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chapter forty-four
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and somehow i lost touch
when you went out of sight
when you got lost into the city
got lost into the night
--PJ Harvey, "We Float"
xx
7:45 pm
Sam combined all of the leftover takeout food and condensed it to fit inside two Styrofoam containers. She placed the leftover food in her refrigerator, not bothering to rearrange things to make a long-term place in the assumption that Martin would still be hungry when he arrived in the next hour. She chuckled silently at his eating habits, still in awe that a man who could eat as much as he did and still maintain his figure. She grabbed her glass of water from the kitchen table and called out to where her mother sat on the sofa. "Do you want anything else to drink, mom?"
"No, no. I'm fine." Betsy replied, looking up as Sam entered the room and took a seat at the opposite end of the sofa.
"I put a pot of coffee on, if you want any later." She smiled awkwardly at Betsy and wiped her hands nervously on the crease of her pant leg. She chuckled nervously and said, "It should be ready by the time Martin gets home."
"And he knows..." Betsy began, a slight stutter in her voice. "He knows that I'm here?"
"Yeah, he does." The corner of Sam's lips curled upwards in a small smile, "I talked to him when he got in late this morning."
xx
Sam sat at the conference table with Vivian, sorting through a box of DMV records that needed to be re-filed. She heaved a sigh and looked up at Vivian. "Do you have A through F?" she asked. "Because I've got John di Alto right here."
"Yeah, that's me." Vivian held her hand out and inspected the folder than Sam passed to her. Vivian cocked her head to one side and stared back with an intense gaze that made Sam think that Vivian definitely had something on her mind. However, before Vivian could say something Sam heard the familiar buzzing of her cell phone.
Reaching into her pocket, she glanced back at Viv and mouthed 'I'll be right back' before standing and walking out towards the balcony.
She slid the glass door shut behind her, flipped open her phone and pressed 'Talk.'
"Hey," she said with a smile, walking over to lean her free elbow against the metal railing to support her weight. "Was your flight okay?"
"Yeah, it was fine." Martin paused, and she heard a car shut at the other end of the line. Martin must be getting into his car. "The plane landed ten minutes ago. How are you doing?"
"I'm fine." She replied, as steadily as she could.
"You're not." He answered though the static from poor cellular reception by the airport. "You're holding something back. Is everything okay?"
She smiled to herself, realizing how good it felt to have Martin in her life. It was a wonderful feeling to have someone who could sense her mood even through the phone line. She sighed softly and said, "My mom is in town."
"And?" he prompted gently.
"Shouldn't that take care of it?" she joked, laughing out of a twisted sense of irony. She breathed in, and the silence from the other end of the line felt deafening. She knew Martin was immensely curious about her family, and that eventually he would start asking about it. Apparently, fate decided to intervene and force the issue sooner than she had wanted. "She's going to want to meet you, you know..." Sam warned, rubbing at her temples.
"I want to meet her too, Sam."
She smiled in spite of herself at how easily Martin took everything in stride. It was one of the qualities that seemed to make him an excellent politician, and an even better significant other. Even so, she felt the need to warn him. "My mother is... well, she's very different from the parents you're used to."
"Sam," he breathed reassuringly, and she used his quick pause to shift the phone from one ear to the other. "You're not going to scare me away that easily. If I can grow up with my father, I can handle anything."
She laughed. "Your father isn't that bad."
xx
Sam crossed her legs and took a sip from her glass of water. She took an ice cube into her mouth, sucking it thoughtfully in the hollow of her cheek. She peered over at her mother, who sat with her arms crossed and one knee jerking up and down like rapid fire. It struck Sam that she had never before seen her mother appear this uneasy, so she coughed to clear her throat and said, "You know, Mom..." She paused long enough to make eye contact. "Martin is really looking forward to meeting you."
Betsy shifted her upper body to lean back against the armrest and curled her lips upward in a half-smile. "Tell me more about him, sweetheart."
"Well," Sam started. Her glass made a clicking noise as she set it back down on the coaster. "He grew up in Arlington, he graduated from Harvard, got his MBA at U Penn, and then worked in independent financial consulting before he ran for Senate last year..."
"Samantha!" Sam whipped her head towards her mother, who sat staring back with narrow eyes and an imposing expression that only mothers could command. "I know all of that already, you don't think I did my research before I got here?" Betsy edged closer until she could reach out and tilt Sam's chin to re-establish eye contact. "I want you to tell me about him, honey."
"Oh." Sam laughed softly in a futile attempt to hide her nerves. It still made her a little bit uncomfortable when she talked about Martin with other people, even people whom she genuinely trusted, because she felt so strongly about what they had and did not want to jinx it. "He's... great," she said finally, smirking at her sudden inability to use semantics. "He's smart, and he's got a great sense of humor. He loves sports and rock climbing and anything by David McCullough." She paused for a beat and clicked her jaw together. "He's close to his family, especially his sisters and his cousins, and he's really nothing like a politician at all."
"He sounds like a good man, Samantha," Betsy remarked with a shrewd smile.
"He is." Sam agreed, turning her head away so as to hide from her mother's knowing eyes. "He's not perfect. Sometimes he's really stubborn and sensitive and quick to judge, but he's..." she stuttered and trailed off, unable to quite put her feelings into words.
"He means a lot to you," Betsy finished, giving Sam the 'mother knows best' look that Sam despised so much when she was a teenager.
Sam curled her lips upward in a smile and turned back to look at her mother, and she found herself suddenly noticing how different her mother looked than the last time she saw her. She was nearly ten years older, of course, but Betsy radiated a calm, comfortable, confident woman in a way that she never had before.
"Mom," Sam whispered, her voice hoarse as she leaned forward to hold her mother's hand and tell her as much. But as she squeezed her mother's left hand in her own right, she felt cold metal against her skin. She held her mother's hand up and cocked her eyebrows. Finding her voice again, she quipped, "I guess we have more to talk about than just me."
"I guess we do," she replied softly. "I've been wondering how to tell you."
Sam smiled back, knowing that she came by her inability to talk about personal matters genetically. "What's the worst that could happen?" She said with a self-deprecating laugh. "If you don't tell me now, you never know... I could find out about it in next week's People."
"We wouldn't want that to happen, would we?" Betsy visibly relaxed her posture, a sparkle in her eyes as she said, "A lot has changed since you left home, Sam."
"I can see that," she remarked laughingly, motioning to the simple engagement ring on her mother's left hand.
"His name is Charles," Betsy sat back against the sofa and rubbed one hand over her jaw pensively. "He's a drug rep. We met last year at the hospital."
Sam frowned, confused, and asked, "At the hospital?"
"Yeah." Sam watched as her mother wrung her hands together nervously. She reached her own hand forward, squeezing her mother's hands and encouraging her to continue. Betsy lowered her eyes to the coffee table and said, "I don't think I ever told you, but I when I got pregnant with your sister, I was in nursing school. I always said that I was going to go back when you and Linds got a little older, but then your dad left and I didn't have the time or the money."
Sam shook her head in silent thought, amazed that she knew so little about her mother and her hopes and dreams. Looking at her childhood from another adult's perspective, Sam gained a newfound level of respect for her mother; it could not have been easy to support two small children on only a high school diploma. "I never knew," she whispered in response.
Betsy shivered visibly and explained, "Well, a few years ago I finally had enough saved up to start taking night classes again. Now I work in the ICU at Kenosha Medical Center."
It struck Sam as immensely sad that her mother accomplished such an important life goal and she had not known about it, but she supposed it was for the same reasoning that she had not invited either her mother or sister to her graduation from the FBI Academy. "I'm really proud of you, Mom," she said finally, and it suddenly felt like an understatement. Not wanting to dwell on the past any longer, she changed the subject and asked, "So, when is the wedding?"
"We haven't set a date yet," Betsy replied, standing and making her way towards the kitchen to refill her empty glass. Still standing with her weight against the doorjamb, she added, "Charles refused to set one until I had come to see you, actually."
xx
"Hi, Betsy."
Betsy shut the kitchen door behind her and was immediately greeted by Charles' twenty-three year old son, who was home visiting for the weekend. "Hey, Trent," she smiled and echoed his greeting. "I hear school is going well."
"It's going great," he answered, making himself comfortable as he sat down on a stool next to the small island. His long legs dangled down too far, so he propped one foot on the bottom rung of the stool. "Quantum II is going to be rough and my undergrad students in lab aren't what I was expecting, but other than that it should be an easy semester."
Betsy gave a small smile and nod. Trent was in his second year of graduate school in physics, and he was studying to eventually get his PhD. Charles was immensely proud of him, in the exact same way Betsy was proud of both Lindsey and Samantha.
"That's good to hear," she replied, setting her purse down on the counter top. At that moment, she heard the sound of Charles' footsteps pounding down the back stairwell. Within ten seconds, Charles appeared in the kitchen and he walked to where she stood.
"How was work?" he asked, placing a hand gently on her shoulder.
"Not too bad." She reached back into her purse and pulled her pack of gum out. She unwrapped a piece and began to chew. Even two years after she quit smoking, she would still get occasional cravings, and she always had gum on hand. "Trent was just starting to tell me about school."
"Hey, guys?"
Both Betsy and Charles turned around at the sound of Trent's voice, which was muffled as he chewed on a handful of pretzels. They looked at Trent expectantly as he swallowed and said, seemingly out of the blue, "When are you going to actually set a date?" Trent glanced from Charles to Betsy and back again, and said. "I thought you said you'd have one by this weekend, right? I want to give my professors some advance warning."
Charles shook his head. "We can't set a date yet."
Betsy frowned. "What do you mean, we can't set a date yet?"
"I already told you," he said matter-of-factly, rubbing his hand along her back. "We're not even going to set a date until you talk to Samantha." He paused for a beat to look at her, his expression one of gentle care and concern. "You can't have only one of your daughters showing up at the wedding, after all."
Betsy sighed long and deep, her chest heavy with trepidation and insecurity. As much as she wanted to see her baby girl again, to see the beautiful young woman she was sure Samantha had grown up to be, she could still see the hateful expression on Sam's face the day the teenager moved out and married Kevin. They barely exchanged messages on birthdays and Christmas now, and as she desperately missed Samantha the way a mother will always miss her child, she had no idea where even to begin.
"Betsy," Charles began, a slight edge of warning to his voice. "You know that I love you." He nodded and pulled her against his side. "And that is exactly why I know you need to do this."
xx
"He was right," Betsy finished, lifting her water glass up and taking a long drink as she shuffled back into the living room. "No matter what, I'm glad that I came."
"I'm glad that you came, too," Sam reassured, feeling the sofa dip and rise gently as Betsy sat down again. A thought came to her on impulse, and she suggested, "Maybe sometime soon, I can meet Charles. I haven't been back to Kenosha since I was eighteen; it might be nice to see it again."
"That would be nice," Betsy replied, and Sam could visibly see Betsy try to temper her excitement at this suggestion. It felt good that such a simple suggestion could make her mother so happy. "You know that after your father... Well, I certainly never imagined that I would marry again. But it's funny how you meet someone and they can completely change your mind on the subject."
At this, Sam smiled and propped her bare feet up on the edge of the coffee table. She said nothing, but silently entertained the thought that she might be learning exactly what her mother meant.
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