The Saturday after Stephanie ran away, Eric went to Sam's house and noticed as soon as she opened the door for him that something was wrong. She looked depressed and exhausted, nothing like her usual self. Sam was doing her best to hide what she was feeling, and Eric, wanting to wait until she felt comfortable about confiding in him, decided not to ask her questions, which was made difficult by the inordinately long and tight hug that she gave him after she'd closed the door behind him. To take her mind off of whatever was plaguing her he told her all about his sister's results, the ensuing explosion and her midnight flight.
"Why would she run away though?" Sam asked. She found it strange that Stephanie would run away given the amount of control she enjoyed.
"The only thing for her to run away from is the abortion my father was going to force her to get."
"Why does she want to be a mother? From everything you've told me your sister is an utterly selfish person."
"She's also utterly insane, there's no point in trying to fathom whatever perverse reason she has for wanting a child."
Hearing about the drama that had unfolded at Eric's house during the week had succeeded in briefly taking Sam's mind off of the drama in her own life. She worried about Eric's family and whether he was really going to be able to escape them before his potential was crushed by them. It was for this reason that despite how badly she'd been feeling she refused to allow it to ruin her Saturday with Eric. On Friday she'd gone to the video store and rented a movie for them to watch and had searched through her files of sheet music for pieces for their piano lesson.
The movie she rented was Homeward Bound, a film she had been looking forward to watching with Eric since he'd told her two weeks earlier that the film's final scene when Shadow limps home always brings him to tears. Sam had to see what he'd described for herself and when they were done watching the movie and it happened, the sensitivity within him that it revealed made it harder for her to hide from him the hurt that she was feeling. She knew that if she opened up to him he'd take her in his arms and wouldn't let her go, a comforting thought that still didn't outweigh her belief that it was important she not be too needy so early. She kept up her façade which cracked up a little further every second until, during a Ravel prelude that they were practicing, it cracked all the way and shattered. Her hands started shaking, and a solitary tear rolled down her face.
"Sam, what is it?" Eric asked.
His gentle utterance of the words was her undoing. She broke down and, without being aware of him doing so, was enclosed by Eric tightly in his arms. Seeing Sam like this for the first time, the pain it brought him was unlike anything he'd felt before; what he'd felt the night his mother had tried to run him over didn't come close. Her fragility, the thing about her that scared him the most, was now completely exposed. He held on to her without loosening his grip, waiting patiently for her crying to subside.
"You okay?" He asked gently when she seemed composed enough to talk.
"Yeah, I think I'm fine," she responded softly.
The crying had left her body drained and Eric could feel it. She got up from next to him on the piano bench and went to the bathroom to wash her face. She returned and they sat together in the living room, and Sam told him the reason for her feeling this way. Last week after he'd left, without telling her anything, her mother had brought a man home with her. It was the first time she had done so in all the years since her father's death and the inconsideration that she had shown Sam by not discussing it with her beforehand had hurt Sam deeply. She spent the night crying in her room and spent the whole of Sunday in her room avoiding her mother. On Tuesday she confronted her mother about what had happened on Saturday night and was told by her mother that she was forty-two years old and didn't need to clear everything she did with her seventeen year old daughter, and if this was about her father then it was high time she accepted the fact that he was gone and got over it. Sam hadn't seen or spoken to her mother since. She made sure she was in her room when her mother came home from work and she only came out when her mother had gone to bed. She had been holding in the pain that her mother had caused her all week and with Eric there with her now she couldn't hold it in any longer. She kept breaking down in sobs while telling Eric everything that had happened and each time she did he was quick to take her in his arms. Holding on to her, Eric wished that he could do more than just hold her, that he could offer her something concrete to reassure her of her importance to him and his commitment to her.
"Come with me."
"What?" Sam asked, confused.
"When I leave home after school, come with me."
Eric's offer left Sam stunned. She didn't know that he loved her so much that he would be willing to go this far for her and she couldn't think of anything she wanted more than to be with Eric every day, but again it was her fear of being too much of a burden on him that was the basis of her decision.
"No, I can't do that, that's too much. If I come with you then the money you've been saving isn't going to last as long as you need it to."
"Don't worry about the money, I'll have more than enough."
Sam could tell from his insistence that Eric hadn't made the offer to her just to make her feel better. He wanted her with him, and having never experienced the feeling of being wanted so much before, Sam could only give him one answer.
"Okay, I'll come with you."
* * *
For the next three weeks, Sam continued avoiding her mother. She spent her nights in her room sitting on her bed and imagining the life that she and Eric would have when they ran away. Normally it was safe for her to come out of her room after ten o'clock, by then her mother had gone to bed and was fast asleep, but on Tuesday night Sam came out of her room at ten-thirty and found her mother sitting at the dining room table with the lights off eating the plate of spaghetti that Sam had left for her in the microwave. Troubled by what she saw, Sam pulled out a chair and sat with her mother at the table. The first thing that Sam was struck by was the smell. She knew that her mother kept wine in the nightstand next to her bed and had a little every night before she went to bed but the smell that she was confronted with was the product of a lot more than a couple of glasses.
"You don't have to worry about that guy coming over anymore," Evelyn said, her voice husky.
"Why? What happened?" Sam asked, growing increasingly concerned about what had happened to her mother that had put her in the state that she was in.
"He's married, I found out today that he's married," Evelyn answered, putting a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.
"How did you find out?"
"One of the other nurses told me, apparently they all knew and if I wasn't so anti-social at work then I would have also known and wouldn't have made a complete fool of myself."
"I'm sorry."
"No, I'm the one who's sorry. I shouldn't have brought him here without saying anything to you and I shouldn't be making you worry about me by letting you see me like this."
"Are you going to be okay?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine."
Sam didn't believe that her mother was going to be fine. She had allowed a man into her life for the first time in eight years and had been badly hurt and publicly humiliated by him. The distance that existed between she and her mother had never felt as material to Sam as it did then, because as much as she wanted to be a comfort to her mother she couldn't bring herself to take that important step toward her. She hoped that she was wrong about her mother and with each day that passed with her mother going to work in the morning and looking fine when she came home in the evening Sam worried about her less and came to believe that she really was fine, until she heard a noise from the bathroom one Sunday morning and, when she went to see what it was, found her mother lying curled up on the floor in pain having spat up blood all over the sink.
