Beyond the Family Ties

Part 23

"So ... Freen and Mike."

Sam winced slightly, an apologetic, sheepish look on her face as she looked at Becky. Rolling her eyes, Becky took a sip of coffee, leaning back against the cushions of her friend's sofa. "I know I should've-"

"No," Becky curtly interrupted, "Freen should've told me herself. I'm not mad at you. I'm not mad at her either, I'm just ..."

"Jealous?"

Scoffing, Becky scowled as she hunched over slightly, drawing her knees up to her chest as she stared off at the drawings Ruby had made that were stuck to the fridge. "I'm not jealous."

Letting out a light laugh, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners as she looked at Becky with amusement, Sam gave her a coy look. "Well jealous people rarely want to admit that they're jealous."

"I am not jealous!" Becky protested, looking slightly put out as she jutted her chin forward and tried not to look like a petulant child. The truth was that she was jealous, in some confusing kind of way. It was partly selfishness, feeling like she'd been replaced in Freen's life without a second thought, and not liking that thought, but there was an undercurrent of jealousy too, and she couldn't deny it. "I mean-"

"I get it. You're not here. You feel left out."

"Yes."

With a heavy sigh, Becky closed her eyes, a feeling of loneliness blossoming in her chest even as a weight lifted off her shoulders at the admission. Being home had dampened the loneliness, patching up the hole and the cracks, the sight of Freen's smile a balm to soothe the ache in her chest that had become a permanent fixture she associated with London. Yet being back in Albany City, back with Freen, hadn't healed it well as she'd expected it to. Things had changed. Time had carried on without Becky, and it bothered her more than she cared to admit.

While never commented on, the truth was that Becky had come into everyone's life as a troublesome intruder, disrupting their peaceful routines and had come to see herself as a part of their group now. A family. But without her, their lives went back to normal. They carried on as if things had never changed, aside from the occasional call to catch up with her, and the dreadful thought that she'd been an inconvenience, a nuisance that brought more trouble than they cared for, crept up on her, making her feel anxious. What if this entire time she'd deluded herself into thinking that she belonged with them, that she fit in and they cared about her, when instead, they'd viewed her and her daughter as cuckoo birds that had come to overtake the nest and put everyone else at risk.

"But it's not- I just- I want to be here. I don't want to miss these things. And if I could, I'd come back, but I have to put my family first. I have to protect Laurel, and Freen-"

"I get it. I do. I think I'm the only one that can . I have a daughter too, and I know that if it came down to it, I'd take her and run if it meant that she'd be safer. You don't have to explain it to me. Freen ... you might want to."

"I've tried! She acts as if I left her."

"Well ... you did," Sam hedged.

"Not by choice," Becky indignantly replied, bristling slightly as she clutched her cup of coffee tightly in her hands. Pouting, she brooded over the mess of things that she'd helped make. "She just- she doesn't understand. Like you said. If it was just myself that I had to worry about, I'd say fuck it. I'm not scared of my brother. He could do whatever he wanted to me. But my daughter ... that's another thing. And I know that you get it, but Freen doesn't. And now she's replacing me-"

Softly laughing, Sam reached out to gently rest a hand on Becky's knee, warmth seeping through the denim of her jeans as she looked up at Sam with a sad look upon her face. "I don't think anyone could ever replace you, honey."