Chapter Eight #2
“No. I know. Family therapy for the win,” he said, heavy with sarcasm. But he looked absolutely miserable. “We probably need some time apart anyway but please call me if she gets to be too much. I’ll get someone to cover my shift. I’ll…”
She put her hands on his arms, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “I’ve got this, Gard.” She needed to impress that upon him. She could do this. For Sammy. For him.
He smiled. Or tried. “Thanks.”
He didn’t pull his arms away from her hands and he just looked so damn miserable—and exhausted—she didn’t know what else to do except step closer, move those hands up his arms and around, and…just offer a supportive, platonic hug.
He seemed so alone right in this moment, and God knew she understood being alone, standing alone, handling it all alone.
His uniform was stiff. She could feel the hard press of his vest underneath the shirt. He smelled like laundry detergent. He felt tall and strong and so sturdy, but she knew he wasn’t feeling all that sturdy right now.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said reassuringly, taking an awkward step back. Why had she given him a hug?
“Can I get that in writing?” he asked, a tiny bit of humor in his eyes that were otherwise very direct and very blue.
Her stomach jittered. Not that usual, easy flirty attraction. No, this was far more complicated a feeling. She knew this was all dangerous. She could feel it in every reaction inside of her, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“I need you to call me if things get to be too much though, okay?” he said, oh so seriously. “Promise me.”
“All right. I promise.” But she also promised herself there wouldn’t be any too much. No matter how bad it got.
He nodded. “Good. I’ll be back at three.” He shot one helpless look in the direction of the kitchen then shook his head. “Good luck in there.”
“Thanks.”
Gard strode out. And Lia gave herself a minute, because her heart felt…weird and bruised in what was not a totally bad way. She just didn’t understand what way it was.
When Lia forced herself to go into the kitchen, Albennie had her headphones on and was kneading dough.
Sammy was staring at the open dishwasher.
Her first job of the day was to empty it, but she wasn’t doing that.
She was just standing. Staring. A step up from looking at her phone, but only a step up.
“Do you want me to help you with that?”
Sammy fixed her with the most scathing glare. “I think I can handle unloading dishes, thanks.”
The morning went a lot like that. Sammy dawdling—not in her normal ways though. There was no texting, no internet videos. There was a lot of standing around staring off into space. But if Lia suggested a job, or asked if she needed help, Sammy snapped her head off with cutting teenage sarcasm.
The bakery was packed today, like everyone had decided to enjoy one last outdoor day before winter swept in. Sammy refused to work the register, even though that was usually one of her favorite things to do.
“Oh, I didn’t know we got to just decide to not do part of our jobs,” Albennie said under her breath. Lia pretended not to hear it.
Hoping to maintain peace, Lia set Sammy up with a recipe to try while Lia went and manned the register. Almost an hour passed before she had a breath to pop in and check up on what was going on in the kitchen.
Albennie had her headphones on, shaping rolls. Sammy was standing next to the mixer, which was moving at high speed. But…she was crying.
Lia rushed over. “What’s wrong?”
“I ruined it,” Sammy said, shaking her head. “I accidentally did tablespoons. I’m such an idiot.”
Lia turned off the mixer, gave Sammy’s shoulder a squeeze. “No big deal. It happens.”
“It is a big deal. I ruined it! It’s all…ruined.” She was sobbing now, and Lia didn’t know what else to do but wrap her arms around Sammy and hold on. Albennie shot her a questioning look over Sammy’s head, headphones around her neck now, but Lia didn’t know what to do or how to explain.
“I’ve got the front if you want to…” Albennie gestured outside with her chin.
Lia nodded and started guiding Sammy out the back door. The wind was whipping around, cold and biting. So she led Sammy over to her car and gently nudged the girl into the passenger seat.
When she got into the driver’s side, Sammy was leaning back in her seat. Her face was red and blotchy and wet, but it seemed like she’d actively stopped sobbing.
“Your car smells,” she said in a squeaky voice.
“Sammy, sweetheart, I know you’re having a hell of a time, and you’re upset about your mom. You get to be that. And if you want to take it out on me? That’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.”
Sammy closed her eyes, looking exhausted and wrung out. “Whatever.”
They sat in silence for a while. Lia handed Sammy a tissue and eventually she blew her nose, clearly starting to calm down. When she opened her eyes, she stared outside. “Why can’t I be enough?” she asked, a few more tears trailing down her cheeks.
Lia didn’t have any answers, because that had been a question she’d spent most of her life haunted by. Why can’t I be enough? To make someone stay. Or care. Or anything.
Lia wanted to tell Sammy that she was enough. That she wasn’t defined by the adults in her life or their decisions. She wanted to say a lot of things, but she knew from experience in a dark moment all those things just felt like platitudes.
She wanted to give Sammy something more than that. Something real and honest.
“You know, my parents…they died before I remember. And they’d lost custody of me even before that.”
Sammy blinked over at her. There was some suspicion in that gaze, so Lia figured she had to lay it out. Really out. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to, but none of these details were going to…fully give her past away.
“They were addicts. I’m not sure if they ever had custody of me, but if they did, it was brief.
I was told I was with a grandparent when I was a baby, but then when I was two or three, I had to go live with my dad’s brother and his wife.
They always made sure I knew what happened to my parents—no sugarcoating there.
” Though Lia decided to sugarcoat a little by not mentioning to Sammy her parents had died of overdoses.
“My aunt and uncle called them junkies. I always hated that.”
Lia didn’t expect Sammy to say anything to that, but she still paused, because she wasn’t sure what she was trying to explain. Just that she understood. Just that…it wasn’t as bad as the moment felt.
She knew. She knew.
“They were dead by the time I was old enough to understand, so there was no hope of them coming back. I don’t know how it feels to deal with recovery and relapses. I won’t pretend to. But I do understand that feeling of not being enough for anybody, because in that regard I never was.”
“Was your uncle nice?” Sammy asked quietly.
“No. He was horrible. So was my aunt. So were my cousins. Not a one of them ever treated me like anything other than a burden on her way to being a junkie, just like her parents.” She left out the part where she’d run away from it all at fifteen.
Sammy probably didn’t need any ideas in her head about running away.
“So you’re saying I should be grateful I have Gard,” Sammy said darkly.
“No,” Lia replied. She wanted to say that, but she understood in dark moments people suggesting gratefulness never went over well.
Besides, gratefulness often meant having the experience to realize you should be—and that was tough for any fifteen-year-old.
“No, you don’t have to be grateful, Sammy.
You got dealt a terrible hand. You get to feel that.
Having a decent adult in your life doesn’t mean you can’t be pissed off about the ones you don’t have or the ways they’ve failed you. Because it’s their failure. Not yours.”
Sammy wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hands. “I keep trying to…accept it. That’s what Matilda says. The goal is not change. It’s acceptance.”
Lia didn’t know who Matilda was, but she nodded along, letting Sammy talk.
“Mom’s always going to do this. She’s always going to disappoint me. I’ll never be enough to make her change, but things had been so good for so long, I forgot how to protect myself.”
Lia reached out, wiped some of Sammy’s tears off her cheeks herself. “There’s protecting yourself and there’s shutting down. Don’t shut down. This sucks, and it hurts, but don’t forget there are things that don’t.”
“Izzy and I…talk about it sometimes. Izzy’s mom is the same, except…
Izzy never really loved her mom because she was awful.
And Sarabeth’s dad was actually terrible too.
I know that’s worse, but…they get to hate the bad adult in their life.
I just love mine. And I want her to come home, but she won’t.
Not for me. And I know, I know, it’s not about me.
It’s about her. And drugs, but… I want her to come home.
I want to be enough for her to make that choice, even if that’s not… what it’s about.”
Lia was quiet for a few moments, because Sammy was certainly more mature than Lia had been at fifteen.
Of course, Lia had been…in a much worse situation without any responsible adults.
But maybe that meant Sammy was ready to hear some things Lia had been forced to learn on her own, in her early twenties instead of her teens.
“That feeling you have of not being enough? I don’t know that it ever goes totally away, at least for me.
But the more I have pursued the things I love and surrounded myself with people I love who love me back, the less it hurts, the less it matters.
It’s still there, it’s still a truth in my darkest moments. But it’s not the only thing.”
Sammy looked over at Lia then. Lia didn’t know if she’d really absorbed the words, but she seemed to consider them. So Lia went for broke.
“This is your life, not hers. You can’t control her. Or anyone. But you can control you. So build a life that makes you happy. And when you’re sad, there will be people there to hold your hand.”
“If I don’t treat them like crap,” Sammy said, somewhat sarcastically.
Lia wanted to give her a smile, but… “I think you know your uncle will be holding your hand no matter how badly you treat him. But treating him like crap won’t make you feel any better, so you might as well try not to.”
Sammy blew out a long breath. “I just don’t want it to hurt so much.”
Lia took Sammy’s hand in hers. Squeezed. “I know.” There was nothing else to say to that. Didn’t everybody wish that sometimes? But hurt was the human condition, because it was the other side of love.
Sammy reached across the center console and wrapped her arms around Lia and squeezed. So Lia squeezed back.
“I’m so glad I have you,” Sammy said into her shoulder.
Lia had a hard time speaking through the lump in her throat. She hadn’t expected…any of this when she’d offered Sammy a job all those weeks ago. She’d thought she was doing some Good Samaritan thing.
Instead, Sammy was…turning into this bright spot in Lia’s own life, her own heart. “I’m glad I have you too.”
“I’m sorry about today. I just…” Sammy pulled back, tears welling in her eyes again.
“I get it,” Lia said firmly. “Sometimes when it hurts too much, a bad attitude is the only thing we’ve got. But you didn’t ruin anything. Mistakes happen. We’ll start over. No harm. No foul.”
Sammy looked at the bakery’s back entrance through the car window. Lia could see she was dreading going back inside.
Maybe she should force her to face it, but right now she just…wanted to give Sammy anything she wanted.
“You want to go for a drive?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Just…drive.”
“What about the bakery?”
“Albennie can handle it.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Her smile was tremulous, but it was a smile. So Lia texted Albennie, and she and Sammy drove around Bent County, listening to music and just…breathing. They didn’t talk. Didn’t have to.
It was good enough just to be.