21. Look at Me
Look at Me
ELLIE
“You sure you’re okay with this?” Sam asked. “It’s still totally fine to say no.”
“Sam.” I arched my brow at him. We were standing on the front porch at his parents’ house.
Sam was carrying Henry. And the diaper bag.
I was holding a pie. Store-bought, of course.
I was not a baker, even though I’d discovered recently Sam was.
Not only did he make us dinner every night he’d watched the boys last week, insisting I relax when I got home, but he’d made muffins and even homemade granola bars too.
He said he wanted to make sure I had something to pack in my lunch each day so I didn’t do a repeat of that day I’d passed out.
When Henry went back to Mrs. Oxford I’d gone to work in a serious funk.
“It’s a little bit late to cancel,” I said now.
“Right. We’re already here.” He bit his lip. “But we could still run. Or you could. You know, spare yourself!”
I shook my head, laughing.
“Okay,” he said, “Well if you need to get away, just say chocolate bananas. It’s the safe word. ‘Words’, I guess.”
“Safe word? What?”
“Just like, if you want me to rescue you from an extensive conversation about different types of plaid or whatever. And if you want to go home, just wink at me and I’ll say it’s Henry’s bedtime. Or I’m tired. Or—”
“Sam. It’s going to be fine.”
He was cute when he was nervous.
“Okay. You’ve been warned.”
My stomach flipped as he pushed open the door. “We’re here!” he called.
“Oh my goodness!” came an older woman’s voice.
Then, there she was, the woman who’d raised Sam. She was pretty, shorter than I would have thought, with close-cropped silver hair and crinkles beside her eyes. Eyes just like Sam’s.
Eyes that were currently welling with tears as she took in her grandson.
Her hand went to her mouth as she stared at him, then at Sam, whose arm she gripped like she was drowning at sea.
She leaned in to Henry. “Hello, little one.”
Henry blinked, looking alarmed.
“It’s alright,” Sam said to him. “I don’t think she’ll bite.”
Henry tucked his face into his father’s chest, and not for the first time in recent days, I marveled at how close they’d become. How easily Sam’s hand spread across his son’s back, like he’d been holding babies his whole life.
“Oh, he’s being shy,” Sam’s mom said. She looked at Henry adoringly.
I was used to being second when there was a baby around. It was fine. But she turned to me next. “And you must be Elizabeth.” She gripped my arms.
“Ellie, please.”
“Ellie. Of course. Sam has told us so much about you.”
Mrs. Caplin’s eyes were the same color as her son’s, though her gaze was a little more… I wasn’t sure. Aggressive maybe? Then she pulled me in for a hug. I had to hold the pie out sideways so it wouldn’t get smushed in her surprisingly tight grip.
“Mom! You better not be suffocating her!” That came from a tinny voice in the other room. I frowned up at Sam.
Sam groaned. “You brought Cora?”
“Isn’t she in Singapore?” I whispered.
“I think they’re in London for a bit now,” he whispered back. Like that made a difference.
“Yes, she brought me!” said the voice in the other room as Sam nodded at me. “Wouldn’t take no for an answer!”
“Well, Cora hasn’t met Henry yet, has she? Unlike Anaika? We might as well have our first family dinner all together.” Sam’s mom took the pie from me.
Sam leaned down. “Remember: chocolate bananas.”
“Well isn’t this lovely,” Sam’s mom said, oblivious. She bustled down the hallway.. “Since it’s such a beautiful evening,” she said over her shoulder, “I thought we’d eat outside on the new patio. Your father’s already out there with that confounded radio.”
“I’m really sorry,” Sam whispered. “Did she hurt you?”
“I’m fine.” I was a little bewildered, but fine.
“Okay well, into the fire, I guess.”
An hour later, I sat out in the last of the evening’s sun in the backyard, where a pretty patio had been set up under a pergola.
Dinner was actually really good. The food, anyway.
And Cora, who’d joined us by video conference, was lovely.
We’d never met, despite me trying to reach her way back when.
But I’d never witnessed this kind of family dynamic before.
“It’s a shame your eldest couldn’t come,” Mrs. Caplin said again. She’d said it three times tonight. She’d repeated a few other things too.
Still, each time she brought it up, a pang of guilt hit my chest at leaving Tommy behind.
I’d tried to get him to come, really I had.
But he’d already been in a bad mood since I’d asked him about his upcoming birthday yesterday.
I think it was because he still didn’t have any friends at his new school to think of inviting to celebrate with him.
When I asked if he wanted to come with us tonight he’d slammed his door in my face.
I couldn’t seem to do anything right these days when it came to Tommy.
“Mom,” Cora said, grimacing. I appreciated how she’d tried to referee the conversation all night alongside Sam.
“Does he play ball?” Sam’s dad asked.
I could feel Sam flinch beside me.
God, this guy did not quit, either. Once Sam’s dad had been made to turn off the game on his radio earlier in the meal, baseball was all he’d talked about, and it was mostly only to Sam.
I wondered if he’d always been like this.
If he’d never talked about a single other thing with his son.
If he’d always ignored the rest of his family.
“No,” I said. I was annoyed on Sam’s behalf. And somehow, Tommy’s. “Tommy never showed an interest in baseball.”
“All boys like baseball.”
Great, so he was sexist as well as clueless?
“Dad,” Cora said. “What if he was a girl?”
I internally cheered Sam’s sister.
Sam had been nuzzling Henry’s tummy with his head, letting Cora handle this round, but he set him down now.
“Tommy’s into other things,” he told his father. “Like art.”
I blinked. Sam knew about that? Tommy didn’t show his art to anyone. He carried a sketchbook around with him, but never talked about his work.
“Can’t make a career out of art.”
“And I didn’t make a career out of baseball.” Sam’s voice was terse, his expression harder than I’d seen it in a while.
Sam’s dad turned pink at the neck, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. If he hadn’t, I might have said something that wouldn’t endear me to this family. Not that I was here to impress them, but Henry deserved a good relationship with his grandparents.
“Hey,” I said to Cora, “Do you guys prefer the chocolate bananas in Singapore or London?”
Cora, who’d been looking tense on screen, relaxed. “Singapore, definitely. They come frozen. They’re delicious.”
I was surprised she’d responded without missing a beat. But of course, she and Sam had likely been here before. Probably hundreds of times.
“What is with you young people’s obsession with chocolate bananas?” Sam’s mom asked. Though she, too, looked relieved to have the conversation shifted.
“Do you want a tour of the house, Ellie?” Sam asked me.
“I thought you’d never ask,” I said without hesitation.
“I did offer her one when you first arrived,” his mom said, sounding wounded.
“The food just smelled so good,” Sam said, mollifying her a little.
“Maybe you’d like to hold Henry while we walk around?” I asked her.
This had been the right thing to say, because she lit up. “Oh, I’d love to!”
Luckily, Henry let us go without too much of a fuss.
I followed Sam up the back steps into the house. He closed the door behind us, but kept his hand on the door handle for a moment. “Thank you,” he said. He released the handle, running a hand over his head. “I know they’re a lot.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone so in love with baseball.”
Sam huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh, but his eyes weren’t smiling. “Yeah.”
“Or you playing baseball.”
Sam closed his eyes briefly. “My dad’s living in this weird time loop. On one end it’s twenty years ago and me playing ball is literally the only thing that makes him happy. On the other, he’s picking me apart for it not being that time anymore.”
“And then your mom makes up for it by obsessing about the specific details of every other part of your life.”
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “You noticed that, huh?”
“She’s sweet,” I said. “But I can see how she’s trying to love enough for two people. And doing it in a kind of… self-serving way.” I tried to be soft in my tone, but it was weird.
“Damn, doctor.”
“Hasn’t your therapist said anything similar?”
“We haven’t really gotten there yet. Therapy’s kind of a new thing for me. Also I haven’t been in a while. Life’s too good.” He smiled.
This made my chest heat unnecessarily, since he had to be talking about Henry. Right?
I looked out to the backyard, where Sam’s mom had Henry on her lap, waving his hand at the laptop.
“It sounds like Cora’s got your back? You seem close.
” They’d spelled each other off during dinner, rescuing each other when the conversation started veering somewhere the other didn’t want.
It made me happy for them, and broke my heart a little, thinking of how Anthony would just agree with everything my dad complained about.
“We don’t talk about our childhood much,” he said. “It’s more of a ‘tacit support as adults’ thing.”
That surprised me.
Sam noticed. “Cora had it rougher than me,” he said. “She was basically ignored. Meanwhile, I got that.” He pointed his chin toward the living room.
I walked into the space to see what he was talking about.
Out of a wall of photos, at least three quarters were of Sam.
And three quarters of those were Sam playing baseball.
He was extremely cute. Photogenic, too, with an adorable grin.
But God, I’d never seen so many photos of a living person in one place.
It was like a shrine. Especially when there was another kid.
Poor Cora. And Sam, too. This was such a strange thing to do.