Still, the shock hasn’t totally even set in. I don’t even fully comprehend what has happened to me. I can’t process it.
Sam cheating on me.
There he was, standing between a blonde girl’s legs. He was pushing into her. His face was intense, scowling, and hard. He was so mean looking. I don’t recognize him, even before he realizes I stand there. I stand there for close to ten seconds before he senses me. Just seconds. They might as well have been ten bombs going off. Ten seconds that were forever.
The woman’s back is to me. She is half reclining, holding herself up against my husband’s deep thrusts. Her body shakes with his movements. She moans. Her legs are wrapped around him. I can’t see his dick, thank God. That…. That might have ended me forever. But I saw him moving into her. I saw their bodies. I saw it all.
Then his face lifts just a fraction of an inch and his eyes dart towards the door. Towards where I stand. His eyes meet mine and in a second our entire history felt like it flashed through my head. And all I could do was stand there numb, because there was just no way to believe I was standing there witnessing this. No. Never. This can’t be Sam.
But it was Sam.
I shut my brain down. No. Not now. I’ll face this later. So much later. I am frantic now. I run across the parking garage after I exit the elevator. I scramble into my car and tear out of there. I get to our house and unlock the front entry. I stand there for a second. The silence permeates it. Sam permeates it. He decorated it. He made sure after we moved in to have the floors redone and kitchen updated and to get it all color-coded and upscale. It was supposed to match his up-and-coming career. The ideal and image he foresaw for himself.
I stand there now, knowing the only thing in Sam’s life that never lived up to what he foresaw for himself and his life was me. I never fit into what he wanted. The power, the prestige, and the image he wanted to expel. He wanted perfection. He wanted to fit in with a class of people I don’t even like. He wants to be someone. Someone important, influential and sought after. He wanted senators and judges and rich CEOs to call him their friends and peers. He wanted respect. The kind of respect that my adulation of him could not provide for him.
He had created this home to reflect those ideals. I had never really cared. It was a nice place to live. I don’t get his perfectionist ways, but I let him have it. I thought I was letting him be who he needed to be. Turns out that just made it so nothing in there reflected me.
I’m what Sam could not turn into perfection. His working class wife, the cop. I wear a uniform and I’m not looking to ever change that. I don’t have a bunch of kids at home to take care of or my own prestigious career that explains why I don’t have kids at home. He wants kids. He wants that ideal in a wife. He never fully proclaimed it, but I know that’s what Sam always envisioned for his life. I didn’t fit into his life and perhaps we would have ended up here no matter what.
I feel cold now. All my tears have dried. I have no words. My tongue feels thick in my mouth, like I could not articulate anything if the need arises. I start moving through our house then. I don’t feel an attachment to much. I grab the baseball mitt I had displayed on the mantle. It was my dad’s. I grab some photos. I dig out my suitcase from the spare room closet. I start filling it with my bland undergarments and clothes. Jeans. Sweats. T–shirts. Sweatshirt. A few blouses and stylish shirts and jackets. I grab sneakers and flats and some coats. I don’t know what I need. I quickly strip from my uniform and grab jeans to wear. I’m lowering a t–shirt over my head when I suddenly stop and stare around.
Where the fuck am I going?
I don’t know. But staying here is not an option. It feels like Sam. All of it feels like nothing but Sam to me.
My parents aren’t an option. Mom died eight years ago and Dad is in a nursing home now. He doesn’t remember me anymore. He’s got dementia. I visit him every week, but if I don’t? He wouldn’t know. And I can’t run to him.
There are a few friends, but all of them know Sam. They are all our friends. Everyone knows Sam, who is connected to me. There is no one to go to.
There is no family for me. Just Sam’s family. The Fords had made me their honorary daughter since the time I was five years old and first met them. First met Sam.
No. I clamp down on my thought. No reminiscing. No thinking about little Sam, or little me. No thinking about what I lost today. No thinking. Just going. Leaving. Running.
I sit on the bed and wrap my arms around my chest. I have to get out of here. Sam will come here. He’ll beg and plead and be sorry. Or he’ll tell me he’s in love and didn’t know how to tell me. I don’t know which scenario will be worse for me. But I do know I can’t handle either one. I can’t hear either coming from Sam’s lips.
I stand up and grab my suitcase and my purse. I haul it all to my car and roar down the street.
There is… family. There is distant family. I don’t even know them. I just know that some girl came looking for me over a year and a half ago with the belief that she was my sister. I have no sisters. No brothers. I have no one. Now I really have no one. I have never felt this lonely or vulnerable in my life.
But there is some family who are complete strangers to me but might be biologically related to me.
Christina Hendricks. Her name. The girl, for she was all of eighteen when she came to find me. But I had to give it to her, it was a ballsy move coming after me on her own, without her mom, maybe my biological mother’s permission.
Sister. I never allowed myself to wonder about it. Or even think about her. She said there were two more. Meaning I might have three sisters?
What could that possibly mean for me? I just don’t know. I just need somewhere to go. And maybe something to do. Something to think about that isn’t Sam. That isn’t my husband and that woman screwing on top of his desk.
No. I won’t think about it.
I turn my car around and start along Highway 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge north, towards Seattle to Washington State. I have no idea where in Washington State I’m headed. Ellensburg. I think that was the name of the city Christina mentioned. Is that right? I hope so. I hope that was the name Christina said it to me in a rush. Inviting me to come to her. That’s all I have to go on. A place and a last name. I hope to God there’s something to it. I have no idea what I’m going to do. Am I going there? I don’t know. At least it’s not here. It’s far, far away from my heart. My wrecked life and my lost love. It’s far away from Sam Ford.
I just know I can’t be here. Maybe I can’t ever be here again.
Chapter Two
Natalie
As I drive north, all alone, with no real destination and no real schedule, my fleeting thoughts nearly suffocate me. They twirl and dive all around my brain disjointedly. I hope I’m not losing it. Tomorrow I will call in sick at work and intend to leave it as such for at least a week. I can’t even contemplate trying to put one foot in front of the other and going through a normal day as if my entire life hadn’t just combusted in my personal equivalent of a nuclear bomb detonating in Area 51. I don’t want to talk to anyone about Sam. It’s too humiliating. It’s too cliché. But really, it’s too sickening for me to even try and envision talking about. I can’t work right now. Besides, I’m not lying, what could constitute more of an emergency than knowing if I see Sam I might not be able to stop myself from hurting him? Which is, actually, far more comforting to think about than the strange, weak silence that came over me when I first reacted to him.
My phone is gone. I threw it out the window somewhere near the coast. Sam called it a dozen times or more. Texts, voicemails, emails even. I could not handle even seeing his name on my phone screen, so I cracked my car window and threw it out. I’m driving kind of aimlessly, taking only back roads and the highway beside the ocean. I have nowhere to be. No one waiting for me. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m drifting. And now, I am no longer available. No one can find me. No one knows where I am. It’s both terrifyi
ng and liberating.
Still, all I can do is think about how I got here, driving alone on a coastal highway, beside the vast ocean and trying to forget my life. All the while, my life keeps replaying in my head. The problem is, despite all my contemplation, I receive no profound revelation or even clarity.
****
The first time I ever saw Sam Ford was the day his family moved into the apartment next to mine. We lived in a four–story walk–up in San Francisco. Its brick exterior housed a small laundromat on the first floor and a small retail store, as well. My dad worked late afternoons into the evenings, throwing freight for a local wholesale corporation that sold everything under the sun, from diapers to tires. Mom worked as a cashier in a small corner convenience store. I was an only child, adopted when I was still a baby. My parents were in their forties before they met each other and got married. By then, having children of their own was biologically impossible.
So they adopted me.
I never really thought too hard about being adopted until I was five years old and Dustin pointed it out to me.
Sam and Dustin Ford. They are brothers, three years apart in age. Dustin is my age and Sam’s older. He was eight to our five. The first time Dustin saw me after I walked past them while they were drawing with chalk on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building, Dustin asked me why I was brown, since my parents, whom I was holding hands with, were not.
Sam hit his little brother on the top of his head. “Shut up, twerp. That’s mean. Sorry, don’t listen to this bottom feeder.”
He had my heart from that very first moment. I remember standing there staring up at him and my little five–year–old heart squeezed with desire. This is what having a brother would be like! I didn’t have siblings, cousins, or much of any extended family. I longed for all three. I imagined it would have been amazing. You’d never be alone for long, or get lonely or bored while your parents had to work.
The Ford brothers became my playmates; or rather, Dustin did. Sam became my god. I followed him everywhere. I adored him. We all hung out at our apartment building and a small lot that was attached to some kind of youth center. It was a stretch to call the dirty lot a “park,” but we used it as such. There was a baseball diamond, soccer goals and a small pad of concrete with a single basketball hoop. It was less than three blocks away. Back then, we were allowed to run around if we all stayed together. It was a working class neighborhood and most all of the parents both worked full time. The Ford brothers soon became my ticket to enjoy a lot of freedom. Sam would never let anything happen to me or Dustin, and my parents knew and relied on that. Tall for his age, Sam was also smart, focused, and responsible. Although he seemed a little too serious for his age, there was nothing I did not adore about him.
And so it went for years. Me chasing after the boys, and acting like one of them. I grew up with scabby knees and dirt on my elbows and under all my fingernails. I could kick a ball farther than any boy my age, and my pitching arm was fiercer than most any boy within a twenty–mile radius. Sam and I were eternal competitors. Dustin never cared. He just laughed and had a good time. Not like Sam and me, who were always in the death grips of some competition or another.
Sam loved sports and working out as I did. The only advantage he ever had against me was his maturity and size. As I got older, he stopped taking it easy on me and had to start trying to beat me. It was never easy for him. I was just that good. I played kickball, soccer, baseball, even football. The lot down from our apartment was mostly bare dirt and weeds; there was no real green grass field. The backstop had holes in the chain link fencing, and graffiti was sprayed all over the wooden boards of the dugouts. The owner of the property often tried to clean it up, but it just got tagged again days later. It was heaven for us, however.
Every evening, there I was with the Ford brothers. We played and as I grew, I simply played harder. I never transformed from an ugly duckling into the lovely swan. Nope. No way. High school found me on every team I could fill, and I kicked most of the girls’ asses as well as any competition. No weakness, no frills, no dresses. Nothing but sports and athletics for me.
When I became a freshman, Sam was in his senior year. The boy that was my best friend started to become a man. He went from being shy and awkward and always wanting to hang out at the field with me to ditching me. Suddenly, he was going to school dances and out on dates. The girls he chose to hang out with wore stylish jeans and short skirts. They simpered and preened and wore makeup all the time. Sam became charming and no longer had any time for me. He hung all over Kelsey, then Heather, then Megan, then Amy, and the list went on throughout his senior year. Never without a girlfriend, he held their hands or slung his arm over their shoulders.
I hated it. I sometimes even hated him.
He quit playing sports as often and hanging around the lot with me. I ran in and out of his apartment. Sure, I saw him, but it wasn’t the same. Dustin and I still played ball at the park, but Dustin sucked; he was never nearly good enough. Sam would sometimes come out of his room with his hair all rumpled and lipstick on his neck or collar, even on his mouth! He was usually holding one of his idiot sycophants, who clung to him, and held his hand and laughed at his stupid, secret jokes. They’d come out only for drinks or food before returning to his room and making sure to shut and lock the door. Looking back now, I’m a little surprised my angry eyes didn’t simply burn a hole through the wooden door.
I was so jealous.
But I didn’t know it at first. I didn’t know what this strange new feeling was. It made a lump in my throat and caused my stomach to knot up. I didn’t understand how much I missed hanging around Sam. But Sam didn’t miss me.
He went off to college, and I rarely saw him after that while I finished high school. I became the star of the school’s volleyball and basketball teams. Being a jock was an honor I never concealed. I was also smart, but I didn’t apply myself. My grades were lackluster. I was more into my teams’ continued superiority than in studying.
Dustin and I stayed friends, although he and I never had an ounce of chemistry. If anyone was more like a brother to me, it was he and I was practically his sister.
But Sam? I didn’t felt that way about Sam.
College was not an option I wanted to pursue and I knew it early on. I drifted around after high school for a year, coaching one of the local youth organizations in soccer and baseball. I also waited on tables and took shifts at the convenience store where my mom once worked. It looked like that was where I might have stayed, just floating along, and playing sports in recreational leagues. I dated a bit, and had a lot of friends. Naturally, I partied some. This went on for a good few years until I was twenty years old. And then it happened.
I was directly involved in a hold–up one afternoon. It occurred when a young kid pulled out a gun while I was working the register at the small, local mini–mart and gas station. He was all of sixteen and planning to rob me. He waved the loaded gun right in my face. My hands were shaking as I tried to get the money out of the cash register. Sweat beaded down my cheeks and I almost hyperventilated. I was fully expecting my fumbling to heighten the scared kid’s adrenaline and make him shoot me. And that one taste of feeling so helpless while someone held a gun on me revealed how much I wanted that gun. Not vice versa. Plus, it was wrong. So wrong. You don’t pull a gun out on innocent people that are only stopping in to buy five–dollar snacks.
My mom had worked there for fifteen years. The owners were a little old Korean couple who had three more of the same stores, although they weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination. They were merely trying to make a living. People were in there buying snacks, or pop, or last minute grocery items… and almost all of them died for their efforts.
Just past my twentieth birthday, I decided my life’s calling was to be a cop.
I didn’t really grow up intending to become a police officer. I never had any real ambition about what I’d like to do. My parents never encourag
ed me to dream big. They also didn’t sit me down and try to map out what my future could be. There was never any talk of college. I doubt they had any clue if I wanted to go or not. There certainly wasn’t any money for it. My parents weren’t too imaginative with their lives. There was no calling, or career path, or ambition for either of them. They were grateful for their menial jobs, and being able to pay their bills each month. They found quiet contentment with their lot in life. Sure, I often wished when I was young that they were a little more colorful. Or wanted a little more out of life. But in the overall scheme, those were minor complaints. My parents took good care of me. We always had enough to eat and decent clothes to wear. We never lacked any necessities. I know they loved each other in their quiet, solid, unspoken way. They also loved me. They accepted me as I was, and never once wished I were different. They came to all of my sport games, as long as their work schedules allowed them. They were at my high school graduation too, and took me out for ice cream afterwards to celebrate.
Just before my twentieth birthday, Mom was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer after ignoring all the warning signs. She didn’t once tell Dad or me about them. Naturally, we were all devastated. It took a long six months for us to watch her die. The unhappy experience also took its toll on Dad and me. After another few years, I started to notice the signs of Dad’s dementia coming on. By then, however, Dad was in his mid–sixties. It seemed like only a matter of months when he diminished from being slightly confused or “slow” in thinking to losing it all. He was gone. Letting him go turned out to be one of the hardest experiences of my life, especially since his body and his face were still right there before me. We eventually found a small group home with twenty–four–hour care. I visit twice a week although he never knows it.
Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2) Page 2