Fifty
I stretch my legs out on the spongy green grass in front of Sam’s house and stare at my purple toenails. Last night, Liz and I spent a couple hours giving each other pedicures without saying much. Though neither of us is completely comfortable with the whole mother-daughter routine yet, I asked because I needed the closeness and knew she did, too.
Sam and James died a year ago, yesterday.
The scars on my legs have all faded to a silvery white that shimmers beneath my golden tan. My flaws. Even though I still remember exactly how I got each one, still dream about my father and towers of beer cans and his leather belt, I don’t hide behind them anymore. They’re part of what makes me me, not something to be ashamed of. Sam taught me that.
Liz wanders across the lawn with a bag full of last minute things in her arms, looking like she’s lost something important and has no idea where to find it. The haunted look I see in her eyes has been there since the night she showed up at the hospital to find me covered in her son’s blood. It fades a little when our eyes meet.
I don’t blame her for hiding that part of herself from me. If it had been my son who died, I don’t think I could have handled seeing the person responsible, let alone taking her into my home. Liz’s love, even on the days it feels reluctant, gives me hope. When I’m around her, I almost believe I can be a good person. Like she is. Like Sam was. Like James could have been, if not for…everything.
All around me, bugs and dandelion seeds dance on the gentle summer breeze. I breathe deeply, taking in the fragrant roses in the yard behind me, the heat of summer, and something unidentifiable that surrounds this house and reminds me of Sam, and tuck it deep inside myself with all my other treasured memories.
I will never forget this place. Not ever.
There’s nowhere to go but forward, I remind myself. I’ve spent the last twelve months making sure of it.
Liz stops beside me and glances at the house. I wonder if she’s remembering the countless stories she’s told me about Sam and his dad playing tackle football in the front yard, hanging Christmas lights in August so they could do it together before the next deployment, and belly flopping onto their old Slip-n-Slide. A house as small as Sam’s shouldn’t be able to hold so many memories, but it does.
At first, James rarely popped up in her stories. I didn’t want to hear those ones. It was easier to hate my brother after what happened than deal with losing him. But Liz forced me to listen to the stories I’d never heard from back when my brother used to play at Sam’s house. Now I’m glad she did. In giving me her memories, she gave me back my brother.
“You ready?” she asks.
“I think so.”
We’re moving in with Sam’s grandparents until Liz can get the newest franchise of Enchanted Garden up and running—something she’s thrown herself into to keep her own nightmares at bay, I think. The house is less than a mile from UC Davis, so she’s been prodding me to apply there next year so I don’t have to take the bus all the way across town to the community college. She has no idea I applied for UC Davis’ botany program six months ago—the same day I got my GED—or that I got my acceptance letter last week. I kept it tacked to Sam’s corkboard right next to his UCLA acceptance letter where I could gaze at it every night before I fell asleep. Now I get to surprise Liz with the news.
My mother would be proud of me, I think. Sam definitely would be.
As we load the last minute bags into the front seat of the moving truck, I realize I’m about to do all the things I thought I’d only get to experience if I had Sam by my side. But I’m doing them. Me.
If I’ve learned anything in the last twelve months, it’s that I’m far stronger than I ever thought possible.
“Sam mentioned a diner by Mt. Shasta that you guys used to stop at on your drives to California,” I say to Liz.
“Mmm,” she says, a faint smile on her lips. “He and his father used to eat the restaurant’s whole day’s supply of their blackberry cobbler in one sitting. The other customers hated us.”
“Think it’s still there?”
She gives me a curious look. “Probably. Why?”
Sam had wanted to take me to that diner. To make new memories, he’d said before kissing me like there would be an endless supply of new memories to be made.
Little did he know.
A few nights ago, when I first remembered his words, I knew how I’d tell Liz my good news.
Maybe she needed a new memory, too?
I finger the folded up university letterhead in my pocket and try not to smile. “I think I’d like to stop there, if you’re up for it.”