(2002) Chasing Darkness by Danielle Girard

Author:Danielle Girard [Girard, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-03T18:30:00+00:00

Sam read the familiar phone number and felt the tears drift down her face as she pictured their father drunk, chasing Polly down the stairs. Jimmy had left, Sam had left, but Polly had stayed. She even took care of their father. Polly put up with all of it, bought the line of bullshit her mother fed her. Her mother had never forgiven Sam for refusing to live her mother’s lies.

Sam had left them and when she’d gone, she’d told her mother why. She’d told her with Polly and Jimmy in the room how screwed up she was. Sam had convinced herself she’d risen above it, and taking the moral high ground, she called her father sick and dysfunctional, called her mother weak for putting up with it. It was something only an eighteen-year-old could do. And her mother had never forgiven her, had erased Sam’s existence from the family tree. Sam wondered where her mother was now. Was she dead?

She remembered the day Polly’s letter had come. Sam had been through a battery of tests, and failed each one. The doctors had explained the results with grim faces. They had used words she didn’t understand, identified organs she didn’t know existed. “Due to previous trauma,” she remembered one of them saying. It was the only time Brent had even looked at her. Through the rest of it, he had nodded without a word.

On the drive home, he was silent. He dropped her off at their house, changed his clothes, and disappeared. Polly’s letter arrived in the mail that day. Divorce papers and a letter from Brent’s attorney the next. It was over like that. Alone again.

She looked down at Polly’s letter.I tell him you’re a big shot out in California and he smiles. She shook her head. She was no big shot. She wasn’t even sure she would have a job next week.I hope you have some kids by now. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than being a mom. Oh, Polly. Sam shook her head. It should’ve been me instead of you. You should be raising your boys.

Gripping the letter, she wished she could cry. The guilt, the anger, the physical pain, none of it would come loose. Instead, it had seeded deeper into her belly, sinking roots there. She stared at the other letters, the unopened ones. She should have been stronger. She should have been able to handle what was in them, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

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