In the end, nothing happened the way he thought it would. Or the way that Allison thought it would, for that matter.
His mother didn't tell him exactly when they were leaving, not because she was trying to hide it from him, but because she didn't actually know. She needed to go to the bus depot in Port Angeles to buy the tickets in cash, and in order to do that, she needed a day when she was neither due at work nor likely to get caught by Joshua.
She never made it that far.
Sammy wasn't supposed to be home the afternoon Joshua left them before they could leave him. A leak in the gas main emptied the tribal school. The secretary called the house to let his parents know, but as usual, Joshua didn't pick up the phone. When the secretary called the daycare to tell Allison, a coworker took the message but promptly forgot to pass it along when one of the two year olds took his diaper down and proceeded to pee all over the playroom mat and proudly announced that he had gone potty all by himself.
So Sammy walked home alone. LeeLee was only yards in front of him with the Black twins. She kept turning back and looking at him hopefully, expecting that eventually he would catch up with her. Instead he pointedly looked at the trees, his shoes, the dirt on the ground, anything else, since Austin and Roy were only yards behind him. When she blatantly paused to wait for him, he dropped suddenly to the ground to tie his already-tied shoelaces, and by the time he stood back up, she had turned away in a huff. He immediately regretted his actions when he saw her slumped shoulders, but by the time he worked up the nerve to catch up with her, the twins had placed themselves in between him and Leah. "Leave her alone." Becca crossed her arms in front of her chest, and Rachel followed suit.
"You're being a jerk, Sam Uley," Rachel added.
He began to protest, but Austin appeared at his left shoulder, and Roy at his right. "You guys are the jerks!" Austin threw back.
Roy nodded. "Just because Leah has a crush on Sam here doesn't mean he has to do anything about it." Sam thought this was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. Leah didn't like him like that.
"She's being clingy, but a guy needs his space!" Austin had heard his older brother saying this about his girlfriend, and it seemed to make sense.
Roy agreed. "She's lucky he's being as nice as he is. She deserves someone to put her in her place, and we're happy to do it."
Sam tried but failed to stop the boys from helping him. They were only making things worse. Becca became incensed. "Put her in place? Which is where, huh?" she challenged.
"In... in..." Roy actually had no follow up. He really wasn't sure what he meant.
Austin filled it in for him. "She should go to hell! And you can go with her!"
Becca's answer wasn't a word, it was more of a screech. She threw herself at Austin, who stumbled backward at her approach. Rachel grabbed her sister before she could make contact, giving Austin time to make a fist and pull it back. Roy grabbed it before he could punch Becca. "Dude! You can't hit a girl!"
Rachel and Roy dragged their companions away before things could get worse, but by then it was too late. Leah was long gone, and Sam was too embarrassed to follow her. Instead he forlornly made his way home. He didn't even notice Joshua's pickup truck until he nearly walked into it; his feet had been trained on his sneakers and he had not been expecting any vehicles in the driveway. He stared at the bed of the truck. It was filled with black garbage bags.
He entered the house and heard rustling coming from his parents' bedroom, so he peeked inside. It was a mess. Almost every drawer in the ancient, battered dresser was open. Clothes hangers littered the floor, and garments were everywhere. Then a crash sounded from the closet. "Aw, fuck!" Three D batteries rolled across the floor.
Tentatively, Sammy asked, "Dad?"
Under his breath, Joshua muttered, "Shit."
His frowning face slowly emerged from behind the folding door. "What're you doing here, kid? It's not even noon yet. Playing hooky?"
"School's closed. Something was leaking."
Joshua ran one hand through his hair and looked at everything in the room except his son. "So why'd you come here? When I was your age, if I had a free afternoon, last place I'd spend it is my house."
"I dunno. What about you?" They both knew Joshua was supposed to be at the cannery, but Sammy was smart enough not to say it in so many words.
Joshua put both hands on his hips and blew a stream of air through pursed lips, staring at a spot beyond his son's head. "Yeah. About that. Fuck." Sammy just waited. "You weren't supposed to be here. No one was supposed to be here right now," he mumbled.
That was when Sam spotted the old, battered suitcase lying open under a messy pile of tee shirts on the bed. Oh. The bags in the truck weren't trash, they were his father's things. He didn't know how he was supposed to feel. He blurted, "You're leaving?"
Luckily, Joshua didn't notice his slip. "I'm... I'm... Shit." He squeezed his eyes shut.
Again, Sammy waited.
"I can't do this."
"Do what?" But Sam already knew the answer to the question. Everything. Anything. Normal things. Decent things. He just didn't know why.
Joshua took a deep breath. "Be this guy. A husband. A dad."
Sammy narrowed his eyes. He didn't know how to talk to his father, but this might be his last chance. He had to get it out. It didn't matter if Joshua thought he could or not, he already was. "Everybody else does it. Paul's dad manages to be a dad even without a mom. Mr. Clearwater and Mr. Black and all the other dads around here do both at the same time, and they go to work on time, and they come home and eat dinner with their kids, and it really doesn't look that hard!"
Joshua laughed darkly at that. "Just you wait, kid. It's nearly fucking impossible, and someday you're going to see that."
Now Sammy got angry. "You mean someday I'm going to be like you?" He'd never be like Joshua. Never. "Bullshit!"
His father actually laughed. Sammy had heard the word out of Joshua's mouth a thousand times, but he had never, not once, said a cuss word back. "Yeah, well, I hope not." But he still didn't look Sammy in the eye.
Instead, in his attempt to look at anything other than his devastated son, his gaze landed on the shotgun in the closet, and he clenched his jaw. Sammy looked over to see what had grabbed his attention, and they simultaneously remembered the day Sam held it to the back of Joshua's head. Neither spoke until their only options were to talk or reach for the gun.
"I shouldn't have done what I did," Joshua admitted. His voice was low and hard. "And maybe I shouldn't be doing this either. But it's the best thing I can do for you."
Sammy realized his cheeks were wet. He didn't know what possessed him to say it, but he had to get the anger out of him. He glared at Joshua. "You were hurting her. You were going to kill her."
"And I deserve... I deserve... For what I do to both of you," Joshua nodded once. "You're right. You shouldn't be like me. Don't... don't be like me. Trust me on this, Sammy. Hurting someone that you love..."
"Love?" Sammy yelled incredulously. "I may just be a kid, but I know what love looks like, and it doesn't look like what you do to her! Don't say you love her, you liar!"
His words pushed Joshua to his knees. His voice cracked. "But I do. I love her. I love her like... like.. shit. I love her more than anything. Fucking anything in the whole goddamn world."
"Don't say that! You don't even know what it means!"
His words sounded thick, like he was talking with molasses in his mouth. "But I do. Just don't... Don't be like me, kid. Don't hurt the people you love. It eats at you. Twists at you. Gnaws at you. You don't want to have to live with that. It'll turn you into a monster who can't look himself in the mirror."
"So why do you do it?" Sammy sobbed because he knew that his father truly believed that he loved them. "Why do you keep doing it?" The anger had left him, and what was left was only sorrow.
Joshua's face crumpled and his head dropped forward. Sammy barely heard his answer but thought it was, "Because she reminds me of the person I used to be. The person I wanted to be. But that man is gone, if he ever existed. And I can't stand it when she reminds me."
The words meant nothing to Sammy, although one day they would. But he wanted to know. He needed to know. He had to know why. Why his father did what he did, why he didn't stop, and why he was doing this now. And he finally realized to his own mortification that he didn't want Joshua to go any more than he wanted to leave himself. He wanted his family whole and not to hurt anymore. "That doesn't make any sense," he wailed plaintively.
Joshua finally looked directly at his son in the face and saw the tears streaking down his young face. "Don't you see? I'm doing this for you! I'm doing it for both of you! It's the only thing I have left to give you!"
The words left Sammy's mouth before he even knew what he was saying. "Don't do that!" he shouted. "Don't pretend like this is for our own good! If you cared about what was good for us, you'd have done everything different! Everything!" Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew that this wasn't literally true. His father had his moments of kindness, of warmth, of generosity, that he gave away like treasures, and that Sammy held onto more tightly than gold.
But Joshua did not believe he had anything left for his son. He grabbed the edge of the bed and used it to pull himself off his knees. He hastily closed his suitcase around his pile of tee shirts, not bothering to shove the stray corners of fabric inside before he snapped the lid shut. He grabbed the handle and tried to pull it off the bed.
Sammy threw himself unthinkingly at the case. "No! No!"
Joshua looked down at him in shock, frozen as his son's pleading eyes, mirror images of his own, stared right back at him. He couldn't move his tongue, but he could move his limbs. So he yanked the overstuffed luggage up with a forceful pull, accidentally elbowing Sammy in the chin and tossing him back, where he smacked into an open dresser drawer.
Father and son wore matching expressions of pure horror. Later, Sammy could have sworn the moment lasted a full five minutes, and that his heart didn't beat the entire time.
And then Joshua swept out the door.
Sammy sat on the floor for only a few seconds. Then he was up and out and running. But his father's legs were longer, and Joshua's desperation to get away was great. Sammy burst onto the porch as his father slammed shut the driver's door.
"Daddy!"
Joshua fumbled with his keys as his son ran toward his truck.
"Daddy!"
He managed to work the key into the ignition, and the engine roared to life.
"Don't! Daddy! Daddy!" Sammy smacked his hands onto the glass window, just inches away from his father.
Joshua blinked at the red mark on his son's chin, and his decision was made. He threw his car into reverse and slammed his foot on the gas.
X-x-x-x-X
Sammy found himself sitting at the end of his driveway. The dust on the road had long settled, and he had no idea how long he had been there. But his mother wasn't home yet and actually wasn't due back for hours if the sun's placement high in the sky was any indication.
He stumbled as he tried to stand and belatedly realized that he had never taken off his backpack. He looked back at his open front door but couldn't stand to go inside and face the mess that had taken over his parents' bedroom. No. His mother's bedroom. He choked until he coughed, and he checked his face for tears. But he didn't seem to have any left.
He started running up the street toward the daycare and his mother. He could be there in fifteen minutes if he kept up the pace, but his backpack was bouncing on his back uncomfortably. He shrugged it off and it rolled into the ditch, he thought, but he wasn't sure. He really didn't care. He ran faster.
He was sweaty and sticky and breathless when he rounded the last corner and saw the little brick building ahead of him, and he stopped short.
What was he going to tell his mother? What was she going to say? Why was this his responsibility and not his father's? Had he even left a note? A message on the phone? Had he meant to, but Sammy interrupted him? What was his mother going to do? Was her heart going to break? Was she going to cry like he had? Was she going to jump for joy? He didn't think he could stand either reaction, or any of the ones in between.
He turned and walked slowly in the opposite direction. There was no question where he would go, no other options, nowhere else he wanted to be.
Half an hour later, he was in her backyard. He saw her through the window. She was in the kitchen eating grilled cheese sandwiches with Seth. Harry was on his way out the door, probably on his way back to work after settling the children in after their aborted school day. Sue's car was thankfully gone.
Sammy waited for Harry's car to pull away, thinking that it looked so normal. Harry found his keys, put the right one in the ignition, turned on the engine, put his car into reverse, and drove away. But in just a few hours, the process would reverse. He would drive forward into his space, put his foot on the brake, put the car into park, turn it off, and take his keys out and go inside.
Sammy was absolutely certain that Joshua would never do such a thing. Not ever again.
He debated whether to go inside. There was no doubt in his mind that Leah would let him in, but he didn't think he could even try to pretend he was alright for Seth. And he couldn't bear to break down in front of the little guy either. Instead he found the next best refuge: the treehouse.
Maybe it was the swinging ladder, maybe it was her sixth sense about him, maybe it was just a coincidence. But no sooner had he mounted the little platform and turned around that he saw her on the porch looking up at him. She looked worried, and he wondered how obviously a mess he was. She asked him to come inside, but he shook his head. She looked back at her little brother, and Sammy shook his head again.
As quickly as she could, she rushed Seth through his lunch and sent him to his room for a nap. It felt like an eternity. Sammy paced restlessly back and forth in the treehouse, which wasn't long enough for a good pace, and clenched and unclenched his hands. And then by some miracle he heard the door open and close, he saw the rope ladder wiggle, and she had him wrapped tightly in her arms.
She didn't let go. Thank god she wasn't letting him go. He'd have to carry her down on his back or something, because that was as far away as he was willing to let her get.
And then he cried.
X-x-x-x-X
A/N: Thanks again to Babs81410.