Chapter 4
Four
brOOKS
The sound of Hershel’s truck pulling away leaves with it a quiet that’s ominous.
I stand in the mudroom, hand braced against the wall, waiting for something to happen. My forearm is throbbing from the gash I took when the truck went sideways. The right side of my body is protesting in a way it hasn’t in years.
And around me, there’s nothing but silence.
I wait for a raised voice from the kitchen. Maybe a cabinet door slammed a little too hard.
As I kick my boots off, grimacing with the ache racing up my body, I wait for Sam to step in behind me and tell me what an absolute idiot I was for ignoring her call. Because she’d be right.
Leaving the safety of the mudroom, I look for her.
“Sam?”
Nothing but silence.
The house is too damned big. We bought it after the success of Storm Posse. Sam and I had run around like little kids in an 80s movie marveling at the fact that we owned this.
Now it just feels too empty, despite all the stuff we’ve accumulated inside it over the years.
I walk slowly upstairs. Not so much because I’m afraid of what I’ll find, though there’s a little bit of that, but because ignoring that call came with more than just regrets. It came with aches and pains that no amount of ibuprofen is going to touch.
The bedroom door is ajar. Not fully open, but not closed either. I push it open and see her. She’s standing at the foot of the bed. Before her, a suitcase is open.
She’s folding a shirt and placing it gingerly inside.
Around her, I clock the missing pieces. Her phone charger is gone from the nightstand.
The little green makeup bag she takes when we travel is already tucked into an open corner.
She doesn’t bother to look up, just reaches for a pair of jeans and packs those, too.
And despite all these clues, I can’t make any damned sense of it.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She doesn’t bother to look up. She just grabs a t-shirt that’s sitting beside the suitcase and begins folding it, placing it inside the suitcase.
“Packing.”
“I can see that. Why?”
Finally, she stops, looking up at me, and I see it. I see every tear that no doubt slid down her face as she made her way to me. I see the hurt so bared before me that it makes me ache in a way that the accident couldn’t.
“I’m leaving, Brooks.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. You’re not leaving, Sam. This isn’t what I want.”
She laughs, shaking her head and goes back to packing. I want to take the suitcase and fling it across the room. My hand itches so badly to do it that I have to curl my already aching fingers into a fist to stop myself.
“For the past two years, I’ve been doing what you want, Brooks. I’ve let you take me out of that truck. I’ve let you replace me.”
“I’ve never replaced you, Sam.”
She stops again, looking back at me, and for a second I see her. My defiant Sammy Girl. The one who’d fight with a fence post if she felt like it was on the wrong side of the argument. Part of me is triumphant to see her again.
Then her face falls, and she’s gone just as quickly as I glimpsed her.
“Tonight, I told you that you needed to take that turn earlier than you did.”
I close my eyes because I can hear her voice in my head. The voice of reason, just like she always is, telling me the very thing that would have saved all the agony that I’m going through.
Then there’s that other voice. The one reminding me that ignoring Sam’s call could’ve killed both me and Luci.
There’s a version of that moment where I walk away and a young woman just starting out doesn't. I would’ve had to look her parents in the eye and tell them their daughter was dead because I was too busy throwing a jealous fit over another man touching my wife.
That I was willing to make a stupid, potentially deadly decision because I wanted to punish my wife for what? Another man fixing her headset?
And then, despite all the stupidity of the evening, I still want to know why he felt so comfortable doing that.
“I had to sit there and listen to you ignore my call, Brooks. When I heard you say her name…”
She trails off and the look of hurt on her face…
If you come at her accusing her of something you don’t have proof of, it’s just going to hurt her.
Well, good job, Brooks. That seems like all you’re capable of these days. Hurting her.
“But then I heard everything go sideways,” she continues. “And yeah, I was mad before, but I told myself, God, whoever, just let him be okay. We can fix this. Whatever’s wrong with us, we can fix it.”
She swipes at her face, brushing a tear away. I step toward her and she backs up, shaking her head.
“Too late,” she says.
“It’s never too late, Sam.”
She picks something off the dresser. I can’t even figure out what she’s tossing in at this point. Everything’s going sideways and I’m helpless to stop any of it. She slams the top of the suitcase closed, zipping it. The sound is so loud, so final, that I feel like screaming.
“I walked into that clinic ready to tell you I love you, because God help me, I still do. I walked into that clinic ready to tell you that whatever it takes to fix us, let’s do it, because the world just gave you back to me and you were all I need.”
She places her hand on the suitcase looking up at me. “And then she was in your arms.”
“Sam, that’s not?—“
“It wasn’t enough that she was in that truck cab with you. Now she’s in your arms, her face against your chest, like she belongs there.”
“She was scared.”
“I was scared!”
Good. She’s mad. She’s angry. This I can work with.
“I was scared, Brooks! I needed to be the one you held. And I sure as hell didn’t need to hear you tell her that you wouldn’t have made it through without her.”
Tell her, you idiot. Tell her that when that truck went over, the only thing you could think of was that you were glad she wasn’t in the cab with you. Because if that storm took you out, at least it didn’t take her out with you.
“Sam.”
“What, Brooks? What are you going to say now? What can you say to make any of this better? Tell me.”
“Sam.”
“Tell me!”
“I don’t want you in that truck with me! Is that what you want to hear, Sam? I’d rather it be Luci in the truck with me! Is that what you want me to say?”
For a split second, it looks as if I’ve physically slapped Sam. My heart splits in my chest at the sight.
And then, something far worse happens. Her face changes. The hurt is gone and replacing it is something cold and foreign. Something I don’t recognize.
It scares the hell out of me.
I want the angry Sam back. I want anything back.
“Thank you, Brooks. That’s all I needed to hear.”
She picks up the suitcase, the case banging against her leg as it slides off the bed. The whole thing seems to happen in slow motion. Her walking out of the room, disappearing down the hall.
“Sam, wait…”
I follow after her, the ache in my body a far second to the ache in my chest.
She’s already reached the mudroom by the time I catch up.
“Sam.”
“You need someone in the truck with you. It’s just not me anymore. It’s her.”
Tell her, you idiot. Tell her that there are mornings you wake up gasping and reaching for her because you’re afraid she’s gone.
Tell her that knowing she’s back there at command and not out on the road is sometimes the only thing that makes the fear go away.
Tell her that nearly everyday you can still hear her crying in that tiny hospital room and that everything you’ve done since then is to make sure she never has to hurt like that again.
I open my mouth to say all of that.
What comes out instead is, “This isn’t how this was supposed to be.”
She laughs and it’s another first, because I’ve never heard a laugh like that from Sam. It’s the kind of laugh someone makes when every bit of humor in their life has died.
“Funny. I’ve been thinking the very same thing.”
She turns, opening the door. This is it, Brooks. This is where you have one last chance to fix it.
“Where are you going?” I ask instead because if there’s one thing I’m determined to prove tonight, it’s that I’m the biggest fool that ever lived.
“Petra’s.”
“Don’t drive tonight. Just…wait.”
“I’ve been waiting for two years, Brooks,” she says, and she sounds so utterly resigned that something in my heart just…gives. “I can’t keep waiting for you to decide that I’m worth fighting for.”
“That’s not?—“
“Enjoy your life with Luci.”
And then she’s out the door.
It’s still raining. That’s the useless thought I have as I watch the love of my life walk toward her SUV and disappear inside.
I stand there, useless and lost, as the headlights flip on and the engine starts. My insides are shouting, screaming at me to do anything. Throw myself on top of the hood. Run out and beg her to give me another chance.
But all I do is stand there and watch.
None of this was how it was supposed to go. None of it. I meant for her to be safe. To never go through that hurt again. Even if she had to find comfort in another man. Even if she never understood, she would be safe.
And now, I’m watching the tail lights pull away from the home where we once planned to have family dinners.
The home where we one time consumed three bags of Halloween candy because we had absolutely no trick-or-treaters and then made love in the living room floor with the candy papers crinkling beneath us.
That woman is disappearing down the road, her taillights becoming faint until the dark swallows them completely.
“Sammy Girl,” I say, as if she can hear me.
You stupid fool.
I close the door and lean against it, going over every ignorant decision I’ve made today.
And they all come down to one thing: I held on so tight that eventually, she slipped through my fingers.
And I have no idea how I’m ever going to get her back.