Love and Marriage

Chapter Forty-Four

"Mommy! Put the video in now please!" Claire exclaimed impatiently. She was bouncing up and down on the couch as she waited for her mommy to come back into the living room with the popcorn. Sarah was sitting next to her on the couch, also anxiously waiting for the movie to start.

"I'm coming." Sam told her daughter, entering the living room with a huge bowl of popcorn. She placed the bowl in the middle of the couch between Claire and Sarah before going to set up the DVD player. Although the original plan was to rent the new Disney movie that had come out on video, when Sam took the girls to the video store they insisted on getting 'Beauty and the Beast' instead.

They had already had pizza for dinner and she had made sure that the girls had got ready for bed before they started the movie. That way, if they fell asleep during the movie she wouldn't have to wake them up. She could just move them into their sleeping bags since they were 'camping out' in the living room. "Here we go." Sam gave them a small smile after she got the DVD player working and the familiar Disney logo showed up on the TV.

"Yea!" Claire and Sarah smiled back. "I love this movie."

"I do too." Sarah agreed.

Sam picked up the DVD player remote and moved past the advertisements and teasers for other Disney movies available on DVD to get to the actual beginning of the movie, taking note of the way Claire and Sarah were getting along. She knew that Sarah was Claire's best friend, and when you're young like that, a best friend is a sacred thing. "There you go." She grinned, making sure that the volume of the TV was loud enough.

"Thanks mommy!" Claire smiled at her before turning her attention to the TV.

Sam moved out of the way so that she wasn't blocking the TV or anything and ended up standing a few feet behind the couch with her arms wrapped across her chest. If she was to take the job in Houston and move there without Martin, she wasn't sure that she would be able to leave Claire behind. She would need to take her daughter with her, even though she didn't think that Claire would want to leave her friends behind—especially Sarah. And she was certain that Martin wouldn't like that. After all, not moving Claire to a new state was one of his major objections to the transfer. But how was she supposed to leave her child behind?

She'd been on the receiving end of that kind of abandonment when she was a little girl and her father had left her behind. It had messed her up emotionally for many years. It made her question why she wasn't good enough to make her father stay, making her second-guess everything about herself. No, she decided, she couldn't do that to Claire. She wouldn't, couldn't, abandon her daughter. So where did that leave her then?

Ever since her talk with Martin earlier, staying didn't seem like an option anymore. Although he said that he didn't want her to leave, she wasn't sure she believed him. He might as well have already packed her bags and booked her a ticket. It didn't feel like he even wanted her to consider staying around, and that hurt. That hurt a lot. She was hoping that the letters Leslie told them to write would help them come to some kind of compromise, but that didn't happen. If anything, the letters somehow turned Martin against her, making him lose his fighting spirit and give up on their marriage.

Looking at the clock, she saw that it was seven thirty. Martin still wasn't home and she had no idea where he was. She'd called the office while the girls were changing into their pajamas but there was no answer. So he wasn't still at the office. It shouldn't have surprised her that he was avoiding her after their conversation earlier, but it did surprise her that he didn't call and tell her that he was going to be late. After all, they had made plans for a movie date. Of course that was before he suggested that she leave him, so maybe it was stupid and pathetic for her to hope that their earlier plans were still on.

The phone rang and she practically ran to the kitchen to pick it up on the cordless phone. "Hello?" The hope that it was Martin soon died when she heard the other person's voice.

"Samantha? This is Leslie."

"Hi." Sam greeted.

"I'm sorry that it's so late, but it's been a very hectic day and I just now got your message." Leslie apologized. "What seems to be the problem?"

Sam walked out to the living room to make sure that Claire and Sarah were still engrossed in the movie before re-entering the kitchen and closing the sliding door for privacy. "I hate to bother you like this."

"Nonsense!" Leslie exclaimed. "I'm always here to help. What's going on? The message you left with my secretary earlier was rather cryptic."

"Well, Martin and I wrote the letters that you told us to write."

"That's good. How did that go?" Leslie asked. "Did you manage to talk about everything calmly?"

"Yes and no." Sam replied. "He is convinced that the best solution to this problem is for me to move to Houston without him. He doesn't want to fight anymore."

Leslie's heart sank as soon as she heard that. Then she became rather frustrated with Martin and wanted to give him a piece of her mind. "Is Martin there right now?"

"No." Sam replied.

"Darn." Leslie sighed. Well she'd just have to talk to him later and hopefully talk some sense into him. "What was your response to his suggestion?"

"I don't want to leave without him. I don't want my marriage to end." Sam replied, keeping an eye on the door so that Claire didn't walk in and overhear anything bad.

"That's good." Leslie told her. "That's good that you don't want to leave."

"But at the same time, I don't want to stay around if he doesn't want to make our marriage work." Sam added.

"Has he actually said that he doesn't want the marriage to work?" Leslie questioned, hoping that he hadn't said that.

"Not in so many words." Sam sighed. "He said he didn't want me to leave but thinks that I'll be happier in Houston. He thinks I'll resent him if I stay and then our marriage will still fall apart."

Leslie took a moment to think about what Samantha was telling her. "And what is your opinion about this? Do you think you might end up resenting him if you stay?"

"I guess it's possible." She agreed. "I mean, I think the fact that I was shipped off to White Collar has already caused some problems between us. It only makes sense that the longer I work there the more problems will arise."

"But…" She anticipated that Samantha still had more to say.

"But I feel like he's testing me."

"How is he testing you?" Leslie asked.

"About eight months after we started dating, we broke up—well he broke up with me. I wasn't the best girlfriend on the planet. I shut him out and pushed him away all the time. I was afraid to let him in because I was falling in love with him and didn't want to face it. We got back together a couple of months later, after he got shot. But I was the one that had to make all of the effort to get us back together."

Thinking back to the time when they were broken up was painful. That was one of the worst times in her life because she had grown accustomed to having him in her life and then all of a sudden he was gone. "I was the one who had to prove myself to him. I had to prove that I was ready to open up and let him in. I felt like I had to do everything I could to prove that I was good enough for him. At the time I thought it was ok. I thought that I deserved that because I was such a horrible girlfriend to him in the past. But now I feel like he's trying to do this to me again. I feel like he's trying to get me to prove that I'm worthy again."

"So you feel like you have to prove a lot of things to him?" Leslie asked.

"Yes." She nodded. "That first time I had to prove myself to him was justified. But this time, I'm not so certain that I'm the only one who needs to prove myself."

"That's understandable." Leslie agreed. "You're not the only one at fault here."

"What am I supposed to do?" Sam asked, hoping that Leslie had some magical cure-all advice.

"Martin isn't there right now, right?"

"Right."

"My suggestion is that you call his cell phone and tell him to come home immediately. You two need to talk about all of this and I suggest that you bring up the fact that you feel like you have to constantly prove yourself to him. I have said it before and I'll say it again. Communication is a major problem for you both. I don't know if talking about it will solve all of your problems, but I know it will help and it will make you both feel better."

Leslie sighed, wondering why these two couldn't seem to make their marriage work. It was obvious that they loved each other, so why were they always so obstinate? "Now concerning the job in Houston, I think it would be a bad idea to move there unless you can somehow get Martin to agree to go with you. I know that you would love to have that job, but leaving without him would be a mistake for everyone involved."

"I know." Sam agreed. She hated to admit it, but Leslie was right. Leaving wouldn't solve anything. "I just…everything is so complicated."

"Yes, it is." Leslie agreed. "But what you need to do right now is talk to Martin about this with total honesty."

"Ok. I'll do that." Sam replied. "Thank you Leslie. I appreciate you calling me back."

"Anytime." Leslie promised. "Remember that I'm here for you and Martin anytime you need me."

"Thanks." Sam smiled. "But I'll let you go now. I'm sure you have things to do."

"Samantha, don't forget to be honest with him." Leslie reminded her.

"I won't." Sam told her. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Sam hung up the phone and decided to check up on the girls. Upon entering the living room she found that both of them were singing along to one of the songs:

"No one hits like Gaston. Matches wits like Gaston. In a spitting match nobody spits like Gaston."

She smiled at the enthusiasm with which they were singing, even though they got most of the words wrong. But they didn't care about that. They were able to have fun just by singing gibberish. She couldn't help but continue to watch them laughing and singing along. She'd call Martin in a few minutes, once she had worked up enough courage.