A/N: Hope everyone had an awesome New Year; I know I did. Sorry about the lack of updates, but exams are next week.
This chapter has a little extra side helping of Don for the extreme lack last chapter, plus some Charlie. Because I wasn't able to put all I wanted in Don's part last chapter, there will be some carry over in the narrative/thoughts. Action will come, I promise.
REVIEW RESPONSE: To Dreamingstars: thank you! I'm glad you love it. I'm definitely guilty of putting off updates, but I don't think this story is long enough for that to happen. To Jas0643: Thank you! Here's more! To Ash-rox: thank you! Here's the update. To RogueHoney: yes, very nice.
Please read and review.
Homecoming
Chapter 6:
"What? Are you serious? You can't be serious! What are you thinking?"
Sam smiled at the long stream of profanities and questions flowing from her best friend's mouth. Though Dannie was overjoyed at the prospect of going to LA, Kimberly was mortified.
"Samantha, be reasonable. When was the last time you spoke to anyone in your family?"
"I sent Don a letter on Thanksgiving."
"For one thing, why didn't I know about this? And for another, who the bloody hell is Don?"
"My twin brother – listen, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but, Kimberly, I need to go home."
"This is so crazy!" she moaned.
"This is so bloody brilliant!" Dannie was jumping up and down. "Your family has got to be better than Grandma and Grandpa Warner."
"C'mon, Kimberly, what do you say?"
She heaved a sigh. "I'll go make the reservations."
"Thank you!" both Sam and Dannie squealed.
-
Don got out of his car in front of his childhood home. His father wasn't home, and if Charlie were, he would probably be in the garage. Good.
He grabbed his new CDs and his Discman – Charlie had been bugging him about buying an iPod, but he just didn't see the point as long as CDs were around.
Don entered the house and called out a couple times just to make sure he was alone. He went straight up the stairs and walked down the hallway. He stood in front of the door that hadn't been opened in at least seventeen years. Finally gathering up the courage, he twisted the knob and pushed it open. One-step was all it took to enter another world.
No one had lingered in the room since Dad finally convinced Mom to stop going in where she would promptly break down into tears. After that, Dad cleared the house of Sam, trying to help Mom stop hurting. A stack of photo albums and loose pictures were neatly placed at the foot of her mussed bed – the only thing neat in the perfectly preserved bedroom. The bedspread was still thrown to one side; a few items of clothes were strewn about from had probably been a hurried packing job. There were a few empty picture frames on her nightstand and dresser, along with other odds and ends she had chosen to part with.
A crumpled piece of paper lay on the floor. Don had seen his mother read it many times, though he had not. He closed the door and went to stand in the center of the room, trying to picture Sam in it as she was now. It didn't fit. The woman pictured on her website and CD covers wasn't the rebellious, wild teenager who lived in the squalor she once loved. He picked up the short letter and smoothed it out.
"Everyone,
"I had to get out. I'll come home again.
"I promise.
"Sorry,
"Samantha.
"PS. Don, I took the two hundred dollars Granddad sent you for graduation. I'll pay you back when I come home.
"Don't touch my stuff."
Their mother had believed her promise, refusing to allow anyone to touch anything. She simply sat in the middle of the room and looked around, as he now stood. Even after eight years, when she was in the hospital dying, their mother had made Dad swear to leave the room as is, so when Sam did come home, she would know they cared about her wishes.
He sat on the bed.
Though the twins shared almost everything with each other, no one, not even he, was allowed in her room. He looked around, trying to her more information about her, since he obviously didn't know her as well as he thought he had. He had thought he knew her so well, until she ran away for apparently no reason.
She hadn't taken a lot of the stuff she once treasured. The signed Metallica poster she had gotten at her first concert – the tickets had been his gift to her for their sixteenth birthday – still hung on the wall. She used to blast their music so loud the neighbors complain, but there was no stopping her.
A baseball hung in a shadow box, displaying the messy signature scrawled on the sphere. Don had stopped almost every batter as second baseman their freshman year; Sam had begged for the first signature, so she could have bragging right when he became a major league star.
As he poked around, he found her stash of baseball cards (the collection had rivaled his for years), empty cartons of cigarettes, her prom picture (she had gone with the president of the chess club per Charlie's request), notebooks (filled with doodlings, poems, lyrics, and maybe a couple notes for class), and an electric guitar in the back of her closet (he had not even known she played guitar).
He sat on the bed again, this time grabbing a stack of photo albums sure to be filled with pictures of Sam.
He lost track of time as he listened to her CDs and flipped through the pictures of them together or her with Charlie or just her and her untamable mass of curls.
Faintly, what must have been hours later, he could hear Charlie calling his name and walking up the stairs. Don froze. Charlie would never think to look in Sam's room, but now that he knew Don was here, there was no way out without giving away his location. He scrambled to his feet, accidentally knocking over some books in the process – way to be an FBI agent. He held his breath, praying that somehow Charlie hadn't heard the crash. No such luck. In less than a minute, the door swung open, revealing Charlie's shocked face.
"Don, why are you in here? You're not supposed to be in here," he said, stanidn goutside the door in the hall and reminding Don of the one and only time Charlie had entered Sam's room. Ge had been ten, and when Sam founf him in her room, she shoved him out and refused to spek with him for a week.
"Come on, Charlie. It's been what? Eighteen years? Someone's got to get this mess out sometime. If you and Amita end up staying here for the rest of your lives, you're not going to want all of Sam's stuff cluttering a room, are you?" he asked, trying to use
Amita as a distraction. Charlie paled, making Don think his tactic worked.
"You said her name," Charlie whispered in disbelief.
Don should have known. All mention of Sam had been taboo for years.
"Charlie, why don't you come in? Look, she's not going to jump out of the closet and attack us for being in here."
He slowly entered the bedroom and shifted his weight from foot to foot and eyes from side to side. "You hate her," he said finally. "You said that when she left."
"I was angry, Charlie; everyone was. She just left out of the blue."
"No, she didn't," he said quietly. "She'd been planning it for years. Mom forbade her – said not to be stupid and throw her life away to be a starving artist."
"How do you know that?"
He shrugged. "They used to fight a lot, mostly when they thought no one was around. I would come in from the garage for a drink of water and Sam would be screaming at Mom."
Don ran a hand through his short hair. "Will you help me clean this up?" he asked Charlie, indicating to the fallen pile of photo albums. He would think more about this revelation later. Charlie nodded, and the two brothers began restacking the binders.
"You never missed her before," Charlie mused as they worked.
"Of course I did. I just never said anything." Charlie looked dubiously at him, but didn't comment.
"Have you ever told anyone about her?"
"No, you?"
Charlie shook his head, "I mentioned her name once to Larry while I was at Princeton, but I never got around to actually telling him who she was – Mom walked in before I could, and it never came up again."
Don nodded in understanding. Since they found the note, no one said a word to their parents about Sam. Mom had been likely to break into tears, and Dad… he pretended like she never even existed. Don had hated her after she left. Not for leaving (he had thought of doing so often as well) – but for breaking their family. Charlie had been devastated: though Mom had been the one to nuture him, Sam was the one to keep him on earth. She was the one who pretended to care about what he was explaining, had tried to keep up with his train of thought, but never let him get lost in anything. Unlike Don, who had to look cool, Sam invited Charlie to sit with her and her weird friends at lunch and went out with a guy she didn't particularly like to try to help Charlie get more friends who had his same interests. And, if Don was honest, he had been devastated as well: Sam was his biggest cheerleader, his personal trainer, the one to cover for him when he broke the rules, and the only one willing to keep his ego in check.
"What's this?" Charlie asked suddenly, holding up one of Sam's CDs.
"She's not a starving artist." Charlie looked at it, amazed.
"How'd you find out? I've never heard of her as famous."
"Your girlfriend lent Megan a copy of one of her CDs."
"Amita is… is a fan of our sister?"
Don clapped Charlie on the back. "Have fun explaining that one."
The front door could be heard opening. "Don, Charlie!" their father called.
The two scrambled to get downstairs before he went looking for them.