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Chapter 2: Family

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Sammy met Emily Young for the first time when he was six and she was seven. Or rather, he saw her. Meeting her took longer.

One summer night he woke up to the sounds of breaking glass and his father's slurred speech. He hated waking up that way, and he had hoped the evening would be quiet. The day had started well. Allison had packed a picnic lunch and they had gone to the park, where Joshua taught him to throw a frisbee properly. And when he flung it high into a tree, his father had just laughed and congratulated him on his strong arm and gamely flung loose sticks at it until it dropped to the ground. He plopped the disc on Sammy's head in a failed attempt to turn it into a hat, and then they had a contest to see who could walk the farthest balancing it on their skull. Sammy won, although he was pretty sure Joshua let him. But the instant they got home, Joshua pulled a beer out of the fridge, and he didn't stop at one.

Sammy lay in bed for several minutes trying to figure out what to do. He heard his mother's voice, wavering a little but speaking in low tones and trying to calm his father. It didn't work. A string of cuss words echoed down the hallway before a loud smacking noise interrupted it. Then silence.

It was the silence that moved Sammy. He was getting used to tears and yelling and slamming doors, but not this sudden nothingness. He bolted out of bed and toward his mother. He didn't know exactly what he was terrified about, but he needed to make certain she was okay.

He ran right into the kitchen. For a second, his father didn't see him. Joshua's broad back was facing him, his shoulders heaving up and down and his fists clenched. He peered around the large man to see his mother cowering against the counter holding her hand to a bright red cheek. The remnants of a glass were scattered haphazardly across the counter. Her tearful eyes shifted from her husband's face to the wide, fearful eyes of her son. Joshua noticed her focus shift and turned toward him.

Joshua narrowed his eyes. "What did you just see?"

Sammy just blinked at his father, paralyzed. He had no idea what the correct answer was. All he knew was that his mother was upset and that it was his father's fault. And suddenly he grew angry. Allison was the sweetest and most loving person in the whole world, even more so than LeeLee. How dare his father make her so upset? Sammy clenched his own fists at his sides. He didn't know exactly what Joshua had done, but it wasn't good. "You hurt her! You hurt mommy and you didn't say sorry!"

Joshua grinned a distinctly frightening grin and took one step toward his son. "Sorry? You want sorry? I'll make you sorry!"

Joshua started to unbuckle his belt, and Sammy instinctively backed away. His father had only ever threatened him with it in the past, wrapping it around his fist, pulling it taut, flicking his wrist back and bringing it down against the wall next to Sammy's head with a resounding slap. Sammy shut his mouth then and there, not wanting to find out what it felt like against his skin.

Tonight he realized that he was about to find out. He could see it in Joshua's eyes.

Allison knew it as well. Joshua yanked the buckle open, pulled it off his pants, and raised it over his head. His movements weren't smooth in his drunkenness, but his eyes were locked on his small son.

Allison grabbed his raised arm. "Don't you dare touch him!" Her voice had never sounded so enraged, and even Sammy startled at it.

Joshua's ire refocused back to his wife. "What did you say, you sniveling whore?"

She let go of his arm and backed herself up until she hit the counter again. "Run, Sammy," she whispered.

And to his eternal guilt, he did.

It only took him a few minutes to get to LeeLee's house. He knew the path to her home better than he knew the back of his own hand, so even in the dark, with no streetlights or stars or even the moon to show him the way, he didn't hesitate at all. He scrambled up to her room and slid up the sill.

But something was wrong. LeeLee wasn't alone. There was someone else in the bed, and it wasn't her baby brother. Lying next to her was a strange girl he had never seen before.

What was he supposed to do now? He needed his mommy. He needed his LeeLee. The first was in trouble, and there was nothing he could do about it. The second was, well, what was going on? She was his best friend, and she let someone else in his spot. He didn't know what to do, so he started to back away.

Then a small, warm hand wrapped around his wrist. "Sammy?" asked a sleepy voice. "What's wrong?"

That was when he realized he was crying. He must have woken her up. He turned around to find her hanging halfway out the window. He wasn't ready to answer the question. "Who's that?"

She retracted her head and stuck her right leg out the window, then the left, and then she was squatting in front of him in her bare feet. "My cousin Emily. Or my kind-of cousin. Second, my mom said. Whatever that means."

"Like there's one older than her? She came second?"

Leah shook her head. "I don't think so. It means her mom isn't sisters with my mom. It's something more confusing. But she's here for a couple days. Remember? I told you people were coming."

He had forgotten. He pouted. He didn't want to have to share LeeLee with anybody, especially not tonight. "She's in my spot."

She shuffled forward until she could wrap her little arms around him, and she didn't complain when he dried his wet cheeks on her cotton shirt. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "She'll get scared if you climb in the window, I know she will. She'll probably scream or cry or something. Let's go up to the treehouse, okay?"

He sniffled and nodded as she stood back up. "Bring the purple pillow." It was the squishiest one, even softer than Leah herself. He eyed her bare feet. "Your feet are gonna get pokeys in them." They had learned the hard way that the shingles were made of something prickly that left their skin itching for days.

"Yours too," she answered, and he realized that she was right. In fact, his feet were probably already scratched from sprinting between their houses in the dark without shoes. He hadn't even noticed. "Go on ahead and lower the basket."

Before she could disappear back into her bedroom, he called out, "You're coming, right?"

"'Course, Sammy. I won't leave you alone."

He made his way over to the treehouse quickly. The five or six minutes it took her to gather whatever they needed felt like twenty or thirty. He peered out when he heard a muffled thump in the yard, wondering if she had decided to jump off the roof or worse yet, had fallen, but could make out by the moonlight that she had tossed a lump onto the ground. Soon he was hauling it up with the basket, and he gratefully lugged in what he recognized as the purple pillow. "One more," she called from below. He lowered the basket again but struggled when he tried to retrieve the next load. Then Leah's head poked up above the platform, and she crawled toward him on her hands and knees. She had her pink backpack with her. "You look like a turtle," he giggled. She grinned back at him and helped him with the basket containing Harry's large sleeping bag. Then his smile disappeared and he eyed the entry. Without asking, she shucked off her pack and pulled up the rope ladder.

"Now no one will be able to sneak up on us," she explained, examining him to see if this was what he wanted.

He still didn't want to talk about what had sent him running, but he was hugely grateful to her for knowing what he needed. "Good," was all he answered.

She unzipped her pack and pulled out the contents one by one: a heavy Maglite flashlight that she had once jokingly described as being perfect for "bashing monsters in the knees", two Juicy Juice apple juice boxes, a half eaten bag of Oreos, and a pair bright pink socks with a lacy frill on the top edge. "I couldn't tell in the dark," she apologized. But to spare him the humiliation of wearing them, she pulled off her plain blue ones and handed them to him. He put them on, grateful for the warmth her feet had left behind, while she donned the pink ones. They wiggled their toes at each other and Leah grinned. Her dimples were irresistible, so he had to give her a little smile back. Then they ate two Oreos each and shared a drink box.

They quickly unrolled the bag and slid in, facing one another. Sammy thought about his mother and wished he could bring her up to the treehouse to hide from his father. A tear rolled out of his eye, startling him, but before he had the chance to be embarrassed, she yanked her sleeve down far enough to cover her hand and wiped it away. "Is your mommy okay?" she asked softly. She was so close that he felt her breath on his skin.

He just shook his head. He had no idea how to answer any more clearly than that.

"Then we'll just have to take care of each other tonight," she announced matter-of-factly. She pressed her forehead against his, and her nose against his, and clutched his hands tightly in hers.

She fell asleep before he did. He listened to the sounds of the night, so deceitfully calming, and the even rhythm of her breath, genuinely comforting, and drifted away.

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The next morning Sam was relieved to hear his mother's voice first. He couldn't make out what she was saying, so she could not have been directly under the tree. And indeed, the sound of adults stopped abruptly with the closing of a door.

He tried to untangle himself to look outside, but his legs were entwined with Leah's and she was lying on his arm which had fallen asleep. He decided that it was a good excuse not to move. It wasn't as if he wanted to leave, after all. He would live in the treehouse if he could. If Leah would say here with him. Because here there was no fighting, no yelling, no threatening, and no fear. The only things that were thrown from the treehouse were water balloons, and the only function for belts was to keep pants from falling down. Maybe he could convince his mother to move here.

He stared at the wooden slats above his head until a door opened and closed again. At that, his LeeLee woke up and picked up her head, blinking at him with a lopsided smile. Her hair was messy and she had sleep lines on her face from lying on a fold of his shirt, but even that couldn't hide how pretty she was. "Hi Sammy."

He just hummed and stared at her in reply.

LeeLee yawned and reached out of their little cocoon to stretch her arms, and Sam felt like grabbing them and pulling them back in, burying their heads back into the bag, and zipping it shut. Harry called out from below. "You kids up there? You awake? Sammy, your mom's looking for you."

"We're up," Leah answered as she unzipped the bag. A cold draft blew across them, and she yanked the edge back down. "Geez! It's cold, dad!"

"Sun hasn't been up long," he answered. "Lower the basket. I've got your jacket, and Mrs. Uley brought Sam's."

Sam muttered, "Can we do it without getting out of the bag?"

So Leah decided to try, which resulted in the entire bag shifting to the left about one foot as she squished Sammy. Despite the events of the last night, he found himself giggling with mirth under her wriggling, laughing body. Harry started to reprimand them for taking so long, but Allison stopped him with a quiet, "Harry, they sound so happy."

But she sounded so sad that he immediately lost his smile. Leah noticed the shift as soon as it happened and stopped squirming around, choosing instead to wrap her arms around him and squeezing tightly. He didn't have a chance to return the hug before she slithered out of the bag and lowered the basket to the ground.

A minute later, they both had their jackets on and Leah was slipping her backpack on. She peered over the edge of the platform, and an unfamiliar voice wafted up. "Leah? What're you doing up there?"

"Sorry, Em," she answered without answering, instead looking back at Sam. He just frowned and shook his head. He had no interest in meeting a new person right now.

Harry sent the stranger back inside, so Sam only got a quick look at her retreating back when he leaned out. But he barely noticed her at all. Instead he stared at his mother's unusual attire. She had a decorative scarf wrapped over her head and knotted under chin in addition to the largest sunglasses he had ever seen. But it was barely light out, and she never wore scarves. He didn't even know she owned one. He couldn't see her eyes, so he was still afraid.

LeeLee grabbed his hand. "Look Sammy, she came to get you." His frown deepened, so she just said, "We'll go down together, okay?"

Allison tried to keep her head down so that Sammy couldn't see under her glasses. But it was impossible, and once they returned home, the house was so dim inside that she had to take them off in order to see. Sammy couldn't look her directly in the face. He wasn't sure if it was just due to the frightening red swelling that kept her left eye shut, or if it was actually the way she refused to look directly at him even with her good eye. She didn't take off her scarf, but he had seen under the loose edge. There was another red welt just in front of her ear.

Sammy listened for any signs of his father and nearly jumped out of his skin when the big man appeared suddenly in the open doorway. Then Joshua issued the first of a long string of apologies that would come for years. Sammy thought he had gotten good at recognizing it when someone was lying, but he didn't know what to make of his father's words. He was sent to his room despite the fact that he hadn't yet had any breakfast; Sue had kindly offered to make pancakes, but Allison had been in a rush to retrieve her son and get out. So Sammy's stomach was grumbling audibly when he reluctantly dragged his feet along the old carpeting on the way to his bedroom. He peered back several times, unwilling to leave his mother alone with his father as he had the night before; he couldn't help but wonder if there was something he could have done to stop what had happened.

He got distracted from that train of thought trying to listen through the thin walls. And he was shocked when he realized what was going on. His father was begging, literally begging, for Allison's forgiveness. He claimed that he was horrified with himself and what he had done, that he would never have believed himself capable of such a thing, and that he would do absolutely anything to win back her trust. He talked about how much he loved her, how she was the best thing ever to have happened to him, how he couldn't survive without her. He promised her that he would do better, promised he would never do anything like that ever again. He blamed stress at work, blamed the difficulty of making ends meet, blamed the alcohol. He promised not to ever touch a drop again.

Sammy thought his father sounded genuinely upset. But he didn't think his mother should forgive his father, not after what he had done. He couldn't tell if Joshua meant what he said.

But then he heard him crying. Sammy had never seen his father get choked up, let alone actually start to cry. He cautiously cracked open his door just a sliver and peered through the space. He couldn't see anything, so he stuck his head into the hall. And he would never forget what he saw next. His father was on his knees at his mother's feet, arms wrapped around her waist, face buried into her stomach, weeping into her clothes. Allison was staring down at her husband. Her hands were poised inches above his head, frozen, an expression of pure shock on her face.

Sammy shut the door, nausea rolling through his stomach. He backed up until he ran into the edge of his mattress and sat down involuntarily. He didn't move for what felt like several minutes. The sounds outside the room did not change. Eventually he spied the clock radio on his nightstand. The frisbee was lying on top. It motivated him to move so that he could throw the disc in the trash. Then he turned on the radio just to drown out the noise coming from the living room.

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A/N: Many thanks to my wonderful beta, Babs81410. All typos are mine.