40. Sam
SAM
Afamiliar tight feeling compresses my chest as I pull the car to a stop in front of a familiar home.
A cottage in the middle of a cul-de-sac, fenced in with barbed wire.
It's noon, but one of the street lights is permanently on, flickering at intervals.
A dog barks from a distance, followed by a man yelling for him to keep it down.
At the edge of the street, the dumpster is overflowing, and people have taken to just dumping their shit beside it, making no effort to get it inside.
Mrs. Freedman used to hate that. She would complain about it all the time, about how no one in this neighborhood took cleanliness seriously. Then she would point out the overgrown lawns and the rusted fences in some of the homes.
Occasionally, she'd gone as far as to put signs up there to tell people to take more pride in their neighborhood. She'd even gone to the city officials complaining about inadequate waste disposal and offered several proposals they could implement to fix that.
All her efforts got her was a lot of ridicule and nastiness from the neighbors. Sometimes, I wondered why she even bothered. She kept her home and her lawn clean, so what did it matter to her that others didn't? Why did it bother her so much?
I never asked, but I think I get it now. It was just an extension of her caring nature. She could never just turn it off the way I do. She couldn’t just pretend not to notice these things.
She had to try, even when it was futile.
Now that she’s gone, everything looks even worse.
I shake my head and glance at the house, my former home.
It still looks the same, at least. Tidy the way she liked it.
Manicured lawns, emptied trash cans. She always told me to warn her if I were ever going to visit, so that she could put out the nice rug and trim the hedges first. As though I cared about the appearances.
As though I were someone worthy of impressing.
I can almost picture her right now, coming through the front doors with a bright smile on her face, waving at me. Happy that I finally came to see her.
I push my lips together and glance at the passenger seat.
Chelsea dozed off sometime during the ride.
I don’t blame her. We ran her ragged last night.
Between that and her morning sickness that suddenly got worse in the last week or so, she must be exhausted.
So much so that I almost feel guilty, even though she initiated sex yesterday and was very much an eager participant.
The good thing is, now that her brother knows about her pregnancy, he's managed to get her to work from home, and we always make sure at least one of us is there with her, so that she doesn’t have to do it alone. This morning we were all there with her.
I held her hair and rubbed her back. Adam brewed some tea to help her nausea, and Jake distracted her with jokes that made her laugh.
One time, he made her laugh so hard she threw up even harder, and some of it got in her nose, which wasn't a fun experience for her.
She told Jake she would kill him after she was done.
I proposed postponing the trip on account of how sick she was, but she turned that idea down flat.
"I want to come," she says. "I want to see where you're from."
Her eyes shone with so much eagerness, I couldn't tell her no.
I don't think I can ever tell her no.
I’m glad she got some rest on the way, and I’m almost hesitant to wake her up.
I don't, for at least a minute. I just stare at her, as the sun casts a glow over her face. I wonder how the hell I got so lucky with a woman like her. Beautiful, smart, kind. Funny. A total wild card sometimes in that it’s hard to predict her.
And here she is with me, of all people. The lanky orphaned loser, with terrible social skills.
She loves me anyway.
She moans a little, and her face squeezes for a second before her eyes flutter open. It takes her a few blinks for the fog of sleep to clear, and then she gives me a soft smile that has my heart throbbing just from how adorable she is.
“What?” she murmurs.
“What?" I parrot.
“Why are you just looking at me like that?”
"Because you’re beautiful.”
She makes a face. “I spent all morning throwing up, have no makeup on, and my hair is probably a tangled mess around my face.”
I shrug. “So?”
She chuckles and shakes her head, finally looking aside to stare at the environment.
“Are we here?’
“Yes. We’re here.”
“Wow," She says. “This looks almost like my street. My parents could live on the other side of that hedge over there."
"Hmm."
Chelsea doesn't really talk much about her parents, for good reason, in my opinion. From everything I've heard, they sound like terrible people, or at least terrible parents. They had to have been to make their daughter feel unwanted her entire life.
We're never going to be parents like that, I assure myself, the determination strengthening my resolve. All our children will know how loved and wanted they are. I may not have had a great father, but I'll make sure I become one, no matter what it takes.
Jake asked Chelsea a couple of days ago if she would ever tell her parents about her pregnancy, and she shook her head.
"Not until I have the baby at least," she said. "I don't think they'll even care, and I don’t owe them anything anyway." She said it matter-of-factly without a hint of pain, but I know that wound has been there for a long time and has probably scabbed over by now.
But that doesn't mean it's healed.
We share the same pain, a pain of parental rejection.
Jake's the same. Maybe that's part of the thing that bonds us together and makes Adam the perfect addition to the group. As much as he hates to admit it, he has a natural paternal instinct and has all the makings of an amazing father. He’s the glue that holds us all together.
Being with them has helped heal some of the wounds of my past and reminds me that family isn’t the people who share blood with you or even necessarily the people you grew up around.
It's the ones you build a life with, share yourself with, and show up for you when you need them the most.
“I can imagine you walking these streets to school,” she says softly, a dreamy look in her eyes.
“I biked more than I walked," I tell her, "Jake and I went to school at Haverford Prep, like fifteen minutes away from here. I could tell you where his foster home is, but I’ll let him do that himself.” In hindsight, Jake should have come with us, but they got a last-minute call about one of our buildings, and he insisted on being the one to check it out.
“Can we go for a walk?” Chelsea asks.
“Sure," I say, opening my door and then walking around to open hers. It's great that she lets me do this now. Before, when she wasn't used to us opening doors for her, she would reflexively attempt to do it herself.
But now she knows to wait, and she takes my hand and climbs out with a glow on her face.
"You think someone lives there?” she asks
I shrug.
She raises an eyebrow, and after I nod, she walks over to the door.
Once more, her eyes ask permission. I nod. This is a heavy moment for me, but I don’t mind the fact that she wants to see every part of me, know every part of me.
Before she can knock, the door opens next to us, revealing a woman.
I don’t recognize her at first. She’s a lot taller and curvier than I remember, and the tattoos crawling down her arms are new too. But the winged glasses and the shock of whitish blonde hair are a dead giveaway.
So is the recognition in her eyes when she stares at me.
“No way,” she says, a wide grin splitting her cheeks. “Sam?”
“Ella?” She drops the garbage bag she was holding and rushes over to throw her arms around my neck, squeezing tightly.
I stiffen instinctively. Ella was my foster sister, the only one in the group I could kind of tolerate. I was never into hugs, but she’s a big hugger, and I tolerate them for her.
“Oh my gosh." She grips my shoulder, backing up. “I should have known you would be coming over today. The cards told me."
“The cards?”
“Yeah, tarot cards." She beams. “Oh my gosh. You look great."
"Thank you. You too." I gesture for Chelsea to come closer and wrap my arm around her waist. "This is Chelsea, my–"
"Girlfriend, right?" Emma says. "Of course. She's so pretty."
"Thank you," Chelsea says.
"And she's pregnant too."
Chelsea's smile falters, and her eyes flare. "Woah. Those tarot cards are spooky."
"Oh no, dear," she says, with a loud laugh. "It's just that you glow. I'm Emma, by the way. Sam's kinda sorta sister and also a new home owner."
"She left you the house."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure it's because I'm the only one who told her I wanted it. I'm sure if you had visited and told her you were interested, she would have made us split it. Just like old times." She grins, and the guilt punches straight into my chest.
"I'm sorry,” I say. “That I never came. That I never..." I take a deep breath, so much regret burning through me that it's like a furnace. "That she never knows how much she meant to me."
"OH, trust me, she knows," she says kindly. "She was so proud, and she knew why you stayed away. Said you would come at your own time. That's the only reason I didn't hunt you down."
I bite my lip. Her understanding nature only makes me feel worse. She thought I would come at some point, yet I never did. I let her down so many times, yet she still had faith in me.
"She also knows who the person is who paid off the house and kept the electricity on for years. And you donated millions so that she could take in as many kids as she wanted."
"You did that?" Chelsea asks.
My face turns red.
"I thought I did it through the anonymous charity."
"It's hard for anything around here to stay anonymous for long. Besides, she knows you well enough to know what you're capable of. As I said, she was so proud of you."
I push my lips together, fighting back the tears.
She pats my back. "Come on in. There are a couple of things she told me to give you whenever you finally make it back home.”