms and scowled down at me.
“You are standing here with me now because I found out about Charlie by accident. Not because you wanted me.”
Grabbing my biceps, he leaned me away from him.
“I forgave you for everything, Sammy. I have loved you since that first night. I never thought I would see you again. Then suddenly, there you were. In my town. And I tried, I tried so fucking hard to make you a part of my life. But you didn’t want me.”
“I did, Jack!” I cried. “I wanted you, but I was so afraid. The only person I had ever been with was a man who convinced me he wanted me, that he loved me. And then when I questioned one thing, he hurt me. He hurt me so badly that he almost killed my child—your child!”
I didn’t know how to make him understand. My choices weren’t about him, they were about me. I stepped back from him.
“Let me ask you a question, Jack. If your mother was standing before you right now, offering you everything you had missed out on. Would you trust her? Would you take her at her word after walking away from you once already when you needed her most? Would you trust her with Charlie?”
“Sammy,” he sighed.
“No, Jack. Tell me. Would you accept her immediately?”
“No,” he answered begrudgingly, after several moments of silence.
“Then can you understand why I held back? As soon as you met Charlie, I never tried to keep her from you. And when I saw the way you were with her, I let myself have you, too. But at first, I had to protect her. I had to protect myself.”
I walked up to him and placed my hands on his cheeks. His hands went to my hips, and he squeezed.
“I want you, Jack. I want you, me, and Charlie to be a family.”
“I want that too, Sammy. But I need you to trust me. I need you to tell me when something hurts you or scares you. I want to experience every moment with you. I want to protect you from the bad ones just as much as I want to celebrate the good ones.”
“I was wrong, Jack. I know that now. I never should have agreed to meet Carrie alone. And I understand why you had Jingles following me. I don’t love it, but I understand it. I can’t promise I will always trust you with everything. At least not right away. But I can promise you that I will do everything I can to try.”
“I love you, Sammy.”
Jack leaned down and kissed me tenderly. His hands tightened more on my hips as he pulled me against him. My arms went up around his neck and I held him to me.
“Will you tell me who called you selfish?” he murmured against my lips.
I pulled back and laughed. “Not a chance.”