As a little girl, she had once eased into the comfort of a stable, happy family like a crutch and what may have seemed foreign to others was simply and plainly her normalcy. That's how it had been once, but as she grew, an awareness of certain things came over her like the slow rise of the sun over peaks and valleys, the light of truth slowly encompassing each crevice and dark corner.
An awareness of herself grew, of what she supposed some would call home, and she relied on her few scattered certainties: her mother and brother.
Her mother had been vibrant and whole once, though her face as young and happy seemed so distant she could've imagined it. Then, the darkness came. Her father's distance had always hung like a gloomy cloud over Samantha and her brother, but they took the solace escaping away to the streets of their small town provided.
One day, she walked into her house as she always had, the sun waning in the western sky, and could feel the change come over her like a cool mist, a change she knew would keep her forever in this one moment wishing she would've stayed that extra ten minutes at her friend's house or stopped by the ice cream store on her way home, or even...even maybe climbed that birch tree in the vacant lot two blocks over like she'd been itching to do since they cleared out the broken glass.
She could've done any of those things or all of them and each in its own way would've provided that extra cushion time allowed from reality. She could've done those things, but she didn't and she would always mark that moment with other things she wished she hadn't done, the weight of all those mistakes making her wonder what in fact she had done right in her life.
So as the summer heat eased its grasp and the cool air replaced it, the last tendrils of freedom reminded her of not only school but the last memory of her innocence she had preserved in her mind.
The screen door made the same sound as she shut it, making sure it didn't slam because, we don't let doors slam like that, Samantha, or then I have to fix it and you know daddy doesn't like to do that. He's busy.
Daddy's always busy, and away, and sometimes...drunk and mean.
Her mother was away, she could tell. The sky blue Cadillac was noticeably absent from the driveway, and Samantha shuffled her books to the left side of her body as she closed the door, creeping silently into the dark house and listening to the whispers from the living room. She set the books down and crawled to the staircase, huddled in a dark corner and watched her brother, now 18, argue with her father, whose stained clothes hung loosely around his chest and whose breath reeked of alcohol even from her vantage point.
"Look at you, you're a bum. You're forty-five years old. And what do you do, what do you do? You sit around here and you just -- you suck the life out of everyone. That's what you do. You've destroyed Mom, you've messed me up...you're like a disease. You move from one victim to another."
"You got no right to talk to me like that, boy, I'm your father."
"Father!" He spat. "You live in the same house as me, that doesn't mean you're my father. And now you're going to destroy Samantha and she doesn't deserve it. She deserves a real father, not a stupid drunk like you."
The bitter sound of an angry hand hitting soft flesh rang in her ears and sliced through the otherwise silent house like a knife. Samantha flinched and curled further into herself, hoping to disappear into the wood behind her and escape the fight.
Her father heard the creak, and in his drunken haze, moved towards the sound, toward the dark corner Samantha had burrowed herself into.
"You little bitch, hiding over here so you can go tell Mommy how Daddy was bad and hit Matthew, right? You gonna go tell Mommy, little Sammy? Huh, little Sammy, " he slurred, some of his words running into each other like bumper cars at the fair.
She curled her hands into fists and brought them to her face to shield her from what she thought would be a slap just as her brother had endured. It didn't come though. The sound of running footsteps filled her ears and she allowed herself to open her eyes and glance at the form of her brother towering over her, shielding his sister from whatever might've laid ahead.
His strong hands shoved his father back, who stumbled on the small throw rug in front of their coffee table.
"Go sober up, " Matthew said, turning to lift his sister with ease from her hideaway, and carried her up the stairs.
In the quiet of her room, she felt safe and protected. Years from now, she would remember the way her brother's sandy blonde hair, slightly in need of a haircut, fell over his eyes gently as he bent to tuck her in after whispering of fairy tales and silly stories she felt she had overgrown at her adult age of six.
As a child, you forgot many things, especially a young child. You could remember when you learned to read or tied your shoes or learned your alphabet, because those were monumental and joyous events. As a child as well, you could remember pain of certain degrees, but not always remember what had caused it.
She looked at her brother as he sat beside her, caught sight of his eyes in the moonlight, and wondered, in her young mind, why he looked so sad, just as her mom. She wondered what he had seen in his young life, and only in her teen years and adulthood could she begin to understand the impact they had both felt from one man that had seen fit to stay in their tiny house on Payton St. and continue living if only to suck something pure from their young hearts.
She sometimes wished she couldn't see the horrors lying around the foundations of her childhood, would've been grateful for blissful ignorance. Youth, it seemed, was that small fraction of age still untouched by pain and tragedy.
His voice cracked as he spoke to her, wondering if she even understood what he was saying, so young, it seemed -- so young to be here.
"Sam, " he whispered, "I've got to go away tomorrow."
She smiled with naive innocence. "Will you get me a present?"
"No, hon, I -- I won't be back for a long time. But I'm gonna write to you and you can draw me some pictures, okay?"
Her face quickly moved from sadness to excitement in the span of a second and she reached out her tiny arms in an offering of a hug, which he quickly and gratefully accepted. He pulled back and stroked her fine, blonde hair in quiet amazement.
"You don't forget me, okay, Sammy? Don't forget your big brother, " his voice cracked and he stood up, walked away.
"Goodbye, Matty, " she giggled, turning over in her bed.
"Not goodbye, " he whispered back, and left her room for good.
She would remember that, she would later learn -- would remember the sound he made as he left her room that quiet, summer night as the crickets played a song for her. In with the happy times and the bad times, there would just be this moment where her brother had once been Matthew Spade -- a slightly, fractured young man, but nearly whole. She missed that.
Not goodbye.
Not goodbye.
She turned it over in her head.
Goodbyes were forever.