Chapter 18 #3
“I think we can skip it,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, but a little pleased in spite of himself. “After all, it’s not like I didn’t nearly get him killed in—”
“Oh, what happened when you were teenagers was his fault,” Deb snaps, sounding as annoyed as she always has whenever this comes up.
It occurs to Sam, for the first time in thirteen years, that maybe she was annoyed for him—not, as he’d assumed at the time, upset that it had happened at all, and all but forced her to take him in.
“He said as much to you himself, didn’t he?
It was on him and that idiot in the other car, and you took the collateral damage.
I really could kill him, you know, for that more than for any of the rest of it.
For a while there I was sure you’d never get over it. ”
“I’m not sure I ever did,” Sam admits, letting out a shaky breath. “Sometimes it feels like I’m still that kid, you know?”
“Nah,” Deb says, and throws him a smile, so sudden and bright and proud that Sam has to blink abruptly stinging eyes. “You’re not. I know you’re not. It’s what I’m doing here, actually, if you want to get down to brass tacks.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only one thing you really could have done differently,” Deb says, with a little shrug.
“Back then, I mean. One choice you could have made that might—and only might—have changed the way things played out. You could have asked for help. You could have called your parents, or me, or the cops.”
“I know,” Sam groans, the old shame washing over him again. “I know, I know, I’ve thought about it a hundred times—”
Deb cuts him off by holding up an imperious hand.
“I was speaking, Samuel, and I’d rather die than let a man talk over me, even you.
” Eyeballing him and apparently finding him suitably chastened, she continues: “I’m not trying to rub your nose in it, kid.
I’m saying, that’s what you could have done, and you didn’t do it, because you were a child and you didn’t know any better, and also because that’s your gap. ”
Sam’s brow furrows. “My what?”
“Your gap.” Deb’s expression goes soft, and she glances at the photo of her wife on the desk.
“This is one of Talya’s pet theories: Everybody has at least one big, loadbearing gap, a place where something important is supposed to be but isn’t.
Hers, for example, is tact: She’s going to tell you the facts even if doing that is horribly, breathtakingly rude.
Me? I don’t have anything where my middle gears are supposed to go—I’m cool or I’m furious, but there’s nothing in between.
And you, Sam: You don’t ask for help. Even when you really need it. Especially when you really need it.”
“I… don’t, do I.” It’s not a question; Sam realizes it’s true, horribly, undeniably true, even as he says it. “I don’t ask for help. God. I never ask for help.”
“Nope!” Deb’s voice is bright again, a cheer in it that Sam can’t quite parse.
“It was my biggest concern about letting you take over this place, in fact: Sometimes, everyone needs a little help, especially in this industry. No faster road to ruin than refusing to admit no deli is an island, and I couldn’t bear to watch you drive the place into the ground over something small and stupid, something that would be fixable if you could just reach out. Too sad; too wasteful.”
“But,” Sam says, his own tone filling up with despair, “but if that’s my gap, then we should just give the whole thing up, right? You take it all back over? Because—”
“Hush. We’re not going to do that,” Deb says.
Her smile now is so happy; Sam doesn’t understand at all.
“Because do you know what you did, Sammy, when business got bad? You talked to Joanie; you asked around for advice; you let that little turd help you, even though it was his fault to begin with. You called me. It’s hard, you know, to close a gap, but you cared about this place enough to get over yourself, and that’s worth more to me than any numbers.
My mom would have told you the same.” She puts her feet down at last, leans across the desk, and takes his hand.
“That’s why it’s your place now, kid. Not probationary: yours.
I’ve seen what I needed to see. That’s why I came to town, to let you know, and get the paperwork started. ”
Sam stares at her for a long time. Then, ashamed by the way his voice cracks on it, he demands, “Really?”
Deb nods, looking desperately pleased with herself.
“Retirement suits me, and responsibility suits you. It’s time.
” She glances around, her nose wrinkling, and adds, “I’ll tell you what—you better let me take some of this stuff with me.
It’s creepy, you sitting here all day staring at a picture of my wife. ”
Sam thinks for a second that he’s going to cry; instead he nods, and then bursts out laughing.
All this time trying to preserve the place in amber, to ensure he never made a wrong step.
He never, he realizes as he calms down, really believed this would happen.
He’d kept it all as it was, afraid of changing a single thing, so it would be ready when Deb asked for it back, and kindly but firmly told him he’d failed.
He didn’t fail. He didn’t fail. The truth of it settles into his bones as he thanks Deb and hugs her and stares a minute too long at the + Sam Adelson! Post-it on his door.
And as it does, little plans he never even let himself notice he was making begin to unfold, one by one, from a previously locked drawer in the back of his mind.