Stealing Second: Sam's Story: Book 4 in the Clarksonville Series

by Clanton, Barbara L.

  The clues had been there her whole life. She felt like the butt of a bad joke, and at any moment someone would jump out and yell, “April fools,” even though it was mid-September. Yeah, she had been a fool. She had been a fool to hide her emotions and be Mother and Daddy’s perfect little princess. She wasn’t even their real daughter. She wasn’t anything. She had let them run her life for almost eighteen years and let them make her scared to be who she was. She had hidden her relationship with Lisa because of them.

  “Ahhh!” she screamed and swept everything off the bathroom vanity onto the floor. The breaking glass made her head pound, but it was oh so satisfying. She gripped the edge of the vanity as angry tears rolled down her cheeks. She searched frantically for a happy place to go in her mind, but Helene’s image kept coming up. She took a deep breath and thought about Lisa. She remembered their first kiss in the Clarksonville College dugout. There wasn’t another soul around. She remembered how Lisa’s initial hesitation had turned into passion so quickly it made Sam woozy.

  She smiled at the memory, but the ever-increasing pounding in her head told her she needed to lie down. She splashed a little water on her face hoping that would make her feel better, but it didn’t. Resigned, she lay back down on her bed. Before closing her eyes, she flipped open her phone and smiled when she saw that Ronnie had texted her. He said Mrs. Dickens hadn’t planned to rehearse any of Sam’s scenes that afternoon, anyway, so she was off the hook. Sam was about to text Lisa when there was a knock on the outside door to the suite.

  At first Sam figured it was Helene, but then her heart sank when she remembered. Shit, what did he want now? Couldn’t her father leave her alone for two minutes?

  He would let himself in anyway, so there was no reason to actually invite him in. Sam stashed her cell phone under the pillow and turned to face the wall.

  “Samantha Rose, dear?”

  The sound of her mother’s voice surprised her. She opened her eyes and rolled toward the door. “I’m in here, Mother.”

  “I have some soup for you.” Her mother walked into the bedroom carrying a tray with a bowl of hot chicken and rice soup. It was Sam’s favorite soup from childhood.

  “You made this?”

  Sam’s mother nodded.

  “All by yourself?”

  Sam’s mother smiled gently. “I’m not that inept in the kitchen, you know. And, yes, I opened the can all by myself. I brought you those favorite crackers you like, too.” She set the tray on the bedside table, and Sam sat up. She moved over to make room for her mother to sit down on the edge of the bed.

  “Oyster crackers. Thank you, Mother.” Sam wasn’t sure if she could handle food at the moment, afraid her stomach might recoil, but then it growled. “I guess I am kind of hungry.” She ignored the pounding in her head and pulled the tray onto her lap. She ate one test spoonful. When it stayed down, she ate more heartily. She couldn’t help thinking how ironic the whole scene was. Helene was the one who usually brought her a tray of food.

  “How are you feeling?” Her mother asked tentatively. “Daddy said you’re having migraines again.”

  “I’m okay.” Sam shrugged. She wasn’t used to having touchy feely talks with her mother. Actually, one part of her brain thought, I have had touchy feely talks with my mother. My mother whose name is Helene. Sam groaned.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Sam sat up straight like the good debutante she was and added, “I’m a little tired. And I’m worried about Helene.”

  “Yes, I imagine you would be.”

  “I’ll probably go see her later.”

  “I’ll drive you,” her mother said.

  Something in her mother’s voice made Sam take notice. “You don’t have to, Mother.”

  “I just got off the phone with her, and she said she was up for company. I haven’t been there since Saturday, so I should go.”

  Sam, all at once, realized how hard it was for her mother to watch Sam worry about the woman who had given birth to her husband’s bastard child. No wonder her mother was so cold and stiff. A knot of sympathy tightened in Sam’s chest, and she gave her mother a quick hug.

  Her mother stood up abruptly as if thrown by the hug. She cleared her throat. “When shall we go?”

  “Well, I think I need a short nap, okay? My migraine’s almost gone, but I don’t want it to come back.”

  “That sounds reasonable. I’ll be downstairs reading. Come find me whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  “We need to plan our New York weekend, too, don’t we?”

  “We do,” Sam said. “We can talk about it on the way to the hospital.”

  Her mother nodded and turned to go.

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, dear?” Sam’s mother turned around.

  “I love you.”

  “Oh.” Her mother put a hand to her throat. “Thank you. I love you, too.” Her mother’s cheeks turned a glorious shade of red. “I’ll see you after your nap.”

  If her head hadn’t hurt so much, Sam might have laughed when her mother practically bolted out the door.

  “IT’S NICE TO see you’re feeling better, Helene,” Sam’s mother said. She sat in the chair farthest from Helene in the hospital room.

  “Any day now I’m gonna bust out of this joint,” Helene said with a laugh.

  “Only when the doctor gives you the green light, okay?” Sam said. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Sam’s mother stood up and smoothed down her skirt. “I’m going to wander the halls in search of a cup of tea. Can I get you two anything?”

  “No thanks, Mother.”

  Helene shook her head. “Ooh, yesterday, I couldn’t even do that with my head.”

  “Okay, then.” Sam’s mother locked her gaze onto Helene’s and added, “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.”

  Helene nodded, and Sam wasn’t sure what to make of the exchange.

  Oh, God, Sam thought. Helene’s going to tell me she’s my mother. I’m not ready for this conversation. Even though I already know, I’m not ready.

  “Are you okay, Samantha Rose?” Helene asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Sam swallowed against the lump growing in her throat. “I’m okay.”

  Helene looked at her hands. “There’s something I’ve needed to tell you for a while now. I wanted to tell you at the diner the other day, but we were having such a good time, I didn’t want to ruin it.”

  “What’s up?” Sam tried to act natural, waiting for the bomb Helene was about to drop.

  Helene took a slow breath and then sighed, obviously trying to gather her thoughts. “I’m moving out.”

  Stunned, Sam fell back against the chair. That was not what she had been expecting to hear. “What?” she asked weakly. Her brain tried desperately to make sense of the words.

  “Your parents and I came to an agreement a long time ago that when you turned eighteen, I would move out.”

  “I’m not eighteen yet.”

  “You will be soon.” Helene’s smile was tired and resigned. “You’re a young woman now, and you don’t need a nanny anymore.”

  Sam couldn’t help the tears streaming down her cheeks. She leaped out of the chair and grabbed Helene into a hug. She rested her head on Helene’s chest like she’d done countless times as a child. “I need you, Helene.” I don’t need a nanny; I need my mother. Sam desperately wanted to say the words out loud, but they wouldn’t come.

  Helene rubbed Sam’s back. “Shhh, mon petite hibou. At least we’ve had these eighteen years.”

  Sam continued to cry. “When are you leaving? Where are you going? Back to Canada?”

  Helene nodded. “I’m going to live with my sister and her husband for a while. She has the baby coming and can use my help.”

  Sam picked her head up. “When?”

  “I was going to move my things out when you and your parents were in Swit
zerland.”

  Sam stood up. “Were you going to tell me? Or was I going to come back and find you and all your stuff gone?”

  “No, honey, that’s why I’m telling you now. Your mother thought it was best I tell you as soon as possible.”

  That’s why Mother drove me back here. So Helene could break my heart. Sam sat down hard on the chair. She rested her forehead on her fist and stared at the cheap linoleum floor. Her parents were trying to get rid of Helene. They were trying to get rid of the evidence. Maybe they had an eighteen year contract, and it was expiring.

  Sam looked up through a sheen of tears. “Will I ever see you again?” Her face scrunched up as she started to cry again.

  “Of course you will.”

  “Helene,” Sam blurted, “I know. I know you’re ...” Agony closed her throat. She couldn’t say the final words.

  After a moment, Helene said, “Your father thought I’d told you earlier today. He thought that’s why you ran to William and Evelyn’s.”

  “Did you know he’s been spying on me? He uses my cell phone to track me.”

  “I suspected, but no, I didn’t know for sure.” Helene pressed her lips together for a moment. “Why exactly did you skip your classes this afternoon?”

  Ahh, Sam thought, the million dollar question. “I didn’t sleep well last night.” Because I kept freaking out over you being my mother. “I got a migraine at school, so I left.”

  “But you didn’t go home.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “There was no one at home to take care of me.” It was kind of a lie, but kind of the truth, too.

  “Samantha Rose, you don’t know William and Evelyn that well. I can only imagine what they’re thinking.”

  “Helene,” Sam grunted, “that’s Mother’s line. That’s the code she lives by. You don’t care what other people think, do you?” Or maybe she did. She probably had to. She’d had to keep the big dark Payton Family secret her whole adult life.

  They sat in silence for a while until Sam said, “I’m going to miss you.”

  It was finally Helene’s turn to cry.

  Sam stood up and wrapped her arms around Helene gently. “I’ll always love you, Helene. Always.”

  SAM CALMLY SAID goodnight to her parents as if her entire world hadn’t been thrown by the events of the last few days and went up to her suite. She made sure the door to her wing was cracked open, as well as the door to her suite. This way she would be able to hear when her parents went to bed. She’d learned that trick long ago, when she wanted to sneak down to Helene’s apartment at night without her parents finding out.

  While she waited, she meticulously cleaned up the broken glass in her bathroom. Next time she’d take her anger out on something less breakable. Within the hour, she heard the unmistakable sounds of her parents making their way up the stairs to their suite. She waited ten more agonizing minutes to be sure they weren’t going to come out and then tiptoed down the carpeted hallway to the dark stairwell. She froze when she heard a noise from her parents’ rooms. She held her breath, praying no one would come out. Her prayers were answered and after waiting another quiet moment, she padded the rest of the way down the stairs to the door which led to Helene’s apartment. As expected, the door was locked, so Sam pulled out the key Helene had given her. Sam wasn’t sure if her parents even knew she had a key to Helene’s apartment.

  Sam unlocked the door and let herself in. She cursed herself for not thinking about bringing a flashlight, but then remembered she still had her cell phone in her pocket. She powered it on and used the light of the display to guide her way to Helene’s bedroom. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for, but she needed to find more clues about who Helene was and how she’d gotten pregnant by her father eighteen years before.

  She walked into Helene’s usually neat bedroom surprised by the disarray. Clothes were strewn all over the bed and chair. Half a dozen boxes were filled with clothes and knick knacks and other things. Helene had been packing.

  “You really are leaving me, aren’t you?” Sam said to the empty room.

  Sam had been devastated when she thought she’d lost Helene in the car accident, but now, seeing tangible proof that she truly was losing her, something snapped in her head. Losing Helene twice in one week, learning that both their lives had been a lie—it really was one big cosmic April fool’s joke.

  Sam steeled her chin in true Payton fashion and didn’t give in to her anger. Even though no one around her seemed to know how to tell the truth, Sam vowed right then and there that she was going to break that legacy. She was going to start telling the truth, about everything.

  She hit the message button on her cell phone and entered Susie’s, Marlee’s, and Lisa’s names. “Screw it,” Sam said out loud and added Ronnie’s name to the list. She wrote, “I’m kicking down this closet door, ladies! Take me to that big old gay pride festival in October!”

  With a determined grin, she hit the send button.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Stealing Second

  SAM PULLED THE Sebring into a parking spot and threw the gear shift into park. She sat for a moment with the engine idling gathering up the courage to actually turn off the car and get out. She remembered the last time she sat in her idling car wondering if she should get out. That had been over a month before when Helene was still in the hospital.

  For over a month, Sam had lived alone with the secret that Helene was her mother. She hadn’t told Susie. She hadn’t told Marlee. She hadn’t even told Lisa, and she told Lisa everything. The one thing she did tell her friends was that Helene was moving out at the end of the year, so naturally they did their best to cheer her up on a regular basis. Friends were one thing, but the betrayers she lived with were another. She didn’t tell her father or the woman she had called Mother for eighteen years that she knew about their secret. She didn’t mention a thing to Helene, and, in fact, barely spoke to her. And she certainly didn’t tell Dr. Boyle when her mother forced her to keep the appointments with him. Sam had been to enough therapy sessions in her life to know she was staying in control of the situation by not telling anyone about the dirty little Payton family secret.

  She and Dr. Boyle spent most of their sessions talking about Helene leaving, and Sam spoke honestly about the hole in her life it would create. They also spent some of the time talking about the play at school. He reassured her she could continue her role as the fiddler if that was what she wanted to do. He thought it was a healthy outlet for her, and he would reassure her parents it was okay for her to continue. And, much to Sam’s relief, he was going to tell them that she had an actual actor-on-the-stage role in the play. At least one good thing would come out of the sessions.

  Sam took a deep breath. She didn’t want to think about life back at the mansion. She checked her pocket for her cell phone, but then remembered. She’d left the stupid thing at home, so her father wouldn’t know where she was.

  She looked up at the innocent-looking brick building that housed the Clarksonville Community College auditorium. She closed her eyes for a minute knowing that if she turned off the engine and actually got out of the car, her life would substantially change forever. It wasn’t only her fear talking; people knew who she was. A lot of people. Once she stepped out of the car, everyone would know.

  But no, she’d done enough hiding. Mother, Daddy, and sometimes even Helene had told her what to be and how to act for far too long. She picked her hand up and reached to turn off the key in the ignition. Her hand stopped halfway to the key. With a pounding heart she felt as if she were stealing second base—leaping off first base, adrenaline pumping, racing toward second, not knowing if she’d be called safe or out. But that was softball. This was life. Her life. And if going into that auditorium was a bad decision, then so be it. She’d take her chances.

  Sam yanked the key out of the ignition, flung off her seat belt, and heaved open the door. She took a cleansing breath of the cr
isp October air, and with determined steps, made her way to the auditorium.

  The lobby was blessedly empty, but there were the unmistakable sounds of an impassioned speech coming from within the auditorium. What were the chances that she, someone virtually everybody in Clarksonville County knew, would be able to sneak into the auditorium and find her friends without anybody noticing? Slim to none, she thought as she steeled her nerves. She eased open the heavy door and groaned at the well-lit auditorium. It was packed. The woman at the podium looked to be somewhere in her mid-thirties and wore a tailored business suit, her strawberry blond hair pulled back in a bun. She took one look at Sam and faltered in her speech.

  It seemed like every single one of the over three hundred people in the auditorium turned to see who had made the speaker stop in mid-sentence. Sam was used to being recognized, but not like this. As cool as she could, she kept her head high, her back straight, and scanned the seats for Lisa. After a hundred years, the speaker cleared her throat and continued.

  A micro-moment later, a small voice called, “Sam.”

  Sam whipped her head to the left and was relieved to spot Lisa, Susie, Marlee, and Ronnie waving to her from the middle of a row. She hoped the relief she felt wasn’t screaming from her face. Lisa motioned to the saved empty seat next to her, and Sam couldn’t get there fast enough. There it was. Lisa’s smile. The smile that said everything was going to be okay. Sam smiled back and then nodded to Susie, Marlee, and Ronnie. Marlee’s smile was sweet; Ronnie’s and Susie’s were smug. Ah, but who cared. She had broken through her fear and had the support of her amazing friends.