“There was this wooded area behind the school, just a little patch of trees, really. But the kids all liked to walk through there. Sometimes our teachers would even let us go out there for reading or lessons. But then the city decided it was wasted space, that they could sell it along with the lot next to it and bring in some more development.” She pauses and I can practically feel her smile in her voice. “Doug started a petition to save it. He got all the kids involved, planned protests at city council meetings, got us all to write letters. We were twelve.” She lets out a strangled laugh. “He liked saving things. He saved me.”
I tighten my arms around her and she draws a great, shaking breath. Her next words are nearly inaudible.
“My mother was a cruel, hurtful drunk. She never wanted me—a fact that was pointed out regularly. She—” Sam swallows and I tighten my arms again, wishing there was a way I could take this from her. I want her to confide in me, want to be there for her, but I also have a feeling that I do not want her to continue this story. I do not want to hear about someone hurting her. “I could have gotten out of here if it wasn’t for you. That’s what she used to tell me when she was plastered. And she was plastered basically all the time. She spent all of our money on booze. Lots of time there wasn’t any food or—”
I draw in a sharp breath, not able to handle the thought of a hungry, sad little girl with Sam’s eyes. With Wyatt’s eyes.
“When it got really bad, she used to hit me. Not, like, bad or anything. She would just slap me when she was pissed.”
I feel like I can’t breathe. No matter what she might say about it not being bad, the idea that her own mother had abused her…I’m seized with a sudden thankfulness for my dad. He might have pushed us too hard, might have used music as a substitute for affection, but at least he had held it together after mom left. We had never been hungry or mistreated, had never been hit. He might have been shitty about the emotional stuff, but at least he had been there.
Before I can tell her how sorry I am, she continues. “Doug asked me to Homecoming sophomore year. I literally couldn’t believe my luck—he was the guy every girl wanted and he wanted me. It was the most heady, amazing feeling, to be wanted by someone like that.” She drew another shaky breath, pulling my arms even tighter around her middle. “I really loved him, Cash. I know I was only fifteen, but I did.”
“I know you did.”
“I tried to keep him away from my house, refused to let him come in after our dates. I wanted to hide my mother from him for as long as possible. Forever, if I could. He knew things were messed up, but I don’t think he ever realized…anyhow. It was our one-year anniversary and he planned this whole night for me. He was always doing cheesy, romantic stuff, you know? But it wasn’t lame because he really meant it. He could make anything seem cool. So he took me on this scavenger hunt to find my gift, and then we had dinner at this fancy restaurant neither one of us could afford, and then…then he brought me home and we made out in the car.”
She laughs that horrible, strangled laugh again and I decide right then that I hate the sound. “It was so innocent, really. We were dumb kids, fooling around in the car. I wouldn’t even let him get to second base. But…she must have been watching from inside. She came out on the porch, screaming. Wasted, of course. I went inside, thinking I could calm her down, keep her from waking up the neighborhood.” Her voice goes very steely, her words matter of fact and emotionless. “She called me a whore. Said I was going to get pregnant, that I was ruining my life the way I had ruined hers. Then she hit me in the face with her whiskey bottle.”
I freeze. “Sam. Holy shit.”
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “This is actually the good part. See, Doug followed me into the house, even though I told him not to. Even though I tried to hide what my family was really like. He followed me anyway. And when she hit me, he picked me up and took me away from there. And I never had to go back.”
I release the breath I was holding. “Where did you go?”
“Home with him, of course. He brought me in and I was bleeding and crying, a total mess. I have no idea what his parents must have thought. But he told them I was staying and that was pretty much that.”
“They took you in.”
“They did more than that. They made me part of their family.”
“They sound amazing.”
Her voice is strong. “You have no idea.”
She’s quiet for a long moment and I wonder if that’s the end of her story. She had been right—Doug sounded like an amazing person. It’s crazy how I can feel so impressed by him, so grateful that he’d been strong enough to help her, and so jealous all at the same time. Because it couldn’t be more clear from her words and her voice that she loved this man very much.
“We both wanted to get out of here,” she continues, her voice sounding hoarse now. “But we were broke. His parents didn’t have money to send him to school, and God knows I didn’t have a dime. That’s when he decided to join the service. He said I could go to community college while he served and then he could use the GI money for school when he was done. He said we could work our way through together, that we could do anything together.”
She lets out a single, strangled sob. “I never should have agreed. I never should have let him join up. We should have found another way. But it sounded so romantic, to go live on the base together until he deployed, to work and scrape by and be poor and happy.” Another sob. “We got married two days after graduation. We were eighteen. And he was in Afghanistan a year later.”
I close my eyes, the pain of her words washing over me as if it was my own.
“I never saw him again. He never came home. And I…I just couldn’t deal with that. He was everything. Everything. He had loved me when no one else did. Fought for me. Saved me. And then he was just gone and…”
She trails off. I almost want to tell her to stop, to soothe her with platitudes so I don’t have to hear any more of this raw, terrible pain. “I had Wyatt two months after he went missing. He wasn’t presumed dead yet, but I knew it. I knew he wasn’t coming home to me. And I had that baby and all I could see was Doug. In his eyes and his mouth and his little, tiny fingers. I took one look at that perfect baby boy and I told the nurse to get him away from me.” I can’t help the sharp intake of breath, the obvious sign of my shock. “I didn’t hold him again in the hospital. And I didn’t get out of bed for weeks.”
It’s like watching a puzzle take shape in front of me. The way she seems so desperate to prove herself. How she seems to blame herself for every little thing. How she reacts to what she perceives as her mistakes with such self-recrimination and shame. And the reason why Wyatt doesn’t live with her, despite the fact that she’s clearly crazy about him. That was the thing that I never understood, the question that she had never answered.
She had rejected her baby in her pain and her mourning and she had never forgiven herself.
“The Warners took him without question,” she says, and I hate the shame in her voice. “They were wonderful—they never blamed me or tried to make me feel bad for it. They just wanted me to get better. I think…I think they were probably pretty thrilled to have him, honestly. He looked so much like Doug…” She’s crying again, not the loud, violent sobs of earlier but a quiet, mournful weeping. “I gave him up, Cash. When his father was missing on the other side of the world. When he was a tiny baby who relied on me for everything. I passed him off to my in-laws and I laid in that bed and I cried and cried because my high school sweetheart wasn’t coming home.”
“Stop it,” I command, my voice broken. “He was more than that—he was your family. Of course you grieved—”
“Don’t try to absolve me. I did the worst thing a mother can possibly do.” I thought of my own mother, leaving the five of us when we needed her so badly. How little Daltrey had been. How Lennon had stopped talking for months. I shudder. “I’ve had to live with the consequences of that every day and I’ll have to live with
them for the rest of my life.”
“But that doesn’t mean they have to define you.”
“They do. Do you think I see anything else when I look in the mirror? Do you think anyone in this town sees anything else? You’ve heard them, the way they bring up Doug every time they see me. That’s all I’ll ever be here, the girl who wasn’t good enough for him. The girl who couldn’t take care of his son.”
“Who the hell cares what they think.” My voice is like a growl at the idea of someone judging her. “The people who really know you—”
“Still don’t want me to have Wyatt.”
My rage at the Warners for making her feel this way about herself is consuming and I have to take deep breaths to control it. She needs me to be calm, needs me to make her understand what she really is.
“Sam, you told me in L.A. that I didn’t need to be fixed. Did you really believe that?”
She answers without hesitation. “Of course I did.”
“Then neither do you. You made mistakes. Some of them were bad—”
“Really bad.”
“Fine. Really bad. But you didn’t make those mistakes out of malice or hatred. You made them out of pain and fear. And you’ve spent years making up for it.”
“I don’t think you can make up for something like that.”
“I think Wyatt would disagree.”
She’s quiet for a long moment.
“He loves you, Sam. You know that. He’s crazy about you. He wants to be with you. He doesn’t blame you and he certainly doesn’t need you to beat yourself up over this, over and over again. He just needs you to be you. To be there for him.”
She relaxes against me, the tension leaving her body. “Do you think so?”
“I know it, Sam. I can see the way he looks at you. He just needs you. Not your guilt. Not your self-loathing. Those things don’t help him. He just needs you.”
She’s quiet again, but she turns in my lap so she’s facing me, curling up against my chest. “Can I stay here?”
“Of course you can. You think I would let you leave?”
She laughs softly, the sound weak and shaky but so fucking beautiful to me. Because if she can laugh, maybe she’ll be okay. If she can curl up next to me and sleep, after all of that, instead of seeking solace in a bottle or a random hookup, then she’s come a lot farther than she realizes.
And if I can be the one to calm her, to soothe her and make her feel okay, then maybe there’s a chance I can really do this, really be there for another person, take care of them.
I carry her inside and wrap her up in the covers, rubbing her back until she’s asleep. I want to watch her, want to assure myself that she’s okay, that she won’t cry again tonight. But her breathing is so steady, so comforting, that I’m asleep next to her in minutes.
Chapter Twenty
Sam
“Hey there, kiddo.”
Wyatt doesn’t look up from the matchbox car he’s driving in a circle across the pavement. “Hi.”
“How you feeling?” A shrug. He crashes the car into the porch step and I wince. “You sure? You’re giving the poor driver of that car some whiplash there, I think.”
“It’s not real, Mom,” he says, his voice dark. “It’s just a stupid toy.”
“Hey. Why don’t you put it away and come talk to me.”
He sets the car on the grass and follows me to the swing set, never looking up. Everything in me wants to gather him up in my arms, pull him in close and squeeze him until he feels better. But I know this kid, and I know hugs will only go so far.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He kicks the dirt below his swings. “What’s there to talk about? We knew he was dead.”
“We were pretty sure. Pretty sure and knowing for certain are two different things.”
He doesn’t speak and I sigh, wishing this could be easier. “You know, sometimes I pretend that he might come home.” He looks up at that, his eyes weary. “I mean, I used to. Before yesterday. I would imagine that it was all a big mistake and he was just lost somewhere, trying to get home to us.”
“That sounds pretty silly of you,” Wyatt says, but his voice is shaking. “I mean, if he was alive we would have heard something. It’s been eight years.”
I shrug. “It might be silly, but I would still think it. Sometimes it helped me feel better.”
“That’s dumb.” His voice is raising and he balls his hands into fists. “You shouldn’t be so dumb. Of course he’s not coming back. He was never going to come back.”
I reach out and brush his hair away from his face and he jerks back. “Don’t touch me. Don’t be so dumb!”
“It’s not dumb, Wyatt.” I try to keep my voice calm even though my heart is breaking for him. He’s trying so hard to keep it together, to stay tough. The little fists in his lap come up and then slam down against his thighs, just once. “It’s not dumb to want him back.”
“How could I want him back when I never had him to start with?” Now his lip is quivering and I can’t take it anymore. I reach for him and say a prayer of thanks when he lets me, when he falls against me, wrapping his arms around my middle. “It’s not fair!”
“You’re so right, kiddo. It’s really not fair. In fact, it sucks.”
“It totally sucks.”
He’s finally crying and I rub his back, knowing it’s good for him even though the sound breaks my heart. “He would have loved you so much.”
“How do you know?”
I laugh. “Oh, Wyatt. I knew your dad better than anyone in the world. I know everything he liked and everything he thought was cool. And he would have thought you were the coolest thing ever. I promise.”
“What else did he think was cool?”
“Star Wars. Soccer. Baseball. Wrestling—the fake kind, on TV. He liked to read. He liked video games. He loved going for hikes, just like you. And swimming was his favorite thing, even when it was too cold, he would still go swimming whenever he could.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
The question surprises me. “Of course I did, Wyatt.”
“And that’s why you got so sick when I was born. Because your heart was broken.”
I thought I had cried all of my tears with Cash the night before but Wyatt’s words have them pricking my eyes again. “That’s right, kiddo. And I’m really sorry, because it meant that I couldn’t take care of you.”
“But it’s not your fault. Not if your heart was broken.”
He’s all you, Doug, I think, squeezing the kid even tighter. I’ve never been half this generous a day in my life. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He pulls back so he can look at me and I’m so relieved that he let himself cry at last. Already his eyes look more normal, more like himself. “Yeah.”
I lean forward so that my forehead is touching his, so that our eyes are inches apart. “Losing your daddy broke my heart. But you’re the one who made it whole again.”
He looks down, shy, but not before I see the grin stretch his mouth. I kiss his nose, making him swat me away, and squeeze him one more time. “Dude, why are you crowding me on my swing?”
“You pulled me over!” he cries, laughing.
“Whatever. Get your own swing.”
He rolls his eyes at me as he goes back to his swing and I can’t keep from laughing. “Need a push?”
“Mom. I’m eight years old. I know how to pump my legs.”
“Excuse me, mister grown up.”
He starts to pump, as if to prove to me that he can do it. His hair flies back off his forehead in the breeze and I notice there’s no faux hawk today. I wonder if he felt like his idolizing of Cash might seem disrespectful considering the circumstances.
“Why aren’t you swinging?”
“Because you never taught me how to pump.”
He laughs at me. “Yeah right.”
“I suppose I could try it.”
“Do or do not,” he tells me in his best Y
oda. “There is no try.”
“Oh, God,” I mutter, loud enough for him to hear. “My kid a nerd.”
We swing for a few minutes without talking. The sun is actually out today, the sky blue and nearly cloudless. It figures that such a perfect day would accompany such crappy news.
“Hey, Mom?” Wyatt says, and I slow my swing so I can hear him better.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Where were you yesterday?”
I immediately feel a little shot of guilt but I try not to listen to it, remembering what Cash told me the night before. He doesn’t need your shame.
“I was hanging out with Cash.” I don’t tell him about L.A., having decided last night that this wasn’t the time.
Wyatt nods, looking away.
“Does that bother you, buddy? That I was with him?”
“No,” he says immediately. “I just…I wish you had been here to tell me. About my dad. Instead of Grandma.”
Sorry, Cash, I think. Some serious guilt is getting through with that one.
“I wish I had been here, too.”
Wyatt slows his swings by digging his feet into the dirt. “I just keep thinking…if I lived with you, instead of Grandma and Grandpa, then you’d be the one to help me when bad stuff happens.”
I draw in a sharp breath. “And you would like that? If I was the one to help you when bad stuff happens?”
He nods, staring at his feet. “I would. And, you know, for the good stuff, too.”
I sigh. I’m tired of keeping things from him, tired of participating in the farce that implies that I don’t want him or can’t handle him. “Wyatt, I would love it if you would come and live with me.”
He looks up, his face alit, and I hold up a hand. “But that might not be able to happen. At least not yet.”
“Why?”
“Well, first of all, buddy, your grandparents really need you right now. They’re very sad about your dad.”
“You’re sad, too.”
“I know. But theirs is a different kind of sad. I know that having you around really makes them feel better.”
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