Chapter 14

"You're sure you want to stay," Michael asked.

Sam nodded. "It's not like you're abandoning me in the wilderness, Mike. I've got family here that still needs my help." He kicked at an acorn on the ground and looked back up to his friend. "If anything really pressing comes up, give me a call. Otherwise…." He shrugged. "I may be here for at least a couple months. I owe them this."

He didn't have to explain; Michael understood what he meant. After having escaped a home full of abuse from his father, leaving his mother and brother Nate behind to suffer without him, many a day Michael felt the tug of honor and what he owed his family for abandoning them. It was too late to make it up to Nate, but he still had time with Madeline. No doubt when he returned she would have something needing his attention, and he would handle it because of the debt he felt he had to repay her.

"Okay. Take care of yourself, Sam. If you need anything, let us know." He shook his friend's hand and drew him into a quick hug.

"I will, Mike. Thanks for your help here. You and Fi..."

"It was a great team effort." Fiona gently bumped Michael aside and gave Sam a warm embrace. "Don't freeze to death up here, Sam."

"I won't, I promise." He grinned at her. "You two be careful driving back. If anything happens to the Caddy, Elsa will kill me."

Michael laughed. "We wouldn't let that happen."

"Yeah, need I remind you of the one you destroyed trying to get away from those guys chasing you after your chat with Carla?"

"That shouldn't be a problem anymore," Michael responded quickly. "Goodbye, Sam. We'll keep in touch and see you soon."

Sam waved until the Cadillac was down the road and they couldn't see him. He sighed, and his breath came out in a cloud. It was getting colder every day, reminding him of one of the reasons he didn't come home. There was always summer, but then other reasons kept him away, poor excuses every one of them. When he walked back up the driveway and saw Elise standing near the wash lines waiting for him, he knew by the way she stood with her weight on one hip and her arms crossed that she wanted to talk to him about something heavy. Considering how he was feeling about his choice to stay and the reason behind it, he was pretty sure the upcoming conversation would highlight his decision with a good dose of guilt.

"Elise. What's up?"

"Not much. Strange how not having the herd around opens up a lot more time. Will you join me for a walk?"

Sam shrugged. "Sure, why not." He was dressed a little light for the weather, but as they walked he was sure he would warm up. "Lead on." He pointed toward the fields.

Elise walked with Sam along the charred heap that used to house the cows. "I was kind of surprised that you didn't take off with Michael and Fiona."

"I promised I would stay, Lise."

The corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. "I'm sorry, Sam. I really didn't believe you'd do it."

"Why? I've always done what I said I would. When did you start thinking I couldn't be trusted?" He was hurt and blindsided by her doubt.

She let out a deep breath and stuck her hands into her back pockets. "I'm sorry. I think because you didn't come home after you left to go to school, and when you did those couple of times, you were here and gone before half the town could say hello. And your mom… you weren't here for the funeral. If I'd been away and Momma or Daddy died, I would have moved heaven and earth to get here to bury them."

"Yeah, well, I was in the jungles of Columbia at the time in the middle of a disastrous mission." He shook his head. "Believe me, Lise, if I could have escaped and come home, I would have been here. Anywhere was better than in the middle of that mess."

"So you would have done it out of desperation and not necessarily out of love for your mom. Nice." She shook her head and looked up at him. "I expected better out of you. Maybe I built this image of you up in my mind all these years and you're nothing like I thought."

"Lise, it's not like that at all!" Sam looked down at her, feeling like she betrayed him with her lack of confidence in him. "I can't believe you think I thought so little of my Ma! It kills me that I couldn't be there, and that when she was alive I did nothing for her. I turned out just like my Dad. Do you think I feel good about that?"

"No, I can't imagine that you would." She pouted and said, "After your mission was done, you could have at least come to visit her gravesite."

"I was trying not to get court-martialed and thrown into Gitmo," he replied with a growl. "When I barely made it out of that fiasco, I wanted to get as far from home as I could think of, where there were plenty of places I could lose myself. I was broken, Elise. I couldn't come home a failure."

"Of all the places you could have run to, home would have been the best place. At least here you have people who love you. Not that Michael and Fiona don't, but... we're family." She looked up at him with sorrow in her eyes, and she closed the distance between them and put an arm around his waist. She pressed against his side. "You know we would have taken care of you."

He put an arm around her shoulders. Somewhere along the line, he'd forgotten that the Fraser side of the family was a lot more touchy feely than the Axe side. If he didn't indulge her, she'd think he hated her. "When I left, you were all proud of me and thought I'd be this big hero. I was anything but at the end of my career." He snorted. "Coming back with my tail between my legs was not very appealing."

"I think I understand that, but... oh, never mind. You came back when we needed you most, and that's really all that matters." She squeezed him and broke the contact with a smile of love directed at him.

"I didn't really want it to seem like I was abandoning everyone, but, well, it kind of turned out that way, didn't it?" He frowned. "If it makes you feel better, I did the same thing to my wife."

"Oh yeah, I remember Aunt Jeannie talking about her." She glanced up at Sam with a smirk on her face. "By the way, she didn't think much of her, and if she was here, she'd probably say it was no big loss." Elise laughed, but then sobered as she asked, "Did you two ever get divorced?"

"No." He glanced toward the herd and watched them laze around munching the last of the green grass. What more could he add?

"Sam! You should take care of that, or get rid of the girlfriend."

"If I can find her, yeah, I should. There's a lot of stuff I need to deal with, the barn reconstruction being one of them." He stopped walking, and she turned toward him with a questioning look. "But first, where's Mom?"

Elise smiled. "Let's go take a ride." On the way back to the house, she stopped along a fence and picked some dark purple flowers that the frost hadn't killed yet. Sam knew exactly what she was doing, because he remembered that his mother loved those flowers. He went ahead a few feet and picked some until they harvested every last vibrant bloom along the fence line. She took them from him and held the stems in her two hands until they reached the house, and she used some string to tie the flowers into a bunch.

"Looks good, Lise. Thanks for remembering."

She choked up at the way he blinked away the tears. "Just fire up that heap of yours and drive us to the cemetery."

Elise went with Sam and showed him where Jean Axe was buried, but she gave him the flowers and retreated to the truck to wait inside the warm cab. He knelt on one knee beside the stone and rested the bouquet against it. His lips moved as he appeared to be speaking, and his head dipped and he swiped his eyes on his sleeve. Elise found a small stain on the seat to take her attention away from such an intimate moment, because if she kept watching, she was sure that she would break down into a mess of tears and just embarrass him.

After awhile, Sam returned to the truck and didn't say anything until they were almost home. "While we're in town, do you need anything?"

"Nope, I'm good."

"Okay." He continued driving back to the farm without another word.

"You and I used to be able to talk about stuff, Sam. I'd like to think that we still can."

He picked up her hand from the seat and gave it a squeeze. "Thanks, Elise. I'll let you know if I need to talk."