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chapter nine
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i won't say "stay"
i'll play the marble heart
you're beautiful -- maybe so
but it's gotten dark
so it's just you
walking through the pain you made
-Trespassers William, "Umbrella"
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The second her hand came in contact with the rim of the pot sitting on her stove, Sam jumped back instinctively. "Ah, shit!" she hissed, waving her hand back and forth and rushing to the sink. She turned the faucet and ran her hand under the cool water. Her eyes watered slightly as she inspected the small red mark on her right index finger; it stung.
"Are you alright in there?" she heard a voice carry in from the living room, where her sister sat investigating the contents of her bookshelves.
"I'm fine, Emily," she called back. "I wasn't paying attention and I burned my finger."
"Ooh, okay. If you're sure," Emily said as she poked her head through the door and came to take a seat at the table. "Andrew just called. He's stuck in traffic and says he's about twenty minutes out."
"Great," Sam said, turning off the faucet and shaking her hand out once more. "Pasta should be ready by then," she announced, matter-of-factly. "I'm just going to run and see if I have any burn cream in the bathroom."
Sam made her way into the bathroom and inspected her medicine cabinet until she found the tube she was looking for. Twisting the top off, she applied a small amount to the angry red mark on her finger and considered how much things had changed since the morning a little over a week ago when she had first received Emily's message.
They had promised to try harder to keep in touch, and this time, they both seemed to be putting effort forth. They decided to have dinner at least once a month and, as a sort of peace offering for years of relative indifference, Sam had suggested that Andrew come along so that she could get to know him better.
She absent-mindedly flicked her wrist a few more times and leaned forward to inspect the dark circles under her eyes in the mirror. They were well-hidden under a layer of concealer, as if to hide her weariness from the outside world. But try as she might, she could no longer hide it from herself.
She jumped back, startled, when a soft rapping came from just outside.
"Sam?" Emily's voice called softly.
"I'll be right out," she said quickly. She ran her hands through her hair, adjusting the strands that fell loosely around her face, and joined her sister in the bedroom.
"Hey, I was just thinking ..." Emily led. "Do you still have our copy of the yearbook from your freshman year?"
"I'm not sure. Why?" Sam said questioningly, unsure of why Emily would be looking for the high school yearbook from the year that Joe Henry had come into their lives.
"I was telling Andrew about Mary Louise Jones the other day, and he didn't believe me that we actually called them 'With' and 'Without.'" Emily smiled weakly.
Sam turned around to face her sister, holding up air quotes as she spoke. "Would Mary Louise Jones With a Star please report to the office immediately!" she mimicked their high school principal's stern military tone.
Emily laughed. "It wouldn't have been nearly as funny if Without wasn't such a teacher's pet."
"Don't remind me," Sam groaned. "God, I hated her guts..." She walked towards her closet and motioned for Emily to follow. "If I've still got it, it's in here somewhere."
Sam flipped the light switch and opened the door, stepping into her walk in closet. She ran her hand along the carefully organized row of work suits and noticed, for the first time, how her work clothes far outnumbered her 'other' clothes. At the back corner, she finally reached back and pushed the clothes to either side, revealing the two cardboard boxes that held the only physical remnants of her past.
Sliding one box out from its hiding place, she held it out to Emily. "You take one, and I'll take the other?"
Emily nodded and cast her eyes slowly around the closet, seemingly taking it all in. "You've done really well for yourself, Sam," she commented offhandedly.
Sam bit her tongue and swallowed, giving a tight nod for lack of a verbal response. She let out a small breath and took the other box in her arms. "Let's see what we can find, then."
Taking the boxes out into the bedroom, they sat down on either end of the bed. Sam bent back the cardboard flaps to open the box, and peered inside. It struck her that the entirety of her childhood and early adult years fit into these two boxes in one way or another: a shot glass from a spring break road trip in college, a plastic charm bracelet that her father had given her for her first day of school -- incidentally the very same day that he left them forever, the first guidebook she bought when she moved to New York right after college. And there, at the very bottom of the box, sat the high school yearbook from the one year of her life that she most wished she could erase from her memory.
"Hey," she said, her voice catching in her throat, "I found it." She glanced up at Emily, but Emily was not listening.
Emily was sifting through her box with one hand, her other hand holding something in her lap. "Who's Martin?" She said, looking up. Sam furrowed her eyebrows, confused, and Emily held up a card that she had been holding in her lap. "'Hey College Girl, Get well soon. We all miss you. -Martin' ... What's this from?"
Sam took a deep breath and awkwardly dropped her hand to her thigh as though to cover up the raised scar tissue. "It's, uh ... from work, from a long time ago. There was a hostage situation, and I accidentally got shot," she bit her lip, waiting with baited breath as Emily's face dropped.
"Sam?" She urged softly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Sam reached across the bed and pulled the other box toward her. "I didn't want to worry you," she whispered, turning her head away.
Emily grabbed Sam's hand, tugging it gently. "Don't lie to me," she implored.
Sam swallowed hard, knowing that the real reason she had not told her sister was because she did not want her to know. Unable to come up with a reasonable answer and unwilling to lie, Sam fought back tears and struggled to regain her composure. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice breaking.
"It's alright, Sam," Emily soothed, scooting closer to her on the bed. "It's just ... how are we ever going to get over the past if we don't talk about it?"
Sam crossed her arms protectively across her chest, her breath pulsing as she considered Emily's words. A comfortable silence fell as she smiled weakly at her sister.
Emily glanced back down into the box. "Hey, is this Renfro?" She lifted a small brown stuffed bear up, cradling it in both hands. "Remember how much you loved this thing? You took it everywhere."
"That's not Renfro..." she trailed off, recalling the case just a few days before the hostage situation and Barry Mashburn.
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She stood stationary in the middle of the room, rotating her neck in all directions to take in ten year old Jessica Adams' bedroom. It was the kind of bedroom she had dreamed about as a little girl, but her mother would never have been able to afford. The walls were pale pink with a flower print border, a framed poster of ballerinas hanging above the bed. Plush pink pillows lined the window seat along the bay window, while stuffed animals decorated the bookshelves and lined the pillows on the bed.
Behind her, the door creaked open.
"Morning, Samantha," Martin said cheerily, holding a cup of coffee close to his chest. "What do we have?"
"Jessica Adams, ten years old. Carpool dropped her off at dance rehearsal last night, but the dance instructor says she never saw her. Jack and Viv are at the dance studio right now," she rattled off the details, still rooted to the spot.
Martin walked up to the bookshelf, picking up a porcelain figurine shaped as a dancer. "This place reminds me of my oldest sister's room," he commented.
"She danced?" Sam asked, her curiosity piqued by a rare comment about a family member other than his father.
"Lauren did," he said, carefully putting the figurine back in its place. "Anywhere and everywhere. It was very Angelina Ballerina," he laughed.
"Angelina who?" she asked, walking up behind him.
"Angelina Ballerina," he repeated, running his index finger along the titles on the top shelf until he found what he was looking for. He pulled the book off of the shelf and held it out to her. "It was a little bit after our time, but my nieces love it."
She studied the book, smiling at the drawings of mice in colored tutus dancing as she flipped the pages. Closing the book and returning it to the shelf, she motioned to the animals lined up along the girl's bed. "This place is a zoo," she joked.
"What? No favorite stuffed animal when you were younger? I'm shocked!" He teased, his boyish grin showing off his dimples.
"Hey!" She mocked, "I had this bear that my grandmother gave me. I kept him around for the longest time ... I even ended up bringing him to college with me."
"Really?" He said, walking over to the desk and inspecting the contents of its drawers.
"Yeah, he was the unfortunate casualty of one my freshman roommate's parties."
"I'm afraid to ask," he sat down on the wooden desk chair, tilting his head up towards where she stood and waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
She found herself once again noticing how attractive he looked when he smiled, and she chided herself silently for her thoughts. He was still the inexperienced rookie, she reminded herself, although it was getting harder and harder to use that as an excuse. He consistently was proving himself worthy and capable of his position on the team. "Mmm, yeah," she said, chuckling to herself at the memory. "Katie accidentally set him on fire. The smoke detectors picked it up and we had to evacuate the entire dorm."
His eyes widened; this was obviously not the answer he was expecting. "Wow," was all he could muster.
"It was probably the most exciting party I went to all of freshman year. It was the only one where the cops showed up." She said casually.
He shook his head and laughed. "There's more to you than meets the eye, Samantha," he joked, turning his attention to their missing person's computer and depressing the power button, the familiar whir coming as the monitor sprung to life.
She walked up behind him, thinking there just might be more to him than met the eye as well.
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She shook the memory just as she felt the bed dip as Emily got up to answer a knock at the door.
"That'll be Andrew," Emily said, hurrying her steps as she rushed to the door to let her husband in, leaving Sam alone with her thoughts.
A wave of melancholy washed over her, and she fell backwards against the pillows as her posture slackened. The reality hit her like a ton of bricks, pummeling her from both sides with memories of both Emily and Martin, and for the second time that evening, she fought off tears.
Not only did she allow the two most significant relationships in her life to fall completely apart, but in fact, she expedited the process willingly. And she had no one to blame but herself.
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