In which time has passed, but very little of note has changed...
Sam wiped spit-up off of her shirt, and tried to clean the breastmilk off of Margaret's little sweater Gram had made her. It was impractical and soft and fluffy and perfect. She protested being denied the chance to return to her food source, like she hadn't just spat it out. Her indignant yell turned to a snuffle as Sam pulled away her sweater, leaving the onsie in place as she latched back on. Sam cradled her head carefully as she asked Jen to share her thoughts, "Well?"
Louisa's head turned to look at the source of the loud sound, sharply, and she said, "Eeee..." She looked at her mother, and and at her sister. She was fairly happy with Jen, and decided that the iPad in Jen's other hand was much more interesting than her sister's drama.
Jen pulled her iPad away from Louisa gently, so that she would stop trying to drool on the cover, and kissed her fluffy head before she spoke. Jen hadn't yet learned that there was no escaping baby drool. "You need to find a publisher."
"It's just notes." Sam shook her head, "An outline of what I would say, not what I did say." Sam was really thinking about getting started, though, and she wanted to know if Jen thought it was worthwhile.
Sam held onto Maggie. Maggie knew the truth about her writing. She had sat on her mother's lap, snored away in her sling, while Sam had pecked out a word using one hand. Margaret wiggled her toes, and Sam marveled at them. The girls were growing so quickly.
Not for the first time, Sam asked herself how had she found the time to write anything down. Sam figured sleep depravation and an absolutely messy house had to count for something. A lot of what she wrote in the document Jen was reading was passive-voiced, ramblings, scribblings she'd jotted down during nap time or when she couldn't do another bit of paperwork or when Jake was being annoying, and she hid away for exactly seven minutes, because nobody went seven minutes around here without deciding that she needed to hear what they had to say. That wasn't the real story. The real story was hidden away in her Google Docs, under the name of the number of pages in the draft. The story didn't have a name. Naming it seemed so pretentious. It was just a little bit of her life with the Phantom that she wanted her girls to have, one day.
Jen shifted Louisa, and said to her, "LouLou, tell your mommy she is a writer, and she's going to make the big bucks and hire you a nanny. Then Mommy is not going to feel guilty about going out once and a while."
"I go out." Sam frowned as Jen got the toy, "It's just...they don't like the bottle, and I...I miss them, when I can't see them."
She did go out. She went grocery shopping, and to church. She went places. Sam didn't mind that the girls went along. They needed to learn, see the world, or what there was of it within a 50 mile radius of their living room. Her alone time was with the horses.
Margaret was done gumming at her, and Sam finished the process, shifting her with a word of praise to her shoulder. She was getting to be such a fluffball, what with her hair sticking up all the time, no matter what she did to smooth it.
"They would learn to like it." Jen returned, although Sam knew that she was as much a pushover as anybody when it came to the girls. She talked a better game, was all.
Louisa didn't take kindly to the nickname, and made her wishes known. Sam shifted Margaret easily, and held them both, glad for the practice. "Don't you listen to your looney aunt Jen." She teased her best friend as the girls looked at each other, clearly agreeing that Aunt Jen had finally lost it and betrayed them by not being a good minion. At least their mother knew how things went in the Forster-Ely household, "You don't have to like the bottle. You must eat your squash, though."
Margaret grabbed some of her mother's hair, and looked at her sister again. Sam gently removed her fingers from her hair. She hadn't pulled it, only touched it. "Yes, the yucky squash."
They had apparently made a pact that there would be no squash in their lives. Sam was waiting a few days and planned to try it again. Jake had been so excited that squash was up, after the rice cereal and breast milk mixtures, and they hadn't thought much of it.
Sam stood, and looked at Jen, "Would you spread out that blanket, please?"
Jen did so easily, and Sam put the girls down to have some tummy time. She and Jen sat on the floor. "Sam. Be honest with yourself, please."
Sam frowned and made a block squeak. She didn't want to talk about this. It was a little much. Things needed to percolate, still.
Louisa was interested in the blue, squishy square, whereas Margaret simply played around on her crinkle book with abandon. "I am not looking to publish them. They're just something for the girls to have. I'm not creative enough for fanfiction, let alone my own stuff, and I have to do something when Trudy has nothing for me, and Jake worked so hard on that flash drive, you should see it, and I just..."
Sam shifted uncomfortably. She had thought about submitting things to the magazines, somehow, as a way to help the wild horses. Maybe her story would help people to engage more fully with their plight. Sam knew that she would lay herself bare for the wild horses, if only their was a venue for her tales.
"You need to think about the work you've done." Jen asserted. "I went into your GoogleDocs and read the whole thing, not just that bit you sent to me now." Jen didn't look one bit sorry as she reached for a diapered bottom as Margaret moved away.
Sam felt a bit sick to her stomach. Jen's reaction seemed positive, though. Sam figured if she ignored it, Jen wouldn't comment or pick it apart. Jen said nothing of the sort.
Sam arched an eyebrow. She tried not to let that break as they fussed over Louisa rolled over very intently, in order to grab at the corn cob shaped teether. Still, how could she not smile and praise that action? When Louisa was done basking in praise, and Margaret was pushing at the lamb doll that chimed when she touched it, looking like she knew she was epic and all that was cool, Sam looked back at Jen.
Jen smoothed back her blonde hair, fixed her glasses, and asked, "You know what you're going to do about it?"
Sam grinned, "What?" The cat bounded into the room, and took watch over his charges. He knew that he was to get Sam if anything funny began around here, not that he ever did. He was the mayhem culprit around here.
"You're going to go upstairs, take a shower, put on an outfit that doesn't include that yoga skirt of yours, and get ready to go." Jen ordered, "Meanwhile, I am going to play blocks, and wrangle babies and a round lamb thing, and work on my master plan."
Sam considered this statement of facts. "Margaret, Louisa, you be sure and tell me anything she says." Sam looked over at them, hoped they wouldn't get upset when she left, and made sure that everything they could possibly choke on was far, far away, in a single glance. What she missed in that glance sealed her fate, for Jen had her plotting face on as she winked at the twins.
Jake listened as Sam hauled him to the next stall, her steps annoyed and harsh to anyone who really knew how to read her body language. "...and she just won't shut up about it!"
Jake considered his options. He could lie, and soothe Sam's very ruffled feathers, but then he would have to tell her truth later, and that wasn't an idea he relished, if only because it would require more words to state the obvious, tell Sam what she clearly knew and was choosing for some unknown reason to blatantly ignore. He could tell the truth baldly, and rile her up, so that she stomped on his foot with those flats of hers, or he could find some way to walk that middle road and hopefully not end up a burnt pile of ash when she breathed fire on him.
There were options, and he wasn't quite sure what to do. He rubbed the back of his neck reflexively. "Uhh..."
Sam stopped looking at the craft fare wares in the crowded community gym. She was looking at a homemade candle in the shape of an apple pie, complete with wax apple slices and lattice work on the crust. A lock of hair fell over her shoulder as she glared up at him. She knew. How she knew without him making up his mind should have figured. "I am in hell."
She turned away before the artisan could make her way to them and make a sale, and all but plowed across the gym towards the door. Jake finally had to say something. The pastor was looking their way, after all, and Jake did not want to become a sermon example. That had happened one too many times over the course of his lifetime, and Jake had promised himself that that stopped the second he left for college. There was things a man was not willing to put up with as an adult, and being sermon fodder was one of one. Temper tantrums from a grown up woman with a dramatic streak the size of Wyoming were another. "Would you stop?"
Quinn glanced at Sam's passing form, laughter in his eyes. For the billionth time, Jake had somehow found himself trailing after her, wondering how on earth they'd ended up here, again. Mostly he didn't mind it much, he never really did, but he'd be darned if he was going to put up with her temper because of Jen.
Sam had made it to the doorway, then, past the balloons and the booster mothers selling raffle tickets. In the hallway, by the water fountains, she tapped those flats against the tile. "You agree with her."
Jake did not contest that statement. He stood firm. He was entitled to his opinion. The story she had written about the Phantom was amazing. It was her heart on the page. It was deft and beautiful. Jake had been there, been by her side, for God's sake, and he found himself back there, reading her words. He saw her soul in those words. How could he not love every bit of it, even the occasional comma splice? They were a piece of her soul. "Do you want some fudge?"
Sam blew out a steadying breath, pushed the heavy weight of her hair over her shoulder. "You agree with Jen about my notes."
"Book." Jake corrected, before he could stop himself. She did not need to devalue her work, and he wasn't going to be a party to it. He was guessing that that was a no on the fudge, then. He could always get some later, once she stopped being so dramatic about facts. She was a good writer who had written something worth reading. Why she felt this need to minimize it was beyond him.
Sam worked her jaw, waiting until a gaggle of people passed them by. There was music filling the hallway, the heady sound of drums and joy filling the air. "It is not..."
There was an almost earsplitting noise from Jake's right. He knew who it was without looking. Gram had too many friends. Billie Mates breezed their way, her rotund form filling their space. "Oh, look who it is!" Jake knew he was set to be totally ignored. The woman barely spared him a glance as she looked around, "Oh, let me get a look at those girls of yours!"
Sam smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "They're not here tonight, Billie. But thank you for..."
And just like that, Billie cut Sam off, "I know how it is, just wanting an hour of peace. I remember those days. Why when Monica was..." Jake figured at this point it was safe to tune the woman out and seek out Quinn's location in the fudge line.
She smiled, and chatted a little at them, and went on her way when her husband called her name, with a big plate of chicken in his hands. "Oh, I must be off! Tell the girls I said hello! Enjoy your peace and quiet!"
Jake saw Quinn ask him a question and held up two fingers in response. Quinn was next in the fudge line, and if anybody thought that Jake was not getting fudge because Jen decided to violate Sam's privacy, and Sam wouldn't talk it out with the person who had read her work, they both had another thing coming. Quinn got their fudge, holding the bag to his body like someone was liable to knock him to the ground over it. Jake knew that he'd gotten both boxes of peanut butter cup, then. That stuff was hard to come by, as it sold out quickly.
When Billie was out of earshot, Sam let out the reply she had been holding back valiantly. "This is supposed to be fun?"
Jake tried to suppress a smile when he saw that Quinn was heading their way, behind Sam, with a big bag of fudge. It faltered when he saw the pastor staring at them intently, with his sermon writing face on. Jake knew that approaching the man now was a bad idea. He was not sermon fodder. This was just great. He was going to be the talk of church again.
Oh, the pastor never used names, tried to keep his observations vague, but how many times could he come up with ways to express what he'd seen, to a roomful of people who knew just who he had seen? It had stopped working at about five or six, Jake figured.
Quinn finally got there, and Jake wanted to rip the bag out of his hands. He was trying not to laugh. Jake knew that Quinn had seen the pastor observing them, and making sermon notes. Wasn't that a bit creepy? It was not cool to have your entire life documented in one man's sermons, as though he and Sam were some couple version of Goofus and Gallant.
Quinn spoke, "So. We're hiding in the hallway." He was teasing and sly, "Aren't you a little old for dark corners of the community gym?"
Jake remembered, suddenly, Quinn and Sarah rushing around this same event years ago. Jake realized that he was making fun of himself and that changed the retort that Jake had been about to give him. Jake ached for his brother's loneliness in that moment.
"I am not hiding." Sam disagreed. "I'm having a discussion, which you interrupted." There was no malice in her tone. She wanted Quinn around, of course. She wanted to finish this conversation, and that was just fine with him. He wanted to table this, agree to disagree, and go on with the evening. It hurt that Sam didn't see the value of her efforts, but it was her work, and if she wanted to shove it in a drawer, that was her business.
"But I have fudge." Quinn raised the bag, "If we're smart, we'll go to the truck and divide this out before we go home and Dad eats it all."
Sam reached out for the bag, "Did you get the Kit Kat kind?" Quinn let go of it, and Sam opened the bag more fully. Why did she get the bag? And who cared about the Kit Kat fudge? That wasn't the question here. Jake was frustrated, as Sam headed towards the exit. At least, he thought, she had forgotten about lighting into him.
Louisa was asleep, after having decided to air every grievance she could come up with in the span of an hour and half of fussiness. Nothing suited her, until she finally dropped off into sleep, mid-yell. It would have been scary, had not known to expect it. Margaret was almost asleep.
Sam supposed they were bad parents. She just didn't have the heart to put them in the crib wide away, and let her drift off. Sam would never, ever, let them cry something out, but she knew that she was pushing the limits of her own sense of moderation. Then again, some parents hated cribs. So Sam figured they were functional and healthy, and that it worked. She just didn't want to miss the last few minutes of their days. Margaret made a snuffly noise against her father's shoulder, and Sam wondered what she would dream about.
This whole parenting thing gave them time to talk. They spent a lot of time in relatively confined spaces, either talking to the twins or staring at each other. So in that sense, the proximity had been good for their marriage. Prior to having the kids, they had rarely spent extended periods of time in each other's presence with nothing to do, well, at least they hadn't done so in a long time.
Sam knew she had to be honest. She had been thinking about this for hours. "I really like what I wrote, you know."
Jake looked surprised at that She knew she was a prideful person at moments, puffed up about things. It was only that he needed to understand something she had come to realize only recently. "You should."
Sam tucked her knees underneath her, and stopped folding laundry. There were never ending piles of it. Who was the idiot that had decided they needed to cloth diaper, Sam wondered, as she tried to order her thoughts. "But you have to understand. It's...it's a part of me." It was a tangible, vulnerable part of her thoughts, her heart. She was very worried about what people would see in it. It was like standing naked in the middle of the room, pointing out every weak spot, flaw, and point of pride in her body, in the loudest voice she could muster. Rejection scared her almost as much as people embracing it did, "I don't want people to see it, pick at it, because I love it. I'm not going to toss it out there like it doesn't matter, like it's not the Phantom's story. What if I got the Phantom hurt somehow? What if..." What if people liked it? What if they said...
Understanding dawned on Jake's face. "That's exactly why you can't just let this go by, Sam. It matters, and I've never known you to back down from something that matters." He was kind, gentle, but utterly convicted. How could he have such faith in her abilities? She'd written the story in six months, starting the week after the twins had come home, because she had wanted to find a way to make sense of all of the emotions coursing in her veins.
"You honestly think I should roll with this?" Sam had thought about it, from time to time, in the dark of the night. Her story, maybe, could really help the wild horses, raise their profile. She had tried to make the story factual, but interesting. She had tried to tell her story in the way she would want it to be told. She had started writing one day, and just hadn't stopped. The words poured out of her, and in those moments, she had felt a connection to her past self in a way that felt so challenging. She was being brutally honest about herself, to herself, and trying to find the meaning of it all as she did so. It had been a challenging process, but when she looked at the document on the page, she knew that her words meant something, if only to her. It was a part of her on the page, and it would live forever, if only on her hard drive, a testament to the girl she had been and the woman she was trying to become.
She had thought about pushing onward, trying to market it to a serial magazine, or an online publication or something. She wanted to help save the wild horses. She would never be a fantastic cowgirl, advocating out on the range, or an academic. She was just a rancher's daughter from Northern Nevada, who worked part time at a rescue, and took on cases when she could. Gram had always told her that to whom much was given, much was expected, meaning that if she had a talent, it should be used in the service of others. If she believed that her writing could do that, she would share it gladly. It just wasn't that stellar. She was no journalist of note, even if she had started writing a bit for the local paper when they had a gap.
Teresa and she had struck up a friendship, and in those months, Sam replied their conversation in the cafe a thousand times. She had even gone so far as to listen to the tape recording. Teresa had insight, and she was forever emailing Sam, asking her when she was going to write that book. Sam always replied that she was too busy with Trudy's rescue efforts, but the truth was, Sam had often replied after writing a little bit. It was a lie that loomed between them.
She had been so afraid to even mention her writing to anyone. Jake knew. He had always known. The family had slowly put things together, or found out on their own. She knew, Jake knew, and Quinn knew for sure. Sam was pretty sure that Max knew, because Sam had never been able to hide anything from her or Gram. It felt like an elephant in the room. And even talking about it now made her feel odd. It was hard not to guard the words she had written for her daughter's eyes. It was even more challenging to see them in a new light, a light that suggested other people might find value in them.
Jake tilted his head, cuddled Maggie, who gripped her father's shirt, as though he was the one solid thing in her little world right now. Sam understood the feeling. "It only matters what you think, Sam. But yeah..." He paused for a second, his mustang eyes vibrant in the low lamplight of their messy living room, "Yeah, I believe that if you want this, you're going to make it happen. The only thing stopping you is you."
"I just..." Sam tried to steady her racing heart, "I'd have to ask the Phantom. It's his story, not mine, and I won't do anything else without his blessing."
Jake knew what she meant. "I'm going to go put her down." As he stood up easily, he looked square at her, seemingly communicating that he knew just where she was heading.
Sam hadn't meant she was going to go tonight, to seek out the Phantom. She hadn't meant that at all. It was only something she was thinking on, not something she was set on doing. She had to figure out what she wanted out of this, if anything. "I'm not sure..."
Jake looked almost sad as he said, "It seems it's a pretty clear night for thinking on things." He was halfway up the stairs before Sam realized that he didn't expect that she would follow him. Sam looked around the living room, at the pile of clean laundry on the chair, and made up her mind.
Sam was glad that she was dressed as she moved towards the steps. Her boots were on the bottom stair, to be carried upstairs. She grabbed her boots from the stair, grabbed her hat from the peg, and grabbed her phone from the bowl by the door. Her jacket was on in a flash, and she was shrugging on her boots and tugging up the laces as she hopped across the ranch yard, a full moon lighting her path. The sounds of bugs filled her ears in the spring night, barely drowning out the sound of her racing heart.
You didn't think I was going to leave this 'verse forever, did you? :)
Hopefully, I'll update weekly. That means shorter chapters (~4k words, give or take), and lots of adventures.
Please review.