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chapter fifteen
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if i had the chance, love
i would not hesitate
to tell you all the things i never said before
don't tell me it's too late
'cause i've relied on my illusions
to keep me warm at night
but i've denied in my capacity to love
and i am willing, to give up this fight
-Sarah McLachlan, "Dirty Little Secret"
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Sam tucked her legs underneath her and hugged her arms close to her chest as she sat on the sofa at Emily and Andrew's. On the opposing end, Emily leaned back against the cushions, shutting her eyes as she sipped slowly from her mug of hot chocolate. The two sisters were alone that Saturday night: Andrew was away for the weekend on business, and Emily had invited her over to spend the evening together.
It was late now, long after the sun had set, and as they sat together on the sofa, alone in an otherwise empty house, it brought back memories of many cold winter evenings in Kenosha spent exactly this way. If their mother were not at work, she would likely be out on a date, leaving her young teenage daughters to their own devices. When they were younger, they had been practically inseparable, and even as they got older and Emily went off to high school, they remained the best of friends in spite of the growing differences between them.
Unlike Sam, Emily could remember far more about their father and, consequently, felt less confused and hurt about his abandonment, confident that they were far better off without the man who did nothing but shout with their mother and drink. When she started high school, she started spending less time at home with Sam on lonely Saturday nights and more time out with her boyfriends. But Sam had been far too young and sensitive and, barely able to remember him, internalized her bewilderment and locked her feelings of rejection deep in the recesses of her young heart.
She carried her tendency to internalize her feelings into every aspect of her life, growing up the quiet, thoughtful, artistic child, just in the shadows of her dynamic, popular older sister. But Emily would remain her best friend, her confidant, and her hero: the two little girls trying desperately to hang on to their childhoods as the world forced them to grow up too soon.
In fact, Sam remained in her reserved, quiet shell until the night she killed Joe Henry. But that night, something inside of her snapped, and the last vestiges of her childhood were violently and irrevocably torn from her. When Emily ran away, it was the ultimate desertion, and she discovered parties, alcohol, and boys to fill the empty void in her life.
Emily returned a year later, and they were complete strangers.
Sam heaved a long sigh and ran a hand through her hair as she glanced around the living room.
"What is it, Sam?" Emily shifted her weight to lean forward, concern etched across her forehead. "You've been distracted all night."
"It's nothing, really," she replied half-heartedly with a wave of her hand. "Just work stress."
"It's more than that," Emily insisted, carefully placing her mug atop the coaster on the coffee table. "You're feeling alright, aren't you? You said the doctors cleared you two weeks ago... Did something else come up?"
"No, no," Sam replied hurriedly at the look of alarm on her sister's face. "I'm fine, really. All of my blood work checked out."
"Good," Emily nodded. "What, then? You said you haven't been seeing anyone in awhile ..." Sam lowered her eyes to inspect a crease in her pant leg while Emily paused thoughtfully, taking Sam's silence as an affirmative response. "Is it Jack? He seemed to look at you like there was ... something there. Or that guy from the card you kept in that box in your closet?"
Sam rubbed her eyes and exhaled deeply before folding her hands nervously on her lap. "Actually, both."
"Both?" Emily gave her a pointed look, moving so that she now sat on the middle cushion, narrowing the gap between them.
"Well, Martin really," she said, picking up her own mug and sipping from the lukewarm hot chocolate simply to occupy her hands. "But Jack, too. Just ... differently." Emily began to rub her thigh soothingly, and she looked away as she continued, "Years ago, before Martin even joined the team and I was barely a rookie, Jack and I had an affair. I know it sounds sordid and seedy, but at the time, it meant everything to me. I really thought I loved him, and I don't think I ever really allowed myself to get over him..." Sam shut her eyes tightly as she swallowed, and Emily did not stop the soothing motions against her thigh. "And then Martin came along and we became friends, good friends. And I knew he liked me..."
"So you became more," Emily finished for her.
"Yeah," she nodded with a short breath, and changed the tenor of the conversation. "We were together for nine months, and it was like a lifetime."
Emily smiled knowingly and patted her thigh. "You were only married to Joe for five months."
"I know," she shifted her weight to bring her knees up against her chest, hugging them tightly against herself as she rotated her neck in slow circles before allowing herself to meet Emily's gaze. "And now that I've figured out what I want, I don't know how to fix this giant mess that I created."
"What kind of mess?"
Biting her lip, Sam sank back against the plush cushions of the sofa. "Jack was a huge issue between Martin and I, in large part because I subconsciously made it so. No matter what I do, I don't know how to disentangle myself from Jack without cutting myself off from Martin, too. He figures too prominently in our shared past."
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Sam tried to pull her coat closer around her frame as she quickly exited the cab and ran the ten steps to Martin's building on the Upper West Side. She gave the doorman a tight smile and nod of her head before walking quickly and purposefully toward the elevators.
The elevator doors slid open in front of her, and she quickly stepped in and to the right, turning to press the '8' button until the small bulb inside began to glow. Satisfied, she leaned back against the side of the elevator as it jerked into motion, mulling over the day's events in her head: from the moment she sat on the front steps of her apartment reading the newspaper with Martin that morning, to the second she realized he had left without her that night.
She knew he wanted to start venturing out more often, but this morning was the first time he had gotten so angry about it.
The ding of the elevator announced her arrival on Martin's floor, and she slowly shuffled down the hallway to apartment 814, shutting her eyes briefly before wrapping softly against the wooden doorframe.
After a few beats, the door hinges creaked as the door swung open. Martin stood in front of her, his dress shirt half unbuttoned and his feet in socks but not shoes. A quick scan of the room revealed an open beer bottle on the coffee table and Stuart Scott analyzing the critical plays from the Knicks game in the background on SportsCenter.
He rubbed his chin, not hiding the look of mixed stress, surprise, and disdain that crossed his face, and shook his head slightly as he motioned for her to come inside.
"You didn't wait for me," she said, shutting the door firmly behind her for emphasis.
"What, so we could walk out together hand in hand and play happy couples in front of everyone else from the office?" He said bitterly, retreating to the sofa and taking a long swig from his beer. Sitting down against the cushions, he reached for the remote and flicked the television off, leaving them completely alone.
"Listen, I'm sorry, okay?" She snapped. "I'm not ready yet. I just need more time, I don't see why you can't just let it be."
"Can you give me a time frame?" His eyes narrowed as he spat back. "A target date? Give or take a calendar year... Or were you waiting until Jack found out? Because I have a little secret for you: Jack knows. I guess we're not as careful as we thought we were."
Her heart lurched forward. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing." He said shortly. "It means nothing, Sam."
Unsure of how to respond, she bit her lip and remained silent. And the gap between them grew as long and wide and deep as the Atlantic Ocean.
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"... that was the beginning of the end, really," she finished. "We fought more and talked less, and even when we did talk, it almost always led us back to something we would fight over. By the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late to fix it."
Emily reached out for her hand, squeezing it reassuringly as she said, "Wow, that sounds complicated."
"Complicated would certainly be one word for it," she replied in self-resentful tone. "And that's when you put aside everything that's happened since then. Now I just want to un-complicate things, but I'm afraid too much time has passed."
"There's no such thing as 'too much time' when you really care about someone," Emily exhaled carefully, swinging their clasped hands between them. "After all, look at us."
"That's different," Sam replied breathlessly, voice tinged with unspoken hurt. "With us, everything was always two-sided. But with Martin, I share sole responsibility for those honors. He would be absolutely crazy to take me back after everything that's happened."
"Maybe you should let him decide," Emily dropped her hands but still smiled encouragingly. "He must be doing something for you to come to these conclusions all of a sudden."
Sam shook her head quickly. "That's just it: he hasn't been doing anything different. He's just him, and lately I've been noticing the little things, how well he knows me and how supportive he's been in spite of our history." She paused for a beat to massage her neck lightly. "It's funny how it's the simple things that Martin just knows, when Jack never stuck around long enough to find out."
The air between them felt warm, heavy, and thick, and the silence that hung in the air spoke truths that Sam thought might swallow her whole. With the palms of her hands, she wiped ineffectively at her eyes at the tears that were beginning to form there, and waited expectantly for Emily to say something, anything, to break the silence.
"It seems to me, Sam," Emily said slowly, bracing her arms across her chest, "as though you loved Jack because you had to." She paused for a beat, just long enough to ensure that Sam was still listening intently. "You love Martin because you want to; you did then, too. But the thing is, back then, you didn't want to -- but you did anyway."
Sam inhaled so deeply that she felt lightheaded as the oxygen rushed to her brain, her eyes shut tightly, tears brimming just around the edges of her eyelids but not yet falling. She felt an empty space beneath her rib cage where her heart should be and, if not for the rapid thumping of her heartbeat, would have sworn that her heart had been torn from her chest. "I do love him," she said finally, her voice breaking. "But it's time for me to be fair to him, the way I wasn't fair to him when we were together." She wrapped the palm of her hand around her mug once more, bringing the now-cold liquid to her lips in a desperate attempt to clear her throat. "I have to let him be happy without me."
"And what do you want?"
"I want him to be happy even if it's not with me," she replied, her heart heavy with regret. She paused for a moment to run her hand over her face and, gathering up all of the courage she had left, said, "And more than anything, I want this thing I had with Jack to stop controlling my life. I want to end it, once and for all."
"Then you've taken the biggest step on your own," Emily replied, wrapping her arms around Sam's shoulders. "Before you can let someone else love you, Sam, you have to respect yourself first."
Sam felt the tears spill uncontrollably from the depths of her wide brown eyes as the floodgates opened, and she did something she had not done in over fifteen years. She climbed onto her older sister's lap, and allowed Emily to hold her while she cried.
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