The next morning when Freddie awoke, he was surprised to find the bed empty. He normally got up before Sam, but this morning her side of the bed was already neatly made (or neatly made for Sam, that was, for it still looked as if it was made by a child).
Freddie slowly got out of bed and headed down the hall to Lauren's room to make his first attempt of many to get the teen out of bed.
"Lauren," Freddie yawned, knocking on the door before opening it to find his daughter fast asleep in her bed. "Let's go. Wake up."
"I'm up, I'm up," Lauren mumbled sleepily, not bothering to open her eyes.
Freddie shook his head as he turned and went downstairs, knowing he would be back up to repeat the same order in ten minutes.
Sam, already fully dressed, was trying to coax a very fussy Heather to eat some breakfast.
"Heather, please eat some cereal," Sam pleaded, trying to spoon some Oat Rings into the toddler's mouth. "You barely at anything yesterday."
"No!" Heather wailed. "No food!"
"She won't eat?" Freddie frowned.
"No," Sam sighed. "I've tried toast, oatmeal, waffles and now cereal."
"Not hungry!" Heather pouted.
"Sweetie, you have to eat or you're not going to get better," Freddie said, sitting down next to his wife.
"She still has a fever," Sam said, running a hand through her hair anxiously.
"Well the flu usually lasts three or four days," Freddie reasoned. "I remember when Lauren was her age and she was sick like this, here fever would normally break on the third day."
"Well she still needs to eat," Sam mumbled, picking up Heather from her high chair, rubbing her back gently to calm her down. "Heather? I know you're not hungry, but your making mommy really sad by not eating."
Heather's crying began to slow a bit.
"Can you be a big girl for mommy and just eat five bites of this toast?" Sam said, taking a small piece of toast from the plate on the table. "Just five. That's all."
"Five?" Heather sniffed, holding up her hand to show five fingers.
"Very good," Sam smiled. "So are you going to eat for mommy?"
Heather nodded.
"Thank you," Sam said, sounding absolutely relieved as she handed Heather the toast.
"Nice," Freddie said to Sam as Heather nibbled on the toast. "Hopefully she'll eat later on when I try, or I might be calling you at work for help."
"I'm not going into work," Sam said simply.
"What? Sam, I was kidding," Freddie said. "You don't need to skip work. Heather will be fine with-"
"I'm off today," Sam told him. "I'm not skipping. They're fixing the vents in the theatre so rehearsal is canceled today."
"Oh," Freddie said. "Well great then. It will be nice having you around. Hey, you feeling better yourself?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess," Sam said, though she had put any feelings of her own discomfort aside the moment she found out Heather was sick. "It must've just been something I ate."
"Done," Heather said, handing the half-eaten toast back to Sam.
"Well, it's better than nothing," Sam said heavily.
"Sleepy," Heather muttered, resting her head on Sam's shoulder.
"Want to go back to bed, honey?" Freddie asked knowingly as Sam handed Heather over to him.
Heather nodded.
"I'll go take my second attempt at getting her sister our of bed while I'm up there," Freddie told Sam. "I'm telling you, one of these days I'm gonna make her go to school in her pajamas if she doesn't get up in time."
"Okay," Sam nodded. "Tell her breakfast is waiting for her down here."
As Freddie went back upstairs with Lauren, Sam sat back down at the table, resting her head in her hands.
You're being paranoid, Sam told herself firmly. She has the flu. She'll be over it by the end of the week and then she'll be back to her normal, healthy self…It's just the flu.
….
"So how big is your family?" Lauren asked after school that day, as her and Sam sat around the large piece of poster board.
"Pretty huge," Sam chucked. "We're Italian."
"I know you have a twin sister," Lauren said. "And you've told me all about your Uncle Carmine…"
"Let's see...there's my Aunt Maggie, my Aunt Gladys, my Aunt Tara," Sam said. "And then my Uncle Bruiser. I don't think that's his real name, but everyone always called him that so I just sort of went with it."
She looked through the old shoebox of photographs she had brought down for Lauren to use. "And then you have my cousins Vinnie, Mario, Lorenzo, Jack, Angela, Kate, Stella and Gary. There's more, but I don't have pictures of them so you don't have to put them on."
"Well at least your huge family makes up for my dad's boring one," Lauren said.
"Trust me, your dad's family is filled with just as many freaks and weirdos as mine," Sam grinned. "I mean you've met your grandmother."
"I guess," Lauren agreed.
"Here are the pictures I could find," Sam said, handing Lauren the small stack of photographs. "Don't worry about giving them back; your dad backed all our photos up on the computer ages ago."
"Thanks," Lauren said, looking through the photos. "Oh, um…Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"Do-Do you have a picture of Conner I could use?" Lauren asked hesitantly. "I-I mean he-he would've been my step-brother; I kind of want to have him on the tree."
"Oh," Sam said. She hadn't been expecting that.
"If you don't want me to, then-"
"What? No, of course I want you to," Sam smiled, going back into the photograph box. She found her favorite photograph of Conner. He was two years old; right before he had been diagnosed with the leukemia that had killed him. Sam had taken him to her favorite pie shop to let him try some for the first time. He had instantly fallen in love with the coconut cream pie, and wasted no time showing it by smearing the entire piece all over his face. In the picture he was laughing, absolutely delighted with himself as his face was covered with whipped cream.
"Here you go," Sam said, handing the picture to Lauren.
Lauren smiled as she looked at the picture. "Heather looks like him a little…they have the same smile."
"I know," Sam nodded, getting to her feet. "Anyway, when you're done gluing on the pictures we can start doing the biographies."
"Okay," Lauren agreed. "Sounds like a-" Just then her phone buzzed, and she looked down at the screen.
"Oh my God!" she gasped. "Guess what?"
"What?"
"Scott wants to know if I want to go to the mall tomorrow night!" Lauren grinned.
"Whoa, really?" Sam said. "Nice! Just the two of you?"
"Well, me, him, Danielle and Mike," Lauren explained. "But Danielle and Mike are a couple so they'll be busy with each other and that will leave me and Scott basically on our own!"
"Ah."
"This is perfect!" Lauren said excitedly. "This is-Aw man."
"What's wrong?" Sam frowned.
"There's no way dad's gonna let me go," Lauren sighed. "If I tell him I'm going to the mall, he'll want to know who with and if I tell him there's gonna be boys there he'll totally flip out."
"Aw, give him some credit," Sam said.
"You don't think he'll flip out?"
"Um…well, maybe," Sam admitted.
"Great," Lauren moaned. "I practically get asked out by Scott and I can't even go because my dad would have a heart attack."
"Well maybe you can talk to him," Sam suggested. "I mean it's just the mall; he might be okay with that."
"Yeah…any maybe tomorrow leprechauns will do a little tap dance on the roof," Lauren said, rolling her eyes.
"Huh…my sarcasm's really starting to rub off on you, huh?" Sam smirked. "Listen, just talk to your dad. He might surprise you."
….
"I think she's starting to get a little bit of color back in her face," Freddie said as he got Heather into a new pair of pajamas that night. "She doesn't seem so pale anymore."
"Yeah," Sam nodded. "Hopefully that means she'll be better soon."
"I don't like sick," Heather mumbled sleepily.
"We don't like when you're sick either, sweetie," Freddie told her, kissing the top of her head. "Get some rest. Love you, Heather."
"Night daddy," Heather yawned.
"She needs her last dose of medicine for the night," Sam told her husband. "Can you go downstairs and get it?"
"Sure," Freddie nodded.
"Medicine bad," Heather said as Freddie left the room.
"It's not that bad," Sam told her, rustling her blonde curls. She made to life Heather onto her lap. "When daddy comes back with your medicine, we'll read you your bedtime story before you-"
"Ow!" Heather suddenly cried.
"What's wrong?" Sam frowned.
"I hurt," Heather sniffed, pointing to the joint of her elbow that Sam had briefly brushed against.
"Let me see," Sam said, gently rolling up the sleeve of Heather's pajamas. When she saw her daughter's elbow, Sam let out a small gasp. All around the joint it appeared to be swollen.
No…Sam thought, feeling as if her world had stopped. For the mark on Heather's arm looked just like the ones that used to cover Conner's body.