Marriage and Family

Chapter Fourteen

Martin shut the journal and placed it on the coffee table, unable to read anymore right now. During the past couple of days he had done nothing except read through Sam's journals, finally reaching the fifth and last one.

Reading the journals had been an eye-opening experience for him as he got to find out a lot of the feelings and thoughts that Sam had been hiding from him. But the sad part was that she wasn't really hiding them from him. After reading about the four years and what she had been going through, he could see just how oblivious he really had been.

Thinking back upon the past few years he could see the sadness and pain that was etched on her face. He remembered times when he thought he saw a flicker of anger flash across her face, but he always attributed it to hormones or just having a bad day. He never knew that the inside of her heart and mind was a hurricane of such raw emotions.

When the phone rang, he debated whether or not to answer it. A part of him just wanted to isolate himself for a while and ponder how he could have let himself be so blind to Sam's plight. But he realized that he should probably answer the phone. The call could be about something important.

"Hello?" He greeted.

"Hey daddy!" Rachel's enthusiastic voice came through.

"Hey Ray." He smiled, using the nickname that he had given her when she was really young. "What's up?"

"Not much." Rachel replied. "Is mom there?"

"No, she's not." Martin answered.

"I thought she was coming home once Nikolas came back." Rachel was confused. Nikolas was supposed to come home a few days ago, right?

"She was, but then she decided to go visit your Uncle Danny and Aunt Michelle." Martin explained.

"Oh." There was a short silence on the phone. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

"She's supposed to be coming back in a couple of days." Martin answered. "Why? Do you need something?"

"No…" Rachel replied. "Well, actually I just wanted to talk to her about something. But I guess it can wait a while."

"You could talk to me." Martin told her. Although Rachel seemed to have a better relationship with her mother, his relationship with Rachel was fairly strong. He liked to think that she felt like she could come to him with her problems.

"I…" She stalled, not knowing how to say this without hurting his feelings. "I don't know…"

"You know that you can talk to me about anything, right?" He wanted to make sure that she knew that.

"I know that daddy." She assured him. "It's just that this is more of a 'mom' situation than a 'dad' situation. I need a woman's opinion and unfortunately you can't give me that."

"No," he laughed, "I can't. But can you at least tell me if it's anything serious? Should I be worried?"

"No." Rachel replied. "You don't need to worry about me."

"You aren't in any kind of trouble, are you?" He questioned, wanting to make sure that she was ok.

"No, not really." She answered.

"What does not really mean?" He asked, confused. "Either you're in trouble or you're not."

"Ok, then I'm not." She laughed. The last thing she wanted to do was discuss this with her father. She wanted to talk about it with her mom first before approaching him about it. She realized that she had to change the subject.

"So how are you doing daddy?" She asked, hoping to shift the focus from her life to his.

"I'm fine." He answered, aware that she was trying to shift the focus away from herself. Because he didn't want to force her into telling him anything that she wasn't ready to tell him, he didn't call her on it.

"Are you looking forward to having mom back in the house?" She knew that mom had been away for over three months now and that was the longest stretch of time that she had ever seen her parents be away from each other. Although something instinctively told her that maybe this time away would help their marriage.

Things had been tense at home for the longest time, and it had been a long while since Rachel had seen her parents truly happy with each other. As much as she hated to admit it, things seemed to turn sour once Grandpa Victor moved in.

That's when the tension started to build between her parents. That's when her mom started getting really stressed out. That's when her father stated turning a blind eye to what was happening with his family.

She loved her Grandpa Victor, and so did Sean and Claire. They all thought that he was a good grandfather. He would give them money on their birthdays and Christmas, and he was always willing to share advice that he had compiled during his life. They respected him and thought he was a good guy.

However, their opinion about him changed once he moved in. They saw the way he treated their mother and had front row seats to the manipulative nature of their grandpa. Whether he was always that way and they hadn't noticed or if old age had just made him a miserable old man, they weren't sure.

By the second month after he moved in, they no longer respected him and they saw through the façade of being a good guy that he tried to hard to project around them.

When Grandpa Victor died, they all thought that things between their parents would finally get better. They had hoped that since the tyranny of Grandpa Victor was gone, their parents could start focusing on each other again.

But those hopes were soon dashed once they realized that something wasn't right. Something had snapped between them. The tightrope that their marriage was dangling on started to unravel, sending them into an abyss of the unknown.

They all saw it. Sean, Claire and herself all saw the trouble looming ahead. It was one of the reasons why Claire was so enthusiastic about having their mother come and stay with her for a while. She figured that she could get her to open up and then maybe they could help their parents.

That didn't work very well though because their mother was a very private person and didn't want to 'burden' her children with her problems. They had been helping her deal with Grandpa Victor's emotional abuse for years, cracking jokes around her when the stress seemed to much and trying to help her in whatever way they could. But even now, she still didn't want to involve them in her troubles.

She had talked with Sean about the problems their parents were having many times in the past few months and they always ended up arguing about how serious they thought the problems were. Sean always seemed to think that their parents would end up getting divorced, while she didn't think so.

She refused to believe that her parents would just throw away their marriage like that. They had spent so much time making a life together. They were her primary model of a marriage. Maybe it was a childish view, but her parents wouldn't get divorced. They just couldn't.

"I am." Martin replied sadly. "I've missed your mom a lot."

"I bet." Rachel nodded. "She's been gone for a long time."

"Yeah. Too long."

"Do you have anything special planned for when she comes home?" Rachel asked, hoping that her father was finally going to shower her mother with attention and love. She believed that a lot of their problems could be solved if he would just pay her more attention.

"I'm sure that it would mean a lot to her if you did something special for her to let her know that you missed her."

"I have been thinking about it." Martin told his daughter. Ever since reading the journals he realized that he needed to show Sam how much she meant to him before it was too late and she decided to leave him. Because as much as he hated to admit it, he wasn't sure why she hadn't left him already. God knows she has had many reasons to give up on him.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." She replied. "Ask away."

Well since he had been reading her journals and thinking about the past, he couldn't remember the last time that he saw Sam happy—really happy. Sure she had smiled a lot, but when he thought about it carefully, he realized that they weren't genuine Samantha smiles. They were fake ones, designed to throw him off and make him believe that everything was fine, when in reality, everything was slowly falling apart.

"Do you think your mother is happy?"

"Happy?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah, happy." Martin repeated.

"No dad. I don't." She was surprised by his question, but in a good way. Maybe it meant that he was finally seeing what everyone else was seeing. "She hasn't been happy for a long time."

"How long have you noticed it?" He asked, wanting to see if his suspicions about Sam's unhappiness starting once he moved his father into the house were true.

"Sorry dad, I don't want to be the one to have to break this to you, but it started once Grandpa Victor came to stay with us."

"I thought so." He sighed. "Do you think it was a bad idea to bring him into our house?"

She was silent for a moment, not sure if she should tell him the truth or sugar coat it. "Let's just say that it definitely wasn't one of your better ideas."

"I thought so." He sighed. He didn't want to continue talking about that though and switched topics again. "But speaking of ideas, I think I've come up with some good ideas for when your mother comes home."

"Like what?" Rachel asked, eager to hear what those good ideas were.

"I'm not telling." He laughed. "It's a surprise."

"Yeah a surprise for her, not me!" Rachel exclaimed. "C'mon dad! Please tell me? I promise not to tell her."

"No offense sweetie, but you aren't the best at keeping secrets." He told her. "Remember that surprise birthday party we wanted to throw your mother? You told her about it a week before her birthday."

"Are you going to throw that in my face my entire life?" Rachel groaned.

"Well that is the current plan." He teased.

"I was only four!" Rachel exclaimed. "You can't expect a four year old to keep a secret like that."

"Ok, how about when you were eight and you told your mother what I was getting her for Christmas?" Martin pointed out.

Rachel laughed. "Well if all you're going to do is point out times when I have let secrets slip out, then I will let you get back to whatever you're doing. I should probably get going anyway."

"Ok." He would've liked to talk to her for a little bit longer but realized that she probably had a very busy life. He knew that he did when he was her age and the last thing he wanted to do when he was in college was talk to his parents. "Love you Ray."

"Love you too daddy. Talk to you soon."