Stand
Time for Sam to get her HEA! STAND is now available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes and Noble!
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TW: spousal abuse, but not the way you're thinking. Please read the introduction in the preview.
She doesn’t need family—not her own, not anyone else’s. So why is she so drawn to this single dad and his two bratty but heartbroken kids?
Sam Fielding has never needed anyone, and she doesn’t plan on starting now—not her annoying siblings, and certainly not the man she meets years after ignoring him and his kind all through high school. Ty Cavanaugh just wants his kids to feel safe and to have some kind of relationship with their unpredictable and impulsive mother. But every time she comes back into their life, she hurts them, and Ty is getting to the end of his patience. He certainly doesn’t need the mean girl from high school coming into his life and upending all his promises not to think about his own needs. But when Ty’s ex-wife tries to kidnap the kids and then attacks him at a school event, it’s Sam who protects his family. It’s Sam who steps up and takes them on her journey back to New Mexico to get away from Julia. Could it be Sam who, despite her past and her free-spirit attitude, is the perfect woman for Ty and his children? And can Ty teach Sam that there are men who can be trusted? |
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Excerpt
Part I
Chapter 1
That was it. Sam was getting the hell away from this house, its people and all its memories.
“Come on, Cairo,” she said. Her German Shepherd leapt up from his spot under the kitchen table to meet her in the front hall.
“Samantha!” her older sister yelled from behind her. “Get back here! You can’t walk away every—”
“Don’t call me Samantha!” she yelled back, clipping on Cairo’s leash. She should never have come back. Coming back only turned her back into an angry, childish 17-year-old who hated her name. Instead of an independent 35-year-old with her own career and her own home and a state on the other side of the country that she missed like crazy.
“Sam!” her younger sister, Megan, called. “It’s raining!”
“I won’t melt!”
Sam slammed the ancient oak front door of her family home and took the steps down from the porch in one leap, Cairo happily jumping alongside her. The old house seemed to groan in protest. Yeah, yeah. She knew. She’d upset the status quo. Again. When Cat called her “Samantha,” she was really in trouble.
She took long strides away from the house, down the street she’d grown up on, the trees that had been venerable thirty years ago now creaking with old age and the weight of rain on their summer leaves. The town was late in cutting back the overhanging branches. She let them hit her in the face, punishing herself for her moment of weakness.
“I tell ya, Cai,” she grumbled aloud, “I shouldn’t have come back at all. Not even for Thea’s wedding. Not even to meet Kane’s babies.” They weren’t babies any more; the oldest was four. She winced.
Cairo matched his long legs to her strides and looked up at her, his brown face grinning happily at the walk. Sam took another tree branch to the face when she looked down at him. She didn’t want him to cheer her up. She didn’t want to see how thrilled he was with the new smells and new people he’d met.
“I guess you wouldn’t have gotten your road trip though, huh, buddy?” she conceded, reaching down to scratch between his ears. He’d loved the three-day drive so much, sniffing the air through the crack in the window, visiting national parks and sleeping on her bed at pet-friendly hotels. Had it been worth it just for that?
No. “Not for nothing. Shoulda packed up the car and gone back home right after the wedding.”
Her feet took her down a couple of side streets and through a short back alley to the public footpath in the woods. The slick mud oozing into her sandals soothed her. She knelt down and smeared some on her hands, too. There. That was more like the Sam she knew.
Had her love for exploration started here? The family home’s backyard was like many in this cookie-cutter suburb of Boston: small, dominated by the house, a detached garage and a long driveway for the many cars that had come and gone through the years. So she and her four siblings—Catriona, the oldest, the mother hen; Kane, the only boy, handsome and carefree until their father had died; Thea, studious and quiet, laughing at Sam’s jokes; and Megan, the baby, running to keep up—had often come to this trail, racing each other through the trees to the stream that ran through the middle of the woods and reflected the seasons.
Sam knew every curve, every eddy, every inch of that stream. She’d learned about erosion from watching it curl around a tree root until the root became exposed and the tree fell across the water. She’d crawled in and out of the old farmer’s cottage that had fallen to ruin in the middle of a thicket of brambles, not caring about the scratches when she found an old wooden bucket and rusty ladle. She’d learned about foundations and strata and decomposition alongside how to navigate her sisters’ moods and weaknesses. And which of her brother’s friends were worth getting to know.
Well, that had been years ago, when their lives were simple. Before they’d lost their father and then their mother, and Sam had lost all faith in men being there when they were needed.
She sat down on one of the slick rocks near the tiny waterfall the town had aggrandized with its own name, and stuck her feet, sandals and all, into the rush of water. When she let Cairo’s leash out to its farthest extent, he hopped down to sip from the cool current.
Lifting her heavy hair from the nape of her neck, she lifted her face to the rain coming through the trees and tried to blank out her mind.
But Cairo gave his warning bark, and then she heard the voices.
“It’s raining. Can we go back now?”
“No. We just got here.”
“Ugh. Dad, this is so lame.”
“No it isn’t. This is family. This is what we do.”
“Lame family.”
“Well, it’s all you got, so suck it up and look at the falls.”
Sam opened her eyes. Two children with faces as uninspired as the weather had appeared on the other side of the narrow stream. Sam had three sixteen-year-old nephews, and the boy looked about their age, though he wore a hoodie that covered half his face. The girl might have been younger; she was in flipflops, which couldn’t have been useful on the rocky path down to the water.
Behind them, their father had a scowl on his face that he quickly rearranged when he saw her. From where she was sitting, he looked tall, taller than her own five feet eleven. The calves she could see below his bermudas were strong. He either ran or rode a bike on a regular basis.
He looked familiar. The rainy shadows slanting through the trees across his face reminded her of something. She squinted across the stream. The bike. The blond. “Tyler?”
He took off his sunglasses. The long thin face of the teenager she’d known had become chiseled cheekbones and a strong jawline, but his ocean blue eyes were the same.
He didn’t recognize her. Not surprising: after years spent outside she was permanently tan, and her sleek dark hair had lightened and coarsened in the sun. “It’s Sam Fielding,” she said awkwardly. “From… school.”
His eyes widened at first, but then they narrowed, his lips thinned, and he said, “Oh. Sam,” and it sounded as if her name hurt for him to say.
Unsurprising, really, given the last time she’d been near him.
Her half-smile faltered and died. His kids stopped their desultory exploration of the falls and stared at them. “You know each other?” said the boy.
“Yep,” Tyler said, biting off the word.
From the way their eyes narrowed at her, the kids could sense he wasn’t happy. “Uh…” Sam said. “How are you?”
He shot a glance at his kids. Thank God he wasn’t about to follow up that scowl with a trip down memory lane. “Fine,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, “Did you move back to town?”
“God, no,” she said before she could stop herself. “I mean… no. I live in New Mexico.”
The girl’s eyes widened just as her father’s had. “Cool,” she said, then she looked at Tyler. “Like Uncle Noah?”
Sam recalled a kid who’d hung out with Tyler in high school, with the same emo fashion sense, the same reputation for being a great artist but otherwise not worth her time. “You’re still friends with Noah Tran?”
He looked away, then back. “Yep.”
“Do you live in Taos?” the girl went on. “That’s where Noah lives.”
Sam couldn’t be as reticent as Tyler, not in front of this girl’s enthusiasm. “I’m in Albuquerque, but right now I live near the Zuni Pueblo. Do you know what that is?”
“Where the Native Americans lived?”
“Uh huh.” Ignoring the dislike Ty was quite understandably radiating at her, she went on. “Many of them still live there. My company helps them save the ancient sites they were driven out of. Find artifacts, that kind of thing.”
“So are you an archaeologist or an anthropologist?” the girl asked, obviously knowing her stuff.
“Both. My doctorate was in archaeology, my bachelor’s in anthropology.”
“You have a PhD?” Tyler interrupted.
“Yeah.” Sam couldn’t help herself. She lifted her chin. “Surprised?”
“No. Just…”
“I want to be a psychologist,” the girl interrupted. “Or a psychiatrist. I haven’t decided.”
“You don’t have to decide yet,” Sam assured her. “That’s what college is for.”
The girl wore her hair in a fat braid down her back, and now that Sam focused on her, she saw a thick purple stripe on one side of her hair. Sam smiled at her. “Cool hair.”
The girl beamed. “Can I pet your dog?” she asked.
“Sure. Do you know how to approach him?”
“Of course.” The girl walked into the stream. Her father opened his mouth but she said, “I’m fine, Dad,” before he could speak, and continued to pick her way through the shallow water toward Sam.
Sam had given Cairo the “stay” hand command and now she aimed a radiating welcome at the girl so Cairo would know she was safe. “Cai, say hello.”
The girl held out the back of her hand in a fist and let Cairo come the last few inches to sniff her. Cai did so, then looked at Sam. “Okay,” Sam said, and Cai wagged his fuzzy tail and stepped forward, his whole backside swaying at meeting a new friend. He looked scary, but was a big old mush, really.
“His name’s Cai?” the girl said.
“Cairo. And I’m Sam. And you are…?”
“Alyssa.” Alyssa was on her haunches now, rubbing Cairo’s long ears while he panted with joy. “Cairo, like the city?”
“Uh huh. Nice to meet you.”
“He’s perfect.”
“Thanks. Yes, he is.”
“So why are you back?” Tyler said, reminding her of his presence.
“My sister got married.” Guilt twisted in her stomach that Thea would want her to be at home right now, apologizing to Cat. Pretending there was nothing missing in their lives.
“Which sister?” Tyler said.
He remembered she had a lot of sisters. She’d rather that than the other things he knew about her. “Thea. She was a year ahead of us.” The one who’d driven Sam to school for two years, until their father had died and everything had changed.
Tyler looked at her for a moment longer, his pinched expression screaming dislike. I’m not that girl, she wanted to tell him. I’m not ashamed of most of it, but I’m different now. She couldn’t say it, not in front of his kids; not in these few startled seconds.
“All right, guys, we should go,” he said, turning back to his children.
“We just got here!” complained the boy. His frown made him look just like his father. Their pale skin was even tanned to the same light biscuit.
Even Sam had to hide a smile at the exasperation on Tyler’s face as he turned to his son. “You were just saying you wanted to—”
“Sam!” a voice called from behind her. “Sam?”
It was Megan, sent to find her. “Yeah Meg!” she called back, still looking at Tyler. Cairo leapt away from Alyssa’s hands and over to greet his auntie.
Megan came through the trees. She, of course, looked perfect, even for a casual family Sunday lunch. The clothes horse of the family, dressed like she was on her way to a photo shoot. Her white skirt floated beautifully off her slim hips and she somehow owned rainboots that still looked chic by matching her black embroidered blouse.
“Hey, puppy,” she said lovingly to Cairo, then, “Hi!” to the other three, whose bright clothes stood out in the shade of the wet trees. They were all unashamedly staring at her. She gave them the full-wattage Fielding smile. “Nice day, isn’t it?” She held a hand up to the rain.
“Hello,” said Tyler. He didn’t know Megan; she’d still been in middle school when they’d graduated. His son was staring at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Megan tended to do that to people. Sam gave Tyler credit for not staring too.
What was the protocol here? “This is my sister, Megan,” Sam said. “This is Tyler Cavanaugh. We were in high school together.”
“Not together,” he said, and turned away from the women. He put his sunglasses on and raised his voice a little to the kids. “Let’s go.” This time, they didn’t complain. “Nice to meet you,” he said over his shoulder to Megan as they began to walk back up the opposite bank. “’Bye, Sam,” he added, with the merest flicker of his eyes toward her. The trio disappeared into the woods.
“What the hell did you do to him?” Megan immediately demanded.
Sam lifted her hair off her neck again. Those last couple of years of high school… well, she didn’t think about them. If she did it was to remember with bravado nights of drinking, making out with boys she forgot the next day, or her first time with Brennan Caplan and how she’d made him wear two condoms. Which was not a good idea.
Sam liked to think Megan didn’t know any of this. “We were in different circles. I only met him a couple of times.”
“Oh.” Megan clearly had other things on her mind. “Okay. Let’s go back. Mother Cat’s had another glass of wine and Kane’s asking her opinion on the company, so she’s in a much better mood."
Looking over the stream again before they turned to go home, she imagined Tyler as he’d been in high school: bony, wearing glasses, his hair cut in some painfully home-grown way. She flinched a little as she snapped on Cairo’s leash.
“Oh, come on,” said Megan, who’d seen her wince. “We’re not that bad.”
“I wasn’t thinking about—” Sam finished the sentence by butting Megan’s shoulder with hers. “Yeah, you are.”
Megan butted back. “You just say stuff to piss Cat off.”
“It’s my favorite pastime. And a good reason why I don’t visit.”
Megan sobered as they came out of the woods and onto the sidewalk. “Did you have to bring up Dad, though?”
Sam folded her arms, the familiar bullheadedness taking over. “Why not? Is he like an inverse Voldemort or something? He That Was Too Perfect To Be Named?”
“No,” Megan said, her tone even, but Sam already felt like shit. “He was just Dad. But he was the only one we had, Sam.”
Megan had only been ten when their father had died. Sam had no business tainting her memories of him with her own anger at his pointless death, and the mess he’d left the family in when he’d gone. She put an arm around her little sister’s shoulder, which was as tall as her own. “Sorry.”
At Cat’s house, things were chaotic but normal. The adults pretended nothing had happened. The rain stopped, so the kids recognized fresh meat and dragged Sam and Cairo out into the yard to play catch. The family golden retrievers dropped soggy bones at Cairo’s feet and shook the rain off their fur.
After a little while Kane’s daughter came up to show off the half-eaten dinosaur she’d dug out of the sandbox. Sam crouched down and talked to the little girl about T-rexes. Thea’s younger son, Benji, and the friend whom he was about to have a sleepover with while Thea was on her honeymoon, joined the group to listen.
Megan came up behind her and nearly knocked her into the sand by hugging her from the back.
“Getoff!” Sam said in a muffled voice, her face smooshed into her knees.
“I just wanted to say I’m sooo glad you came home,” Meg said into her back.
“Only for Thea,” Sam said crossly, but she squeezed the hands that had wrapped themselves around her neck. “And Libby. And maybe you a little bit. Now get the hell off me.”
“Get the hell off me!” four-year-old Libby echoed. Seven-year-old Benji and his buddy gulped with shock and delight.
“You’re the worst aunt in the world,” Meg laughed, easing up on Sam’s neck. “Don’t talk like your auntie, Libby.”
Sam’s other nephews had forgotten they were hip and cool sixteen-year-olds and were having a loud game of basketball in the driveway. Jake was now spiking the basketball like it was a football while Paolo-or-Mateo (her twin nephews would have to stand still for her to be able to figure out who was who) tried to jump on his back.
“Now you’ve broken the ice,” said Meg, “will you come see us more often?”
Sam looked at her. They had the same dark brown eyes, same strong eyebrows, same toothy smile. She hadn’t been in Meg’s life since Meg had left high school. It suddenly occurred to Sam that her baby sister could have used a friend in those years.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Chapter 1
That was it. Sam was getting the hell away from this house, its people and all its memories.
“Come on, Cairo,” she said. Her German Shepherd leapt up from his spot under the kitchen table to meet her in the front hall.
“Samantha!” her older sister yelled from behind her. “Get back here! You can’t walk away every—”
“Don’t call me Samantha!” she yelled back, clipping on Cairo’s leash. She should never have come back. Coming back only turned her back into an angry, childish 17-year-old who hated her name. Instead of an independent 35-year-old with her own career and her own home and a state on the other side of the country that she missed like crazy.
“Sam!” her younger sister, Megan, called. “It’s raining!”
“I won’t melt!”
Sam slammed the ancient oak front door of her family home and took the steps down from the porch in one leap, Cairo happily jumping alongside her. The old house seemed to groan in protest. Yeah, yeah. She knew. She’d upset the status quo. Again. When Cat called her “Samantha,” she was really in trouble.
She took long strides away from the house, down the street she’d grown up on, the trees that had been venerable thirty years ago now creaking with old age and the weight of rain on their summer leaves. The town was late in cutting back the overhanging branches. She let them hit her in the face, punishing herself for her moment of weakness.
“I tell ya, Cai,” she grumbled aloud, “I shouldn’t have come back at all. Not even for Thea’s wedding. Not even to meet Kane’s babies.” They weren’t babies any more; the oldest was four. She winced.
Cairo matched his long legs to her strides and looked up at her, his brown face grinning happily at the walk. Sam took another tree branch to the face when she looked down at him. She didn’t want him to cheer her up. She didn’t want to see how thrilled he was with the new smells and new people he’d met.
“I guess you wouldn’t have gotten your road trip though, huh, buddy?” she conceded, reaching down to scratch between his ears. He’d loved the three-day drive so much, sniffing the air through the crack in the window, visiting national parks and sleeping on her bed at pet-friendly hotels. Had it been worth it just for that?
No. “Not for nothing. Shoulda packed up the car and gone back home right after the wedding.”
Her feet took her down a couple of side streets and through a short back alley to the public footpath in the woods. The slick mud oozing into her sandals soothed her. She knelt down and smeared some on her hands, too. There. That was more like the Sam she knew.
Had her love for exploration started here? The family home’s backyard was like many in this cookie-cutter suburb of Boston: small, dominated by the house, a detached garage and a long driveway for the many cars that had come and gone through the years. So she and her four siblings—Catriona, the oldest, the mother hen; Kane, the only boy, handsome and carefree until their father had died; Thea, studious and quiet, laughing at Sam’s jokes; and Megan, the baby, running to keep up—had often come to this trail, racing each other through the trees to the stream that ran through the middle of the woods and reflected the seasons.
Sam knew every curve, every eddy, every inch of that stream. She’d learned about erosion from watching it curl around a tree root until the root became exposed and the tree fell across the water. She’d crawled in and out of the old farmer’s cottage that had fallen to ruin in the middle of a thicket of brambles, not caring about the scratches when she found an old wooden bucket and rusty ladle. She’d learned about foundations and strata and decomposition alongside how to navigate her sisters’ moods and weaknesses. And which of her brother’s friends were worth getting to know.
Well, that had been years ago, when their lives were simple. Before they’d lost their father and then their mother, and Sam had lost all faith in men being there when they were needed.
She sat down on one of the slick rocks near the tiny waterfall the town had aggrandized with its own name, and stuck her feet, sandals and all, into the rush of water. When she let Cairo’s leash out to its farthest extent, he hopped down to sip from the cool current.
Lifting her heavy hair from the nape of her neck, she lifted her face to the rain coming through the trees and tried to blank out her mind.
But Cairo gave his warning bark, and then she heard the voices.
“It’s raining. Can we go back now?”
“No. We just got here.”
“Ugh. Dad, this is so lame.”
“No it isn’t. This is family. This is what we do.”
“Lame family.”
“Well, it’s all you got, so suck it up and look at the falls.”
Sam opened her eyes. Two children with faces as uninspired as the weather had appeared on the other side of the narrow stream. Sam had three sixteen-year-old nephews, and the boy looked about their age, though he wore a hoodie that covered half his face. The girl might have been younger; she was in flipflops, which couldn’t have been useful on the rocky path down to the water.
Behind them, their father had a scowl on his face that he quickly rearranged when he saw her. From where she was sitting, he looked tall, taller than her own five feet eleven. The calves she could see below his bermudas were strong. He either ran or rode a bike on a regular basis.
He looked familiar. The rainy shadows slanting through the trees across his face reminded her of something. She squinted across the stream. The bike. The blond. “Tyler?”
He took off his sunglasses. The long thin face of the teenager she’d known had become chiseled cheekbones and a strong jawline, but his ocean blue eyes were the same.
He didn’t recognize her. Not surprising: after years spent outside she was permanently tan, and her sleek dark hair had lightened and coarsened in the sun. “It’s Sam Fielding,” she said awkwardly. “From… school.”
His eyes widened at first, but then they narrowed, his lips thinned, and he said, “Oh. Sam,” and it sounded as if her name hurt for him to say.
Unsurprising, really, given the last time she’d been near him.
Her half-smile faltered and died. His kids stopped their desultory exploration of the falls and stared at them. “You know each other?” said the boy.
“Yep,” Tyler said, biting off the word.
From the way their eyes narrowed at her, the kids could sense he wasn’t happy. “Uh…” Sam said. “How are you?”
He shot a glance at his kids. Thank God he wasn’t about to follow up that scowl with a trip down memory lane. “Fine,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, “Did you move back to town?”
“God, no,” she said before she could stop herself. “I mean… no. I live in New Mexico.”
The girl’s eyes widened just as her father’s had. “Cool,” she said, then she looked at Tyler. “Like Uncle Noah?”
Sam recalled a kid who’d hung out with Tyler in high school, with the same emo fashion sense, the same reputation for being a great artist but otherwise not worth her time. “You’re still friends with Noah Tran?”
He looked away, then back. “Yep.”
“Do you live in Taos?” the girl went on. “That’s where Noah lives.”
Sam couldn’t be as reticent as Tyler, not in front of this girl’s enthusiasm. “I’m in Albuquerque, but right now I live near the Zuni Pueblo. Do you know what that is?”
“Where the Native Americans lived?”
“Uh huh.” Ignoring the dislike Ty was quite understandably radiating at her, she went on. “Many of them still live there. My company helps them save the ancient sites they were driven out of. Find artifacts, that kind of thing.”
“So are you an archaeologist or an anthropologist?” the girl asked, obviously knowing her stuff.
“Both. My doctorate was in archaeology, my bachelor’s in anthropology.”
“You have a PhD?” Tyler interrupted.
“Yeah.” Sam couldn’t help herself. She lifted her chin. “Surprised?”
“No. Just…”
“I want to be a psychologist,” the girl interrupted. “Or a psychiatrist. I haven’t decided.”
“You don’t have to decide yet,” Sam assured her. “That’s what college is for.”
The girl wore her hair in a fat braid down her back, and now that Sam focused on her, she saw a thick purple stripe on one side of her hair. Sam smiled at her. “Cool hair.”
The girl beamed. “Can I pet your dog?” she asked.
“Sure. Do you know how to approach him?”
“Of course.” The girl walked into the stream. Her father opened his mouth but she said, “I’m fine, Dad,” before he could speak, and continued to pick her way through the shallow water toward Sam.
Sam had given Cairo the “stay” hand command and now she aimed a radiating welcome at the girl so Cairo would know she was safe. “Cai, say hello.”
The girl held out the back of her hand in a fist and let Cairo come the last few inches to sniff her. Cai did so, then looked at Sam. “Okay,” Sam said, and Cai wagged his fuzzy tail and stepped forward, his whole backside swaying at meeting a new friend. He looked scary, but was a big old mush, really.
“His name’s Cai?” the girl said.
“Cairo. And I’m Sam. And you are…?”
“Alyssa.” Alyssa was on her haunches now, rubbing Cairo’s long ears while he panted with joy. “Cairo, like the city?”
“Uh huh. Nice to meet you.”
“He’s perfect.”
“Thanks. Yes, he is.”
“So why are you back?” Tyler said, reminding her of his presence.
“My sister got married.” Guilt twisted in her stomach that Thea would want her to be at home right now, apologizing to Cat. Pretending there was nothing missing in their lives.
“Which sister?” Tyler said.
He remembered she had a lot of sisters. She’d rather that than the other things he knew about her. “Thea. She was a year ahead of us.” The one who’d driven Sam to school for two years, until their father had died and everything had changed.
Tyler looked at her for a moment longer, his pinched expression screaming dislike. I’m not that girl, she wanted to tell him. I’m not ashamed of most of it, but I’m different now. She couldn’t say it, not in front of his kids; not in these few startled seconds.
“All right, guys, we should go,” he said, turning back to his children.
“We just got here!” complained the boy. His frown made him look just like his father. Their pale skin was even tanned to the same light biscuit.
Even Sam had to hide a smile at the exasperation on Tyler’s face as he turned to his son. “You were just saying you wanted to—”
“Sam!” a voice called from behind her. “Sam?”
It was Megan, sent to find her. “Yeah Meg!” she called back, still looking at Tyler. Cairo leapt away from Alyssa’s hands and over to greet his auntie.
Megan came through the trees. She, of course, looked perfect, even for a casual family Sunday lunch. The clothes horse of the family, dressed like she was on her way to a photo shoot. Her white skirt floated beautifully off her slim hips and she somehow owned rainboots that still looked chic by matching her black embroidered blouse.
“Hey, puppy,” she said lovingly to Cairo, then, “Hi!” to the other three, whose bright clothes stood out in the shade of the wet trees. They were all unashamedly staring at her. She gave them the full-wattage Fielding smile. “Nice day, isn’t it?” She held a hand up to the rain.
“Hello,” said Tyler. He didn’t know Megan; she’d still been in middle school when they’d graduated. His son was staring at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Megan tended to do that to people. Sam gave Tyler credit for not staring too.
What was the protocol here? “This is my sister, Megan,” Sam said. “This is Tyler Cavanaugh. We were in high school together.”
“Not together,” he said, and turned away from the women. He put his sunglasses on and raised his voice a little to the kids. “Let’s go.” This time, they didn’t complain. “Nice to meet you,” he said over his shoulder to Megan as they began to walk back up the opposite bank. “’Bye, Sam,” he added, with the merest flicker of his eyes toward her. The trio disappeared into the woods.
“What the hell did you do to him?” Megan immediately demanded.
Sam lifted her hair off her neck again. Those last couple of years of high school… well, she didn’t think about them. If she did it was to remember with bravado nights of drinking, making out with boys she forgot the next day, or her first time with Brennan Caplan and how she’d made him wear two condoms. Which was not a good idea.
Sam liked to think Megan didn’t know any of this. “We were in different circles. I only met him a couple of times.”
“Oh.” Megan clearly had other things on her mind. “Okay. Let’s go back. Mother Cat’s had another glass of wine and Kane’s asking her opinion on the company, so she’s in a much better mood."
Looking over the stream again before they turned to go home, she imagined Tyler as he’d been in high school: bony, wearing glasses, his hair cut in some painfully home-grown way. She flinched a little as she snapped on Cairo’s leash.
“Oh, come on,” said Megan, who’d seen her wince. “We’re not that bad.”
“I wasn’t thinking about—” Sam finished the sentence by butting Megan’s shoulder with hers. “Yeah, you are.”
Megan butted back. “You just say stuff to piss Cat off.”
“It’s my favorite pastime. And a good reason why I don’t visit.”
Megan sobered as they came out of the woods and onto the sidewalk. “Did you have to bring up Dad, though?”
Sam folded her arms, the familiar bullheadedness taking over. “Why not? Is he like an inverse Voldemort or something? He That Was Too Perfect To Be Named?”
“No,” Megan said, her tone even, but Sam already felt like shit. “He was just Dad. But he was the only one we had, Sam.”
Megan had only been ten when their father had died. Sam had no business tainting her memories of him with her own anger at his pointless death, and the mess he’d left the family in when he’d gone. She put an arm around her little sister’s shoulder, which was as tall as her own. “Sorry.”
At Cat’s house, things were chaotic but normal. The adults pretended nothing had happened. The rain stopped, so the kids recognized fresh meat and dragged Sam and Cairo out into the yard to play catch. The family golden retrievers dropped soggy bones at Cairo’s feet and shook the rain off their fur.
After a little while Kane’s daughter came up to show off the half-eaten dinosaur she’d dug out of the sandbox. Sam crouched down and talked to the little girl about T-rexes. Thea’s younger son, Benji, and the friend whom he was about to have a sleepover with while Thea was on her honeymoon, joined the group to listen.
Megan came up behind her and nearly knocked her into the sand by hugging her from the back.
“Getoff!” Sam said in a muffled voice, her face smooshed into her knees.
“I just wanted to say I’m sooo glad you came home,” Meg said into her back.
“Only for Thea,” Sam said crossly, but she squeezed the hands that had wrapped themselves around her neck. “And Libby. And maybe you a little bit. Now get the hell off me.”
“Get the hell off me!” four-year-old Libby echoed. Seven-year-old Benji and his buddy gulped with shock and delight.
“You’re the worst aunt in the world,” Meg laughed, easing up on Sam’s neck. “Don’t talk like your auntie, Libby.”
Sam’s other nephews had forgotten they were hip and cool sixteen-year-olds and were having a loud game of basketball in the driveway. Jake was now spiking the basketball like it was a football while Paolo-or-Mateo (her twin nephews would have to stand still for her to be able to figure out who was who) tried to jump on his back.
“Now you’ve broken the ice,” said Meg, “will you come see us more often?”
Sam looked at her. They had the same dark brown eyes, same strong eyebrows, same toothy smile. She hadn’t been in Meg’s life since Meg had left high school. It suddenly occurred to Sam that her baby sister could have used a friend in those years.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Currently talking about tea on...
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