Sam & Ellie The Fall Before Spring

Part 5

Her life continued, days and nights blurred together by the passage of time, by the absence of anything remarkable. Another day without him. She ate, went to work, came home. Every night she called the bars, every night she heard nothing. Finally, after two weeks she couldn't take it anymore. Although she had already searched for him she would search again and again until she found him.

Her car was chaotic. Empty water bottles, sweaters, and shoes. The carpets were dirty and the leather seats hadn't been wiped down in quite some time. Her car was the only bit of chaos she receded to. And the chaos was almost a comfort as she drove around the city searching for Sam.

Starting with the usual. Bars, clubs and casinos, all of which yielded nothing. After that she called his favourite hotels and motels although they couldn't tell her if he had been there or not, she called anyway.

Eventually, she stooped to his old friends and even dealers she knew of. She knew that they could and probably would lie to her, but it wasn't them she trusted, it was her intuition and she felt like they were all telling the truth. None of them had seen Sam.

Driving home felt like giving up so she prolonged it as much as she could. Just driving around aimlessly until she found herself parked in front of a restaurant. Frivolous Fries.

Inevitably she came home. Alone and defeated with only memories to keep her company she ran her hands along the wall stopping as she felt a familiar dent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Who hit you, Ellie!"

She didn't answer, her lips a flat line as she tried to angle her face away from him.

"Ellie," he repeated, grabbing her chin. She involuntarily flinched, closing her eyes against his pleading.

It's just Sam. Her Sam. She fought to steady herself.

"You can tell me, it's okay," he coerced gently, lowering his voice, "I'll deal with whoever did this."

"Sam, no," she managed quietly, blinking back tears. "I'm fine." Her voice cracked, failing to sell the facade. "It's fine."

"No, it's not fine. None of this is fine. You have a black eye and you must think I'm stupid if you're going to try to tell me that you fell."

"Sam, I did. I fell, just leave it."

"Tell me," he commanded. His eyebrows bunched together -his royal blue eyes filled with concern- as he waited. She looked down again, ashamed.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I just- can't."

"Ellie please," he whispered, begging. He held her face, his thumb stroking her cheek slowly and soothing her as she tried to retreat into herself but his touch. His warmth, his presence was inescapable.

Hesitating, she pursed her lips, trying to make the word fall out. Trying to be strong but it wasn't herself that she was worried about, it was him.

"You," she whispered almost inaudibly. It was so quiet she hoped he didn't hear but when she looked back at his face. At the shameful sorrow stirring in his eyes, she knew he had.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So many promises had been made. Promises from Ellie to Sam, Sam to Ellie and so many of them were broken, but the ones that hurt the most were the broken ones she had made to herself.

As a child, she struggled every day to be different from her mother. She never understood how she had chosen her addiction over her child time and time again. She didn't understand how she wasn't enough. With Sam, she understood more, saw more. She wasn't a child anymore. She could see his struggles, his pain and the burdens he carried. But she would always wonder what could've happened if she had been more. If she had stayed with her mother rather than leaving. Would she still be alive?

Ellie thought of her mother, the eyes that now reminded her of Sam. The gentleness Ellie had never learned to master. The beauty Ellie had not inherited, Ellie was her father. Her face was very much him, the butterscotch hair, the plain brown eyes, the facial structure however more feminine. Her face was sharp whereas her mother's was soft. A part of her mourned that there were no pieces of her mother left behind in this world. Until Sam. When she had shown him a picture of her mom he had pointed out the differences between her and her father and although the differences didn't match her mother identically, her mother was still there in little things. Ellie's nose was long but was not crooked and came to a softer point. Her lips were full rather than thin and in the summer she had faint dotted freckles along the bridge of her nose. Her body had also been curvy when she had met Sam, as her mothers had been as well at one time. And there was the height Sam loved to point out, a whopping five foot four inches, just above her mother five foot two.

She thought of her father, of the first stable thing in her life. He wasn't perfect, but he was a great dad and had helped heal a lot of the wounds Ellie's mother had inflicted. Soothing her as she came out of nightmares, reassuring her that she had done everything she could to save her mother, promising her that it wasn't her fault, even though a little piece of her still believe it was. Every year they celebrated her mother's birthday. And even though Ellie knew her father and mother were over before they had started, he still told Ellie the good stories and the good things about her mother that she had never gotten to see. But he wasn't invincible. He too was mortal and he died.

Now it was Sam. The second man she ever loved. He held her on the days when she reached for the phone because she just had to tell her dad about the flowers she had found on the street (her mother's favourite) and had remembered that he was gone. He smiled when she told him about her mother's voice, and the songs she would sing -another thing she had not inherited-. He laughed when she told him how her father's face had looked when she returned home with a nose piercing she had not received permission for. He was there and he understood.

During the funeral, it was Sam who kept her steady. It was Sam who held her hand as she spoke about her father. He was her rock.

And now she was alone; waiting for him to come home. Feeling useless while she sits in empty rooms. Eventually, another two weeks had passed and she missed him more and more.

As she climbed into their bed on the twenty-eighth day without him, she thought about her perfect world. A world where her mom and dad were still alive. Where Sam wasn't an addict but instead a father to their beautiful son who Ellie watched grow every day. They would live in a house with a wrap-around porch and a beautiful garden. With a couple of potted flowers stationed in the house. The smell of blooming flowers ever-present, encasing them in an eternal spring. They'd live in a good neighbourhood with a good school and she would be pregnant with their second because Fynn was the perfect age to have a sibling. It was a world where there were no fertility problems or addiction, no loss or pain or death, just love. Everything light and simple and sweet. Her heart would always ache for that beautiful tomorrow.

Another morning she woke alone. In Sam's te-shirt that hung to her knees, she padded to the kitchen and began fixing breakfast. A habit from Sam. He was the only one that had an appetite and he made his concern for her eating habits widely known so she started making breakfast every morning in an attempt to placate him. Although it didn't matter now, since he was not here and she could've sipped her coffee on an empty stomach in peace. She still opened the fridge grabbing eggs and a frying pan. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows in the living room and reminded her that it was well past morning.

The reminder lifted some weight off her shoulders. The day would be short. The days she didn't work were the days she dreaded. Time stretched with nothing but her thoughts to accompany her, a different kind of nightmare than the ones that greeted her in her sleep. She had been so desperate to do something she had cleaned her car, twice. The inclination to paint disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Ellie had even set a canvas out and forced herself to sit but all she did was stare at the wall of white until she finally set the paints aside and forced herself to forget about them entirely. That locked away part of her pounded against its cage but Ellie didn't know how to let her out when Sam had the key.