A/N: Oh, loyal reviewers, I need you this evening. It's been a hell of a day. And this may just be my favorite chapter.
XXX
The afternoon died quickly in the presence of Sam's meltdown. Jesse was in disarray, having been rejected by what could only be described as his idol, and Brandi was forced to take him home. Jinx tried to stay, tried to talk Mary off the ledge she was clearly on the brink of jumping over, but her daughter had none of it. She was tired of being hovered upon, tired of being tiptoed around, and mostly tired of being tired. She sent her away none-too-kindly and Carolyn, smart enough to take the hint, returned to the hospital where Griffin and Julian had set up camp for the day. Mary really wanted to go too, was aching fit to burst from not being with Marshall, being by his side, but she couldn't leave Sam. Not on his birthday.
He stayed in his room such a long time Mary guessed he must've fallen asleep. He was infinitely stubborn when he wanted to be and she ventured that in his quest to withhold his birthday, he had partially lost the battle by drifting into dreamland where things didn't hurt quite so much.
It was almost 6:30 in the evening and Mary was sitting at the table working mindlessly on her laptop, punching in information about comatose patients and gunshot wounds, when she heard the door of Sam's bedroom.
Shutting her laptop quickly and trying to look impassive, she turned to watch him enter and he did indeed. He looked rumpled, his hair sticking up at the back, and also ashamed. He just stood halfway between the kitchen and living room, watching his mother who was watching him.
"Hi…" Mary said in what she hoped was an inviting tone.
But she didn't know what to say next. Sam stood, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, also unsure how to vocalize what he was thinking.
"You hungry?" she prodded delicately. "You haven't had dinner."
Sam obviously still wanted to hold up his end of the argument, but his stomach was telling him something else and he nodded.
Bolstered by the leeway, Mary slid her chair out from the table, a silent indication for him to come over and join her. Evidently it was all the encouragement he needed, because he bolted in no time flat. But instead of taking his own chair, he lifted himself onto Mary's lap, facing inward toward the table.
Mary was a little surprised. He hadn't sat on her lap in quite awhile, again with the claims that he was too big or too old. But she wasn't about to tell him to get off, so she shoved the laptop to the other end of the table and pulled the crater-cake in front of them. Snatching the knife at its side, she awkwardly sliced a piece around Sam's body and he wasted no time in just grabbing pieces with his fingers. Mary would've preferred he use a fork, but he wasn't a messy eater so she just let him be.
After a few minutes of silence, Sam licking his fingers, Mary stealing a few bites herself, Sam finally spoke.
"This is the worst birthday ever."
The malice in his voice had disappeared, which was a relief. He just stated it like a fact, and Mary didn't see any point in arguing with him.
"You know…" she said, still reaching around him to grab morsels of cake. "My seventh birthday was my worst too."
"Really?" he said curiously, smacking his lips. "How come?"
She'd never told Sam about James – not much anyway. He was too young to really understand, at least to understand in the way that Mary wanted him to. It may have been moronic, but so much of her life was defined by her father's abandonment. Why she wanted Sam to get that it was unclear, but she did. Maybe she just wanted him to know how wrong it was.
"My dad had left home a few days before," she decided to start light.
"Left home?" Sam turned in his seat to try and look at her. "What's that mean? Like…just for awhile, on a trip or something? Did he forget it was your birthday?"
"No…" Mary shook her head, almost enjoying the innocence of his questions. "See, my dad had a lot of problems. There were things that were more important to him than…"
It was still hard admitting this, but she knew it was true and Sam deserved the truth.
She swallowed, "…Than to me and Brandi and Jinx. So he made a choice and his choice was to take care of himself instead of us."
She said it all very directly, much more evenly than she usually spoke about her father but if she wanted Sam to comprehend it, she needed to be smart about it. Nothing was to be gained from becoming a mess and she had more important things to worry about.
She fully expected, 'what kind of things?' to come next, and was just working out how to explain gambling to a seven-year-old, when he surprised her.
"So, where did he go?" Sam wanted to know, returning to front-facing and grabbing more pieces of cake in his fingers.
"I don't know," Mary said honestly, following suit and snatching some crumbs herself.
"Well, did he ever come back?" he went on, clearly interested in the story now.
"No," she responded, scooping the tinier scraps back onto the plate so they wouldn't litter the floor.
"Where is he now?"
It was like a game of tennis with Sam on his back and forth. But this question was a little harder, especially considering what had come before it. She'd never known where James had gone; he'd never returned for her. And he wasn't ever going to.
"He died," she replied as plainly as she could. "When you were about…" she calculated briefly in her head, taking herself back to that trip to Kansas.
Sam giggling, laughing and squealing on that horse.
"One year old," she said in terms he would understand. "A little bigger."
The mention of death didn't deter Sam. If anything, it made his next request all the more simplistic and expected.
"Do you miss him?"
Mary couldn't see his face, just the back of his dark brown hair; saw each of the scalloped waves, one against the other. It was so pretty, so soft. She knew it came from Mark and not her, but she loved it even if he didn't resemble her. Leaning her forehead into those downy soft curls, she closed her eyes and then pulled up again to answer.
"Yes bud, I do."
Sam was probably the only person to whom this made sense. Why not? Her dad had left and then he'd died. What wasn't to miss? Simplicity really did do wonders for a person sometimes, regardless of what Mary usually believed.
At the same time, she expected this comment to have a more profound effect on him, but he didn't take the time to digest – either literally or figuratively this instance. He turned around as well as he could so he could look at her again, a serious look on his face. He seemed very resolute, very certain.
"I don't think he should have left you," he stated. "Not if he never came back or told you where he was going. That isn't very nice."
Mary's expectation, after the ordeal she'd been through, was that she was going to cry again. But absurdly, it made her smile. Softly, without her teeth, but genuine. More sincere than she'd felt in awhile.
"Well, it sure made my birthday a bummer," she conceded for something to say. "You are a Shannon, Sam," she reminded him, careful to use his preferred name. "A bad seventh birthday must come from me."
"How come?" he drove on, but he hopped down off her lap now, walking around the edge of the table.
Mary saw him with his eye on the pile of presents, but she just kept right on talking, determined to keep him even. Through it, she watched him walk to the island and take one of the gifts, casually bringing it back to the table. He sat across from her this time.
"How come what?" she wanted to make sure.
"Well…" he started to tear the paper off. "My last name is Shannon…"
"It is," Mary nodded.
"And so is yours…" paper gone now.
"Right," Mary agreed.
"But, dad's name is Mann. Isn't it?" Sam wanted to know.
He took the top off a long, thin box which contained a toy rifle, 'like the ones the cowboys use.' She saw the tiniest hint of a smile, but took care to answer his question.
"Yeah," she said. "He is Marshall Mann."
It made her heart twinge to say it out loud.
"But, some of my friends have names that are different from their mom or their dad, but their parents are divorced. You and dad aren't divorced," he replied, as though she didn't know.
After testing the trigger and closing one eye to peer down the length of the rifle, he set it on the table and got up to get another present.
"No, we are definitely married," she assured him, keeping her seat. "But we weren't when you were born. So, you got my name."
She hoped this was sufficient and it appeared it was as Sam nodded and returned to the table. He was only seven and likely wouldn't put the pieces together that if she and Marshall hadn't been married at his birth, it was highly plausible he wasn't – technically – Marshall's son. Sam knew Mark, but not the truth. All three of them had resolved to wait until he was old enough to fully understand what had gone on. At the moment, he considered Mark a fun-loving uncle, some guy from his mother's past that came every so often to take him out to do something he enjoyed. Now wasn't the time to get into specifics.
"Well…" Sam set about removing paper off the second gift. "What if I wanted dad's name instead?"
What a question. It prompted all sorts of strange flutterings for Mary, possibilities she'd never even considered. Legally, biologically Marshall's wasn't Sam's dad. He would have to adopt him for that to happen.
"That'd be kind of bizarre," she offered to avoid voicing this. "Your middle name is Mann. So then you'd be Samuel Mann Mann."
"But then I'd be just like dad!" Sam exclaimed, not discouraged in the least. "Because he's Marshal Marshall Mann, right?"
Mary laughed, for what felt like the first time in years. Sam had just opened his desired grappling hook, something she had gotten him long before he'd requested it the night Marshall had been shot. He gave it the once-over as he waited for Mary's response.
"Maybe we leave this for another day," she suggested, not really wanting to weigh the prospects at the moment, not wanting to think about Mark. "Is that hook the kind you wanted?"
"Yeah," he said, fingering the rope. "So…it's still my birthday, right?" back to the island.
"Sure Sam."
"What was it like when I was born?"
His stream of questions was endless. He bounced from one to the other with no space in-between. Mary had to wonder where all the talk was coming from, but maybe he was smart enough, even subconsciously, to know that speaking kept him from remembering what they were all facing at the moment.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked.
"Just wondered," he shrugged, carrying his third present.
"Well…" she pondered how much to reveal but she was a huge fan of honesty, of the unvarnished truth whenever possible. "It was painful."
She could almost hear Marshall laughing at this response.
"Yeah?" he muttered curiously.
"Yep," she reinforced. "You made me throw up."
"I did?" his eyebrows raised as she said this. "Cool."
She found herself chuckling again.
"If you say so."
Mary decided she could sunny this up a little, to touch on the lighter and more sentimental aspects of Sam's appearance rather than the nitty-gritty for once. She leaned her chin in her head and peered at him from across the table.
"You came two minutes before five o'clock in the morning," she revealed. "And when you decided it was time, it took you nine hours to show up."
"Nine hours?" now his eyes bugged. "That's forever!"
"And did you know Jesse took eighteen?"
"Wow!" there was a flash of a grin on his seven-year-old face.
"They handed you to me…" she went on, tone turning soft and ethereal now. "And your dad was sitting right behind me. And he put your cheek on my chest…"
With a jolt, suddenly she wanted Sam right there – tiny and brand new, Marshall anchoring her; the three of them like there was nobody else in the world. Sam was looking straight at her now, presents forgotten, wrapped into this tale of his arrival.
"That's when I knew you were mine," she said. "I knew I'd done the right thing."
Wait-wait. What did she just say? Hang on – back the truck up. Shut up.
"Huh?" Sam wrinkled his nose. "What do you mean?"
Now was not the time. What on earth was she thinking? Marshall was in the hospital, fighting for his life. He was his dad no matter what.
"Nothing Sam," she tried to smile. "It was a big day for me. I wish this one was better for you."
Sam looked sad then – sad, but determined in what he was going to say.
"I wish your dad had come to your seventh birthday, mom."
Marshall. All Marshall.
"Same to you, bud."
A/N: Nothing left to say except I adore all of you out there for hanging with me. Adore.