Chapter Nine – In Extremis
My mother is always Samantha.
Never just Sam.
There were only two people who were ever granted permission to call her Sam.
Jack was one of them.
He had asked her one night while they were alone together at the office, working closer than was strictly necessary. "Why does nobody call you Sam?" he had asked glancing sideways at her looking for an answer to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps a tiny glimpse into the past of this woman that had long since intrigued him and drawn him to her unexpectedly.
She had studied him closely before answering, an internal debate raging over just how much of her past she was willing to share with this man.
But what they had, whatever sordid relationship they were sharing was new, and her bitter heart simply wasn't willing to let him in until she knew he wasn't going to stomp out her faith in love all over again.
"I don't really know," she chose her words carefully. "I always hated it when my mom called me that and nobody has since then."
She lied.
"Can I call you Sam?" Jack had asked.
And for some reason she couldn't possibly deny him. Not when he was looking at her that way, begging for a tiny piece of her heart.
Maybe she nodded. Maybe she agreed. Whatever happened, she became Jack's Sam that night. In much the same way years earlier she had become my father's.
Unlike Jack, my father had never asked. He never knew her as anything else. She was Sam from the moment he saw her to the moment he left her behind.
His Sam.
Who knew the very worst about him and loved him anyway.
"I used to hate when my mother called me Sam. But when you say it, for some reason, I love it. I want to hear you say it forever," my mother had told him one night as they lay together beneath a cloudless sky and mapped out their lives with the stars.
When forever came, Sam Spade was gone too.
She didn't need to be reminded every time someone called her name that she'd been left entirely alone. So she became Samantha again. And she vowed that no man was to ever be given the privilege of shortening her name unless he proved himself first. Unless she could trust him not to play wicked games with her heart.
And she kept that promise to herself until Jack came along and weakened that part of her that for so long had refused to let anyone in.
Now, now there's Martin who by the end of the case looked so broken she was afraid he might just cry right in front of her.
Martin, with his soul searching eyes, eternal optimism and his unfaltering determination to be a part of the already well established team.
He is already worming his way into her heart and thoughts, into places she swore no man would ever be granted access to again. He is breaking down barriers designed purposefully to keep men away. And he seems to be doing it all with such ease. So unintentionally that she didn't see it coming and she is almost angry with him for doing so.
It scared her sometimes, the way she thought of him. How she wondered if there was something building between them that was deeper than the friendship and colleague camaraderie that they currently possessed.
He had called her Sam today, and she couldn't let it go.
She wouldn't allow him to call her Sam.
"It's Samantha. Nobody calls me Sam."
"Jack calls you Sam all the time."
"Well, Jack's the boss, in case you haven't noticed."
Not yet anyway.
I feel sorry for him. Trying to make her trust him, to recognize him the way he's aching to be recognized. I wish I had the power to reassure him that all she needs is time.
That eventually she will be his.
That one day, he'll be allowed to call her Sam.
His Sam.