What I Didn't Say (34 page)

Hearing the engines kick up, the boat pulled away from the dock and started out across the water toward Shaw Island.  Dozens of small islands fell behind us as the ferry moved slowly through the water.  Blakely, Lopez, Decatur.  It suddenly seemed a shame I had never been to more of the small islands.  There were only four islands in the San Juan Islands that had ferry service, but you could always take a small boat or kayak to the smaller ones, and there were hundreds of them.

I decided that summer that I’d take Sam camping on one of them.  We’d load up two of Carter’s kayaks and just take off.

There was a reason people paid crazy amounts for property, groceries, and ferry rides to be out on the islands.  There were few places on the Earth that were more beautiful.

The ferry ride to Anacortes went surprisingly fast.  I actually had to run down to the van since I wasn’t paying attention and hadn’t realized we were suddenly docked.

And then my parents and I were headed to Auburn and toward Sam.

Was I supposed to have some sort of romantic reunion planned?  Suddenly I wondered if I was supposed to have thought of all kinds of cheesy things to say, or rather write.  But I hadn’t thought of anything.  All I had gotten her for her birthday was a framed picture of the two of us, the one I had snapped on my birthday.  It didn’t seem like near enough.  But I’d had too many bigger things on my mind to come up with anything better.

There were three words I wanted to say to her as a present, three words I’d wanted to say to her for forever.

Would she ever let me say them?

After two hours of driving, the GPS on Mom’s phone said we were only half a mile away.  I started getting a little worried as we pulled into the neighborhood.  It was mostly trailer homes, lawns filled with broken down cars, broken outdoor furniture, and mangy looking dogs lying on porches. 
This
was where Sam had been living the last six weeks?

“Oh my,” Mom breathed as she took it all in.

Crap.

And then we pulled in front of the address Sam had given me.  It was one of the smaller trailers, looking dirty and half broken down.  The porch sagged and looked ready to cave in.  The lawn was filled with winter-dead weeds, a dozen or so empty cans and beer bottles lying in front of it.

Crap.

Dad put the van in park and I hopped out as soon as it stopped moving.  My heart was hammering as I walked up to the front door.  Just as I was about to knock, the door swung open and there was Sam.

Her eyes locked with mine and the both of us froze, just standing there looking at each other.

I’d hoped that Sam might gain some weight, living with an adult who should be putting food on the table every day, but Sam looked skinner than ever.  Her eyes looked sunken, like she hadn’t slept since she left the island. 

A single tear slipped down her face before she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around my neck.  Her entire frame trembled.  I wrapped my arms around her and never wanted to have to let go.

“I want to go home,” she said, her voice cracking.  I felt her tears slip down her face onto my chest.

I backed away just a bit, pressing my lips to hers, everything inside of me hurting.

The whole situation just felt ten times worse when her lips didn’t taste like anything.

Where is your dad?
I signed as she took half a step away, wiping her tears from her cheeks.

Her face went hard and angry as she stepped to the side, letting me see into the trailer.  And I saw him there, lying on a couch, totally passed out, three beer bottles resting on the floor.

“He’s been wasted since yesterday,” she said, her voice hard.  “He probably won’t even remember that I was ever here when he comes to. 
If
he wakes up.”

“Come on, Samantha,” Mom said as she and Dad walked up to the porch.  “Jake and Johnson will get your things.”

Sam just nodded, pointing to a small pile of things by the front door.  She walked back to the van, Mom’s arm wrapped around her shoulders.  Sam wrapped her arms around Mom’s waist, leaning her head on Mom’s shoulder.

“Crap,” Dad said in a low voice as we stepped inside and started picking up Sam’s things.  “What a dump.”

A dump was right.  There was garbage everywhere, stains on the carpet, on the walls, on the ceiling.  The place just needed to be burned to the ground.  It had to be a health hazard.

“Think we should wake him and let him know we’re taking Sam home?” Dad asked, hesitating before leaving.

I glanced at Mr. Garren.  There was a line of drool coming out of the left side of his mouth onto the couch.  He snored softly. 

I shook my head and walked back out to the van.

Dad and I put Sam’s three small bags in the back of the van.  I climbed in the first row of passenger seats next to Sam and slid the door closed behind me.  None of us said anything as we pulled away from the curb and made our way back to the freeway.  After a few minutes, Sam laid her head in my lap and closed her eyes like she was trying to hold something bad and breakable in.

I didn’t know what to say and it didn’t feel right to say anything in front of my parents.  So I just ran one of my hands over her hair, and held one of her hands securely in my other.

As my dad pulled the van into Costco in Burlington, I signed to Sam,
You okay?

She just stared vacantly out the window as we parked.

We all piled out of the van and grabbed two shopping carts on our way inside.  Sam held my hand as we followed my parents through the aisles.  If Sam wasn’t acting so out of it, she might have seen my parents whispering to each other, grabbing a few articles of clothes for her, and grabbing other things like shampoo, girl things, and a whole extra stock pile of food just for her.

Sam may not have had parents to take care of her for the last eight months, but she had them now.

By the time we all got to the ferry at six that night, Sam seemed to be feeling better.  She had livened up a bit and talked to Mom the whole ferry ride home about prom dresses, hair and make-up.  They made plans to go off-island again with Jordan in two weeks to go shopping.

I couldn’t help but smile as I watched the two of them together.  Sam really was family.

We backed the van into the driveway and Dad honked the horn for everyone to get outside and help haul things in.  Sam nearly got mauled to death by everyone when they saw her.  I saw how tears pooled in her eyes as she hugged them all back.

And when we walked into the house, we found the entire place decorated with pink, orange, and white balloons and streamers.  All the younger siblings had spent most of the day getting ready for Sam.  Jordan and Jamie had baked a cake and Joshua had organized a bunch of birthday games.  Tears really did stream down Sam’s cheeks when she saw it all. 

But around nine, Mom gave the knowing smile, and gave me the “go ahead” nod to take Sam out to see her big surprise.

I shouldered two of Sam’s bags, and we crossed the yard hand in hand.

“You have no idea how good it feels to be back on the island,” she said as we slowly crossed the damp grass.  She let her eyes slide closed, her face upturned slightly.  “I never would have guessed I’d miss it so much.”

I pressed a kiss to her temple as we hesitated outside the door to the motorhome.

I never would have guessed how much I could miss you.

“Home sweet home,” she chuckled as she opened her eyes.  She got a huge smile when she saw the stairs Dad and I had built.  “Such handy boys,” she teased.  I just shrugged and gave a smile.

It seemed like it took her forever, but she finally opened the door to the motorhome and stepped inside.

“Oh my…” she trailed off when she flipped the light on and took everything in.  Her face was filled with pure wonder, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open just slightly.  “What…?”

Mom,
I signed.

“This…” she struggled to put how she was feeling into words.  “This is amazing.  It looks totally different.  Everything feels so… clean!”

I gave a silent laugh, feeling like I might burst from how happy I felt for her.  I knew it wasn’t enough to erase all the bad she’d experienced over the last six weeks.  Heck, over the last year, but I hoped it was enough to give her something to look forward to in the weeks and months to come.

Mom worked her butt off fixing it up,
I wrote on our notebook.  It felt so good to have it out again. 
Dad too.  It should be tight as a tin can by now.

“This is so amazing,” she said again, wandering back toward her room.  “This looks like an actual bedroom now, not just a frumpy closet.”

I followed her back, wrapping my arms around her from behind as she took it in.  Resting my chin on her shoulder, she placed her palm against my cheek.

“Jake,” she said, her voice filling with emotion.  “You and your family have been amazing to me.  You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She turned in my arms then, her chocolate eyes meeting mine.  There were a million emotions behind her eyes, but none of them were the sadness or anger that had been there earlier that day.

There was just hope, joy, appreciation, and I hoped… love.

She pressed her lips to mine, slowly melting into me, and me into her. 

It was perfect moments like that that made all the bad ones worth living through.

And you’re the best thing that has ever or ever will happen to me.

23 hours since Sam came home

Sam threw a rock out into the water, her hair blowing all around her face.  Since we’d gotten home I hadn’t pressured her into talking about what had happened while she was with Mike, but I sensed that Sam had something to get off of her chest.

She threw one more rock out into the ocean and turned and walked back to where I sat on the rocky beach.  She sank next to me, resting her forearms on her knees. 

Without any prompting from me, she answered the question I was silently asking.

“It was pretty bad,” she said, her eyes staying glued in the direction of the water, though they looked glazed over, like she was seeing the past six weeks again.  “That trailer was disgusting.  Everything was filthy, not much of anything worked.  I didn’t think it could get much worse after living in the motorhome for so long, but this was so bad.  You got nothing more than a drizzle out of the kitchen sink.  The toilet plugged every time you tried to flush it.  You could get hot water for maybe three minutes.  And there was mold everywhere.”

She took a big sigh, shaking her head as her jaw clenched.  “I slept on this sleeping bag in the tiny dining area, I was too afraid of that disgusting couch.  There wasn’t anywhere else for me.  It was dirty and smelly.  But it would have been bearable if it hadn’t have been for Mike.”

I didn’t want to hear the rest, to have all those blanks filled in.  I’d wondered every second Sam was gone what was happening to her, but suddenly I didn’t want to know.

“I don’t think he was sober more than twenty-four hours while I was there.”  Her eyes fell to the rocks beneath us.  She picked up a handful of small stones and threw them out into the water.  They fell with a soft
plink
, sending endless ripples out to mix with the waves.  “We had no food in the house, but there were always more than enough six packs around.

“He’d come back to the trailer from the bar with a different girl almost every night.  His bedroom was only across the eight foot living room from where I slept.”  Sam gave an obvious shutter.  “It was…” she trailed off, her eyes sliding closed.  I wrapped an arm around her shoulders as she shook her head.  “Sickening.  And it was every night.”