Chapter Thirty-One

Sunday Morning

Sam started talking, like she had her thoughts all lined up and ready to go. “Everything I’ve told you is true. I worked at Phil and Jennie’s diner. I lived in their daughter’s old room.”

All the drawl had gone out of Sam’s rich, deep voice. “Before that, I lived in Chicago. I spent some time in a hospital for kids with problems. A psych hospital. That’s where I learned to bake. I came here because I needed somewhere to be. No one knew me so I could start fresh.”

Sam stared out the window, hunched forward, elbows on knees. “I’ve been thinking about this all night. About when you were a kid in that fire. You must have been so scared. Then having the RV blow up…it made me think about…I have these dreams or memories. Probably dreams. There’s one, years ago, I dreamed or remembered something, I don’t know, but I was scared. I was a kid.”

Little by little, the sureness of Sam’s speech faltered. “It’s probably a dream. I was scared, crying, it was cold and dark, darker than deep dark in the woods at night. I was trying to get somewhere.”

She glanced at Vicky, then back out the window. The morning sky had shifted to a paler shade of gray.

Vicky followed Sam’s gaze toward the library garden, which gently sloped down to meet the woods about forty yards away. A few people were strolling around, volunteers or supporters here early for the show. Pete strolled by and waved at her. Someone must have told him where she was.

When it was clear that was all Sam was going to say, Vicky asked, “Do you remember if you were in the woods? Or inside?”

“Inside, but not normal inside. It smelled strange.”

“Like a barn? Or garage?”

“No. Different.” Sam lapsed into another long, deep silence.

Vicky waited, chastising herself for her impatience, torn between wanting to speed Sam’s story along and letting her tell it her way. Vicky’s mind raced and her heartrate quickened, like when she’d be reporting on a great story and the newscast was coming up and the story was still happening but she didn’t have a live truck and had to hustle back to the station, scribbling her script in her notebook, talking with the photog about the sound and video and the best way to craft together the facts and soundbites and images in the little time they had, hoping nothing big happened after they left, or if it did, that lady would call, like she promised.

Vicky had loved the thrill. Oh, well. Now, a decade later, late nineties TV news seemed so last century, a long-ago era, when television news people were still among the few with cameras, microphones, and the means of communicating with multitudes of people simultaneously.

Now, anyone could instantly connect with millions with one simple personal electronic device. Simple enough for most to use, but there was nothing simple about the human changes created by the ability to communicate with many simultaneously, immediately, constantly.

That reminded her of her phone, dammit, somewhere in a pile of melted, reeking wreckage. Though now that she’d seen the RV, it didn’t look as bad as she had pictured it. She’d expected to see a smoking RV skeleton, but the outside was still mostly intact. Sometimes it was good to have a little distance between a happening and when its story is told.

Speaking of which, Sam was taking an awful lot of nudging for someone who wanted to talk. The fundraiser was going to start soon.

Vicky finally spoke. “Were you alone?”

Sam could have been carved in wood, she was so still, though waves of tension vibrated from the younger woman. Sam was innately graceful and expressive, but seemed to deny those traits, to suppress those natural characteristics so she would appear tough and self-sufficient. Vicky was used to seeing Sam in her element, her café, when she was all of those—strong, confident, and elegant in jeans and apron.

But now Sam was wound up tight, like a compressed steel wire coil. When they’d entered Liz Ann’s office, Sam had rearranged the chairs so they weren’t facing each other. Was that a conscious action, or a habit formed by avoiding people? Or maybe it really was just so Vicky could put up her leg.

“There was a woman.” Sam paused. “We went out into a house. I was scared…terrified.” She half-shrugged, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “And that’s it. That’s what I remember.”

“When you think about it, what do you think was happening?”

“Maybe it was just a bad dream or something.” Sam didn’t sound like she believed that herself.

“Or maybe it really happened.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“When you were in the hospital with doctors, did you talk about this?”

“No. I didn’t talk, and I didn’t play their drawing games or anything else. They thought I didn’t understand much. After a while they mostly parked me in the library and left me alone. I read a lot. I’ve never talked about this.”

“There’s a reason you want to now.”

Sam’s gaze focused intently out the window. “I don’t know where to start. I have, I don’t know…they’re like random little slices of time.”

“That makes sense. You don’t have to put them in order. Is it okay if I keep asking questions?”

Sam’s shoulder twitched. Vicky took it as assent. “Earlier you said something interesting, about being inside, but it wasn’t a barn or garage. What was that like?”

“I was scared. I don’t remember.”

“What’d it smell like?”

“Cold. Old. Like dirt.”

“Have you smelled it since? Something that reminds you of it?”

“Yeah. On a cave tour.”

“You’ve thought about it, then. Do you think you were in a cave?”

“Maybe. Yeah. Dammit. Sorry. That’s all I remember.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Sam. Is it too upsetting to talk about this? I don’t want to push you.”

“No, it’s good. Keep asking questions.”

“Okay. You said you went out into a house. Out into. Were they connected? The cave and the house?”

Pause. “I don’t know.”

“Was there anything the same about them?”

“I’m not sure.”

“That’s fine.” Vicky exuded reassurance. “Do you remember your parents?”

“Not really. Just my mom, a little.”

“What was she like?”

“She made me feel good. We made each other laugh.” Sam’s voice was softer for a moment, then full-out tension returned. “We were going somewhere.”

When the next pause had gone on long enough, Vicky asked, “Do you know where you were going?”

“No.”

“Were you in a car?”

“I don’t think so. I was sleeping. I’ve tried to remember, but that’s it.”

“Do you remember talking?”

Eventually, when Sam spoke again, she sounded surprised. “Oh! We were together in one seat. I think we were on a bus.”

While Sam paused, Vicky started building a fairly elaborate mental image of a woman and child riding a bus at night, cuddled under their coats, surrounded by strangers, talking quietly in the dark as the bus rumbled past sleeping small towns.

“Mama was telling me about her sister. We were going to find her, I think.” She shifted slightly. “You know how you don’t know all that’s going on when you’re a kid.”

A shudder traversed Sam’s rigid body.

Time to move on, Vicky told herself. For now. “Okay, let me know when you want to stop. Take your time.”

Vicky hoped it wouldn’t damage Sam in any way, pressing her about obviously traumatic childhood events. But Sam had clearly survived a few battles in her life. She could take care of herself. Vicky carried on. “Tell me something else you remember.”

Sam glanced toward Vicky, but her eyes didn’t focus before her gaze returned to the window. “There was another time, I remember waking up right next to a woman. I couldn’t move. I pretended I was still asleep, but I could see a little.”

Sam had given up any pretense this was a dream.

“Was she the same woman from the house?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Where were you?”

“We were moving. Driving.”

“Was she driving?” Vicky made her questions sound gentle, merely interested, instead of voracious.

“No. A man was. She was moving things around, like she was trying to find something.”

“Do you know what?”

“I didn’t then, but I think it was a tape. She stuck it in the dash.”

“Like a music tape? A cassette?”

“The bigger ones they used before.”

“Eight-track. You were a kid in the ’90s, right? Eight-tracks were big in the ’70s. So it must have been an old car even then.”

Vicky had always liked the name of that audio technology. It said what it was. Sometimes she pictured people’s lives as eight-track tapes. Physical changes, personalities, actions, histories, thoughts, secrets—all that and more on parallel tracks for some length of time. Some lives were always out front, like lead guitar or vocals, sometimes stronger, louder, sometimes less so, but always present. Other tracks were fainter, in the background, maybe setting a subtle part of the tempo or mood, but mostly not. Lives whose absence went almost entirely unnoticed, or at least uncommented-on.

That was how Vicky’s mind worked, too, and right now the drums and bass guitar were leading, beating this is it, now. Something always changed when tracks diverged or intersected. Or someone’s mind jumped to something forgotten. Or hidden.

Sam stared straight ahead. “It was bigger. A van, maybe. That’s all I remember. I’ve tried.” She fell silent.

If Vicky still had her phone, she would have put it where she could see the time, to keep a mental countdown to the fundraiser’s eleven a.m. start. Other people were handling that now, so her attention was all on Sam. Almost all. It had to be close to ten, now.

Vicky twisted slightly and tugged at the yoga pants near her injury. Without a word, Sam turned, and with both hands gently tugged at the hem.

“Thanks, that feels much better.” Vicky settled back and gazed at Sam. “It’s good you’ve thought about this.”

“Maybe. I usually try not to.”

“That’s understandable. Even so, you’ve thought about all this before, right? It must be so hard to have to relive it.”

Sam ran both hands through her hair, from her forehead back to the nape of her neck. It was the first time Vicky had seen her make any self-grooming movement. She never seemed to need to.

Vicky softened her voice. “Can you tell me about another time with your mama?”