Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year! Please don't kill me :)
...
Previously, Sam went to L.A., either to escape Freddie or get some closure with her father, or both:
Kim rolled her eyes at the back-and-forth. "Great. Now that that's settled can we let Sam settle the bet?"
Dell scoffed at his wife's mislead – if adorable – determination. "I'm telling you: I know my daughter. There's no way she'd be with someone so…"
"She's right," Sam interrupted, quietly yet firmly. As much as she wanted to keep her personal life private, at the moment she'd wanted to knock him off his self-satisfied delusional high horse more.
What? Turning his attention from his wife to his daughter, Dell shook his head in silent confusion.
Sam took no satisfaction from the triumph:"Guess you don't know me as well as you think you do, huh, Dad?" Pushing her plate away – suddenly unhungry – she stood and left the table. Without asking to be excused.
Now:
If she'd had any money in her pocket, had thought to pick her phone up off the table, or even knew where in the hell she was, Sam would have left her father and his delusional assumptions behind faster than you could say the words 'rue the day.' Instead, she was stuck standing outside the restaurant, willing her hackles down and the maelstrom of emotions to subside.
"Are you okay?"
Stifling a groan (at least the door hadn't opened to reveal her father), Sam lifted her shoulders in an effected shrug. "This is actually pretty tame compared to some of the days I've been having lately." Not a word of a lie.
True as it may have been (why else the impromptu visit?), Kim saw the deflection for what it was. "Don't blame your dad, okay? Boys can be kind of clueless sometimes."
The 'news' elicited a violent snort. "I don't blame him for not knowing; I blame him for thinking nothing has changed." That she hadn't changed…
"It's not what he thinks as much as what he wishes," Kim corrected quietly, her heart hurting for them both. "He knows what he did, Sam. And it tears him up inside that he can't go back and fix it somehow."
"Well, he can't…" Fighting a resurgence of sadness, Sam leaned up against the building for support. "I guess we both just have to live with it."
Kim allowed silence to prevail while she considered her place and how much to say. After a brief internal debate she settled in beside her step-daughter, hands casually stuffed into her jeans pockets. "He told me what you said, about him not looking for you."
Sam bristled but remained mute.
"He was ashamed," Kim continued conversationally. "He didn't tell me about you and your sister until long after he'd started looking, and even then it was only because I'd seen the show." At which point she'd realized the 'Joy' their daughter had been named after hadn't been a deceased great aunt…
If that was supposed to make Sam feel all warm and fuzzy inside – that he'd only come clean once caught – then the woman needed a serious lesson in conciliation tactics…
The girl's stony disposition did nothing to deter Kim. "He was afraid if he found you he'd find out you'd stopped loving him, Sam. Same as he was afraid I'd stop loving him once I found out."
Sam cursed the traitorous lump in her throat; swallowed it to argue, "It shouldn't have been about him – he's the parent."
Kim gave a slow shake of her head. "Sam, we don't automatically become perfect when we have kids; we're still human. We still get scared and we still make mistakes. And sometimes we're selfish…"
"Just stop, okay?" Sam sighed. "I get that he's your husband and you love him and want to defend him, or whatever, but this really has nothing to do with you." It hadn't happened to her.
"Okay." As much as she wanted to help, Kim knew she was still a stranger to the girl. "You want to tell me how I just took your father for half a grand instead?"
"Not really. It's kinda creepy you're so interested in my love life, by the way." 'Kinda' being an understatement…
Kim shrugged. "I'm an old lady reliving my youth through you and your friends."
"Not any less creepy," Sam informed her, though she suspected it had been a joke.
"Fine. How about, you're my step-daughter and it comes with the territory?" A step-daughter she'd never met, but her husband's daughter and her daughter's sister and family all the same…
"Yeah…" Sam dug her sneakered toe into the ground at her feet. "I'm new to the whole 'step-parent' thing so I wouldn't know one way or the other; I hereby absolve you from anything that 'comes with the territory.'"
From what she'd heard, Kim doubted the girl was familiar with the whole 'parenting' thing… "I'm pretty sure it's non-absolvable," she teased, trying to keep the conversation light. "Unless your father divorces me – then I'm morally and legally absolved." Seeing the blonde's flinch she realized she'd inadvertently done the exact thing she'd been trying to avoid… "Shit, Sam – I'm sorry."
Nails picking the newly-formed scabs in her palm, Sam shifted her watery gaze to the woman's contrite one. "Just don't let him do to Joyce what he did to us, okay?"
Kim didn't know how she'd be able to stop him, but found herself acquiescing anyway.
Sam turned back to the distance, her thoughts turning inward. "Franklin says I can't let go of the past."
It took Kim a second to process the unexpected admission. "With your father, you mean?"
"I don't really talk to him about dad," Sam offered by way of denial. "It feels too much like cheating."
"Oh." The depth of the girl's loyalty to the man was surprising. "He's really been there for you, huh?"
Sam nodded; pondered aloud, "Sometimes I give him so much grief, I wonder why he hasn't given up on me yet."
That the blonde thought he should led Kim to believe she thought everyone else – her parents included – already had… "Can I tell you something?"
"It's a free country." And it wasn't like Sam had anywhere else to go…
"Your father is jealous." Sensing the girl's skepticism, Kim added, "Don't get me wrong: he's glad you have someone to turn to, and he knows it's no one's fault but his own that it's not him. But he envies the relationship you have with your principal all the same."
"He does?" Despite Sam's best efforts, her tone betrayed a note of interest.
"Parents get jealous, too," Kim smiled, pleased to be making progress. "But he'd be horrified if he knew I told you, so not a word, okay?" When her companion said nothing – seeming to take the request literally – she joked, "I meant about that, not 'at all.'"
"I know." Sam watched the blur of passing traffic as she considered how much to share; decided the woman's opinion was the most unbiased one she was going to get… "I was talking about with Freddie."
Not wanting to derail the girl's train of thought again (or worse: offend her into clamming up), Kim's only response was a soft hum of encouragement.
"He says he loves me but I can't get past the Carly thing." That was the big one, anyway…
Kim pursed her lips; muttered a simple, "Oh."
"'Oh'?" Sam glanced at her step-mother. "That's what you've got for me?" God, she hoped the woman got better at giving advice before Joyce became a confused hormonal teenager…
"What do you expect?" Kim defended, forgetting tact for a moment. "I only know what I've seen on the site." Even with her father, the girl wasn't exactly forthcoming with the details of her life outside iCarly…
"Then you saw how obsessed he was," Sam wryly pointed out. "Fawning all over her and making a general fool of himself…" Preserved in their archives for all the world to see. Over and over and over.
The blonde's assessment was pretty accurate, and also part of why Dell assumed (hoped) his daughter was smart enough not to have feelings for the boy. Kim wasn't so unforgiving: "You just said yourself: was. When was the last time he gave you reason to think he was still hung up on her?"
"For real? I don't know." Everything used to seem like 'reason,' but lately Sam was starting to question her own judgment. "Franklin says it's more fear than reality. But it feels the same, you know?"
Unfortunately Kim did know. "When your father first told me what he did to your mother and you girls? I kicked him out."
"You did?" Seemed Sam wasn't the only one who didn't believe in full disclosure…
Kim nodded, meeting her step-daughter's curious eyes. "I couldn't believe the man I knew – the man I married – could do something so horrible; that it took him so long to tell me. And I was afraid that if he could do it to you guys then he could do it to us."
"It's hardly the same situation." For one thing, her father had married the woman out of love rather than obligation…
"No, it isn't," Kim conceded. "But I knew he was capable, and I had to decide whether I was going to let something that had happened in the past ruin what we had; something he couldn't change any more than I could change loving him…" Lifting an inquisitive eyebrow, she posed, "Do you think I made the wrong decision?"
Sam groaned inwardly, recognizing the parallel the woman was trying to not-so-subtly draw. "It was your decision; if it doesn't work then you have to live with it."
Kim wondered if the blonde got her caginess from her mother or it was just the side-effect of a less-than-ideal upbringing… Trying another approach, she breathed a sympathetic sigh. "Are you worried you're going to look like an idiot if you trust him and he proves you wrong? Because I was…"
"I don't know," Sam admitted for the second time in as many minutes. "Everyone's got a different idea of what my problem is." And the list just kept growing.
"Well, what do you think?" In the end it was only the girl's opinion, and how she handled it, that mattered…
Sam absentmindedly traced the wounds in her skin. "All of the above, maybe?" All of the fears and neuroses, each one damaging on its own but debilitating when put together, and any of which, if founded, could leave a permanent scar… "I'm not good at letting myself be vulnerable. Leaving myself open to getting hurt."
Which was completely understandable, given what the girl had been through… "Sam, I can't promise you won't get hurt," Kim advised quietly, "but I can promise that you don't want to have any regrets. If I hadn't let your father back in, we wouldn't be where we are now."
"You didn't know for sure that's how it would be." And even then her odds had been infinitely better than Sam's were…
"You're right; I loved him enough to take the chance and it paid off. But even if it hadn't, at least I wouldn't have had to spend the rest of my life wondering 'what if.'" Removing a hand from her pocket, Kim placed it imploringly on the blonde's arm. "If you're going to take anything away from what your father did, let it be that you can't get a do-over, however much you may want one."
Oh, Sam had already 'taken away' far more from what he'd done than she cared to… But even if she could set aside her doubts and 'take the chance,' what if it turned out she'd been right to have them? Chilled despite the unrelenting heat, she whispered a hoarse, "I'm not sure I wouldn't rather regret it than risk ending up like my mother."
Kim swallowed hard at the reminder of the mess her husband had left in his wake, and of the fate to which he'd abandoned his daughters. "Sam, just because you have her DNA doesn't mean you'll become her; not everyone deals with adversity the same." Some could hack it and some just couldn't. Some were unfortunate enough to be doomed to suffer the sins of their parents… "You've been dealt more than your fair share and you've survived it, Sam. I think you've already proven you're stronger than her."
Refraining from telling the woman she didn't know the first thing about her – or even half of what she'd 'survived' – Sam hid her uncertainty behind a forced smile. "What doesn't kill you, right?"
"Exactly," Kim agreed.
That would have been more comforting if Sam weren't afraid it would be what finally did kill her…
I know this chapter took a looong time and it's short and decidedly lacking in the Seddie department, but I promise the next chapter (hopefully the last) will rectify that.
Best wishes to everyone for 2015!