Mo was happily ensconced at Katelyn and Brian’s for the night, thrilled to be having a sleepover with Sawyer and Lacey and to be babysat by a “real” teenager. Aisha climbed into Sam’s SUV, feeling half glad, half irritated—her go-to emotional state these days, so that was super fun, right?—to have a ride to Caren’s show. The glad: it would be nice to have a glass of wine with everybody after she was done work, something she’d never do if she was driving herself. The irritation: Sam was too easy to talk to. She wanted to keep everything about Jase private, didn’t she? Well, from the amount of her blather, apparently not.
“I just don’t get why,” she moaned for the umpteenth time. Sam, to her credit, showed an unusual amount of patience and made yet another sympathetic sound. If their roles were reversed, Aisha wasn’t sure she would be half as consoling. No, that was a lie. She already knew she’d be nowhere near as consoling. Snap out of it, she’d yell—and honestly if Sam did flip her lid, Aisha wouldn’t hold it against her. Her whining was getting on her own nerves!
“Seriously, Sam. I’m asking you for answers.”
Sam made a soft noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “It never hurts to ask, but I’m sure you’ll be disappointed in whatever I have to say.”
Yes, Aisha suspected that was true. She watched the trees, reduced to featureless smears, as they sped by a good twenty kilometres over the posted highway speed, and resolved to stop repeating herself. Her resolution lasted until they were almost at the crossroads that fed into Greenridge.
“Why would he lie to me? I told him . . . so much. For him to hold back, to not tell me something so . . . big. That’s what it was. A lie.” Aisha wanted to sound angry, outraged, grievously wronged—but instead, her voice was full of tears.
Sam shifted in her seat, glanced in her rearview mirror, and then shoulder checked as well. Since there was no traffic to speak of, it was obviously a stalling tactic. She’d finally reached her limit and was trying to avoid further overt contact with Aisha’s scattered emotions. Aisha didn’t blame her. Only felt humiliated. Ashamed. Would she never learn? Above all things, she would’ve said Jase was honest. That he was integrity personified. She’d thought his quiet way of thinking before speaking showed a trustworthy character. She was a no-brain idiot! Really, he, like Evan, had just found the perfect oily method to slide around her defenses.
Waiting for the light to change and grant them passage on the single lane bridge that would take them over the river and into town, Aisha noticed Sam studying her with something Aisha could only call sorrow in her expression. Not what she was used to in the queen of poker faces. It pulled her out of her own misery for a moment. “What? I know I’m pathetic. You don’t have to spare my feelings. Just say whatever you’re going to say.”
Sam shrugged and was uncharacteristically mute for a second—well, uncharacteristic for Sam when she was with other people. Aisha was well aware that Sam reined herself in around her, almost walking on eggshells. Sitting there in her name brand yoga gear—she’d brought a dress to change into after she helped set out the food—with her sleek hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked too impossibly young to be Aisha’s mother, and Aisha was reminded again—as if she needed another stupid reminder!—of how young Sam had been when she had her, of how young she’d been when she’d had Mo, of the whole rotten circle of genetic-ineptitude.
A small white pickup bearing an orange and gray kayak zipped off the bridge, followed by a three-wheeled Harley motorbike. After a breath, the light turned green. Sam hit the gas and the action seemed to fuel her thoughts, not just the SUV’s speed.
“Sometimes when people are really insecure, they lie, Aisha. It’s not a justification or an excuse, just a fact. Do with it as you will.”
“But that does sound like a justification! Everyone’s insecure. Everyone has had hard times, or had bad things happen to them. Not everyone lies.”
Sam shrugged again. “So what happened to you, like specifically?”
The question threw Aisha for a loop. As in what had her life been like? Or was Sam asking her directly about Evan again? Or . . .
“You’ve had hard times, for sure. Losing your mom . . . the circumstances around Mo’s conception.” Sam’s voice was soft, yet also firm somehow. “But there are different kinds of hard times. Different types of insecurity and struggle.”
Aisha snorted. “Thanks, Captain Obvious. It’s still no excuse.”
Sam’s jaw tightened and her gaze was flinty as she darted a glance at Aisha’s face, then refocused on the road again. “If you like this kid—or, given how hurt you are, maybe even love him—get over yourself. Yes, you’ve lost a lot, and, yes, you’ve experienced some hard things, but you had so much to begin with. It’s not comparable to someone like Jase, who I’m guessing could only dream of having a pittance of everything you have—even after all you lost.”
“What do you know about it? Giving someone up isn’t the same as having them taken from you.”
“Wow.” Sam inhaled sharply, then raised an eyebrow. “You might be surprised,” she said finally, without heat.
Shame soured Aisha’s throat. She was being hideous to Sam. It was like she was trying to punish Sam for the very things she appreciated about her, that she was easy to talk to, that she was her mother, that she was there—but she didn’t get a chance to apologize because Sam wasn’t finished yet.
“Did I ever tell you that when Jo first called me and told me you’d shown up and wanted to see me, I was in Greenridge—and I left.”
No, Sam had not told her that. No one had. “I thought it just took a while for Jo to track you down.”
“Nope. I definitely bailed.” Sam pressed her lips together for a moment, keeping her eyes firmly on the road. “It’s not that I didn’t want to meet you. That I wasn’t curious or didn’t hope that maybe, sometime . . . well, whatever. It’s just that I was never like Jo.” Sam shook her head wonderingly. “She always had this inextinguishable optimism and hope. Nothing could kill it. Like when she was a little girl, you could give her a stick to play with and she’d act like it was the best thing. I seriously did that—would go and gather sticks from the yard to entertain her with while I made dinner.”
Sam was only a few years older than Jo, but when Jo was “a little girl,” young enough that playing with sticks would entertain her, Sam had been in charge of feeding them. Aisha hung her head, remembering other bits and pieces of Sam and Jo’s pasts that she’d heard, but didn’t always think about because they seemed so removed from who they were now.
A faraway fond look softened Sam’s features. “She really always has been such a weirdo. ‘I have a happy tummy, Sammo!’ she’d say about food, or if something good had happened that day—and her scale was pathetically low. ‘A happy tummy!’ What does that even mean?” Sam’s face tightened again. “I had a gut full of rage for years. Anyway, after so carefully handpicking the parents—your parents—who’d raise you, when you showed up on the scene, I couldn’t see what I possibly had to offer you, and I couldn’t see anything happy, for anyone, coming from us meeting. Because when you’ve lived a certain way, that’s how you see the world—like anything that sounds too good to be true, probably is. That if you hope for too much, you will be disappointed. That no matter how hard you work or try to better yourself, you’re just one slip away from everyone knowing you’re worthless.”
Aisha couldn’t speak. Sam turned onto the art gallery’s street, driving slowly for once. “Anyway, I’m not saying Jase’s omission was acceptable. My only point is that I almost sabotaged the single best thing in my life—knowing you and Mo—because of my own insecurities. Whatever his glitch is, it might be understandable. Then again, he might explain, and you may still feel he’s untrustworthy and not for you. Either way, at least then you’ll stop second guessing yourself and really know.”
Aisha made a non-committal sound, her memory replaying Jase’s body language and the sadness that came over him when she refused to hear him out. Like he wasn’t surprised at all. Like he’d expected it.
Sam came to a stop beside a navy minivan, darted a look over her shoulder, and speedily reversed the Mercedes into a spot Aisha would’ve thought was too small. “I’ll drop you here and be back in a bit. I ordered a bouquet for Caren that I want to pick up.”
Aisha nodded, blown away that they’d reached their destination already. She undid her seat belt, then turned to face Sam. “Your advice is fair, but I don’t know if I want to let Jase explain himself. What if I do and he makes sense and I let him in again and he hurts me again?”
“Yep, that’s the catch, all right. Do you let people in and risk getting hurt, or do you play it safe, keep closed off and protected, but rob yourself of potential joy and love in the process?”
Aisha raked her hair, which was back to its curly self, with her fingers. “When you put it like that, it sounds like it’s supposed to be a no brainer.”
Sam looked sad. “Not a no brainer. Not a no brainer, at all. It’s very hard to know what to do sometimes.” She smoothed her ponytail as if subconsciously echoing Aisha’s movement.
Aisha reached for the unlock button on the SUV’s door, about to open it and climb out, but then she reached toward Sam instead and patted her arm. “Thank you . . . you really helped. And I’m sorry I’m such a jerk all the time.”
Sam grinned. “Not all the time, and for the record, I find your personality quite winsome. Reminds me of . . . me.”
Aisha rolled her eyes but smiled back. “Genetics are the worst.”
When Aisha was safely on the sidewalk, Sam zipped out of her parking space and was gone. Aisha stared after her a moment, wondering, yet again, what her mother would’ve thought of her birth mom.