My Personal Fairytale | COMPLETE

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The woman clapped her hands in delight, ignoring Sam's shocked stare. She smiled brightly at the three siblings.

"What are you doing here?" Sam whispered. She motioned for the twins to come stand next to her and pushed them both behind her. The woman looked remarkably like... more like identical to-

Ellie was unable to contain herself. "Mommy!" she cried, dashing around Sam as her little feet launched her toward the newcomer. The woman stooped down to her level and caught Ellie in her arms. "I missed you, Elle," she said, hugging her tightly to her chest. "You've grown so big."

Looking up, she said, "So have you, Jack. And Sam-"

"Ellie, come back here!" Jack demanded, cutting her off. He too stepped around Sam, but he didn't move far.

Ellie shook her head no, still burrowed in her mother's arms.

"Ellie!" Jack loudly said again.

"Jack, sweetie, what's the matter?" the woman asked tenderly. She unwrapped one arm from around Ellie and held it open to him. Jack shook his head as vehemently as he could manage and grabbed Sam's hand. "I haven't seen you in years, baby," the woman continued. "Come see your Mom?"

"You," Jack started, "are not my mommy." Sam squeezed his hand, noticing the tears starting to pool in his eyes. "Do you want to know why? You're not her because my mommy is dead!"

The park was dead silent. Not even the birds made a noise.

"Ellie," Sam said softly, "will you please come back and stand with me and your brother?" Jack sniffed, trying to prove that big boys don't cry but not really succeeding.

Slowly, Ellie took one step back, looking anxiously between Sam and the woman. Then she took another, and another, until she ran the last couple steps back to where she'd started behind Sam.

The woman stood up helplessly and turned her attention to Sam. "Samantha, honey..."

"Who are you?" Sam asked. "What do you want with us?"

She shrugged her shoulders and took a step forward. "I need to talk to you," she said simply.

Sam, Jack, and Ellie instinctively took a step back. Even Sunny whimpered. "Shh," Sam murmured, specifically to the dog but to her siblings as well. "It's okay."

"She's cute," the woman commented. "When did you get her?"

"My birthday," Sam responded stiffly. She looked behind her, needing to get Jack and Ellie out of here. This was craziness. She couldn't handle it.

"You must be... what, fourteen now?" the woman commented.

"Fifteen," Sam answered, too sharply. "And we really need to go now."

The woman drooped just a little bit. "I'd love to talk to you," she said almost wistfully.

Sam nodded curtly. She said, "Let's go see Daddy, guys," as she turned Jack and Ellie around.

"I'll be here for the rest of the day... if you'd like to come."

Sam just walked away. She hurried out of the park and down the street, only turning to look back when they were about to turn the corner. Their mother was still there, watching them go. As Sam looked, she turned her head and waved to a familiar looking elderly lady in a long grey dress, who walked much too quickly for her age to stand next to her.

Sm turned her head abruptly before they noticed her watching.

Jack and Ellie burst through the door of the house and ran straight into the living room where their father was sitting. Sam slipped unnoticed up the stairs, not bothering to tell her dad what had happened. She knew that in the next five minutes the twins would have told him all about it, anyways. It was just a question of whether or not he would believe them.

Sam's mind was whirling with thoughts as she wandered into her room. Foremost, of course, was the woman who claimed to be her mother.

Anne Smith was dead. Sam knew that for a fact. She remembered that night three years ago with stunning clarity, like it was burned in her memory.

It was a Friday night when it happened. Her mom and Marie Stevens, her childhood best friend, were out for dinner celebrating Marie's birthday. Marie had stopped by first, because she wanted to see Sam and the twins, and then they hopped in her old Subaru and drove off.

It was pouring rain, and Sam hadn't been able to sleep. Even after her dad tucked her into bed, made her a cup of hot chocolate, and she read for a while, she was still wide awake. And so she'd found herself sitting at the window, listening to the rain that it was too dark to see pouring down, and just waiting, for what she didn't know.

She was the first one to see the flashing blue and red lights as the police car pulled into the driveway. A man stepped out and started towards the door. "Dad!" she had called, not moving from the windowsill. And then again louder. "Dad!"

He ran into her room just as the policeman knocked on the door. Sam pointed at the window and her father went to downstairs to see what was going on.

It was a couple hours later that she found out what had happened. Somebody got into a brawl at the bar her mom and Marie went to. He pulled out a gun, aimed at the guy he was fighting with, and was so drunk that he hit Anne instead, who was walking out to the car. Marie Stevens didn't even get a scratch.

Sam saw her mother's cold white body at the funeral. Anne Smith was dead. There was no way she was the woman at the park down the street. Sam refused to think about it anymore. Not her mother's death.

So who was she?

And then there was the old lady, too, who looked eerily familiar. Off the top of her head, Sam couldn't place her.

And then it hit her. She dashed from her bedroom into her dad's office. To the left of his desk were some built in mahogany shelves, filled to the brim with books. Right about at eye level, he kept a collection of old pictures. It was the only place in the house that Sam could think of where there were pictures of her mother.

A wedding photo, Sam as a baby, Sam holding the twins just after they were born with a wide, toothy smile, and her parents at a concert in their early twenties.

There was also one of Sam's mom and her parents, who died before Sam was born. They were standing in somebody's house, arms all wrapped around each other. Sam scrutinized the faces.

The woman was the one she was looking for. Her... grandmother.

Sam sank back into the big leather desk chair and closed her eyes. This was too much. Way too much. But there was one thing she knew for certain.

She was going back to that park, and she was going to figure out what was going on.