Stealing Second: Sam's Story: Book 4 in the Clarksonville Series (28 page)

“Thanks, guys.” Sam touched Karl’s letterman’s jacket. “At least not all jocks are jerks.”

“Thanks.” Karl’s cheeks tinged red, and Alivia smiled at him.

“You know,” Abby continued, “I always wondered why you didn’t have a boyfriend. I thought maybe the guys around here were intimidated by your family name.”

“That’s probably true, too,” Sam said with a chuckle.

“And Lisa,” Abby continued, “is she your...”

“Yes.” Sam nodded.

“Ah, so many things make sense now.”

Sam felt her cheeks get warm. “God, what a nightmare this is. I didn’t want to come out of the closet in such a grand fashion.” She closed her eyes for a moment wishing she could be somewhere else.

“You know, Sam,” Abby said, “I think people are reacting this way because you were so far above the rest of us.”

“I never—”

“I know, but let me finish. Your parents are like the king and queen of the North Country.”

“Payton Valley, you mean?” Sam couldn’t help her sarcastic tone, even though she knew Abby was just trying to help.

Abby nodded. “Yeah, something like that. But right or wrong, you’ve been untouchable, better than everybody else, above reproach.”

Sam frowned.

“In their eyes, I mean,” Abby was quick to add. “We know you’re cool, right guys?”

Heads around the table nodded.

“And now we find out you’re as human as the rest of us mere mortals.” Abby grinned letting Sam know she was on her side.

“What she means is,” Ronnie said, “the mighty have fallen, and these ignorant assholes see you as an equal or, let’s be honest, less than equal.”

“I’ve never—”

Susie’s hand on her arm silenced her. “We know,
gringa
. You’re vulnerable right now. They’re going in for the kill. All of us at this table agree that you’re an awesome person. We’re all here to help you. We’re here for each other, okay?”

“Has anyone bothered you today?” Sam asked Susie, hoping she hadn’t taken heat by being her friend.

“Not too much. I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.” Susie squeezed Sam’s arm gently and then pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “Now in about three minutes, this phone is going to ring, and it’s going to be for you.”

“Lisa?” Sam’s eyes grew wide.

Susie nodded. “She has lunch now, too.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know,” Susie said. “I texted Marlee and Lisa this morning after you told me what happened with your parents.”

Except nobody knows all the sordid details
, Sam thought. “Thanks, Sus.”

“Hey, what’re friends for? Right, guys?”

“Absolutely,” Alivia said. “We’re here for you Samantha Rose.”

“I don’t think Samantha Rose exists anymore, so call me Sam from now on, okay?”

“Okay.”

Rachel cleared her throat and said, “How about we declare an official moratorium on the name Samantha Rose, and only those that are true friends get to call you Sam?”

“I’m all for it. Thanks, guys.” Sam blinked back tears. She hadn’t been expecting such unconditional support.

“Since there’s absolutely no privacy at this school,” Susie held up her car keys, “you’re going to go sit in my car and talk to your girlfriend until the bell rings to end lunch. Okay?”

“Thanks, Sus.” Sam stood up. “Thanks everybody.” She blew out a sigh, shut her ears, and headed toward the side door of the cafeteria.

SAM WAITED UNTIL her parents went to bed and then snuck down the stairs to Helene’s apartment. This time Helene was home. She knocked lightly on the door, almost hoping Helene wouldn’t answer. The door opened within seconds.

“I was hoping you’d come by.” Helene opened the door wide enough for Sam to enter.

“Sorry it took me a whole day. Well, a whole month, actually.”

Helene closed the door behind them and led the way to the kitchen. She gestured for Sam to sit at the table. “Canada Dry or tea?” Her own freshly made cup of tea sat steeping on the counter.

“Tea please.”

“The usual?”

Sam nodded and then, without warning, started to cry. A month’s worth of torment flooded out of her.

A familiar arm went around her shoulders. “Shh, shh,” Helene pulled her close.

Sam let herself be comforted until she ran out of tears. “Sorry.”

Helene brushed the hair away from Sam’s face. “I have so much to tell you.”

“Not yet, okay? I don’t think I’m quite ready.”

“Me neither.” Helene laughed which made Sam smile. “Let me get your tea.” Helene stood up and pulled out a box of Sleepytime tea. “Five lumps?”

Sam nodded.

“We haven’t done this in a while.”

“We’ve both been busy.”
And now you’re leaving me
.

Helene poured the hot water from the tea kettle into a cup and put a tea bag in. She set it down in front of Sam and pushed the box of sugar cubes and a spoon toward her. Sam shook out five cubes and dunked them in her cup. She couldn’t help thinking it might be the last time she and Helene shared their stolen nighttime ritual.

“How was school today?”

“Pfft.” Sam wiped at her eyes, willing herself not to cry again. “They’re a bunch of jerks.”

“Rough, huh?”

Sam nodded.

“That’s not how I wanted things to go for you.”

“Helene, will I ever see you again?” Sam looked at her tea cup not wanting to make eye contact.

“Yes. Of course you will, but you won’t be able to cross the border by yourself until you’re eighteen.”

“Unless I’m accompanied by a parent.” Sam looked up shyly.

Helene’s smile softened. “When did you find out?”

“A month ago. When you were in the hospital. I was looking for something in that duffel bag you call a purse.”

“And you found your birth certificate. That‘s why you fainted.”

Sam nodded.

“Do your friends know?”

Sam shook her head. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. I was in shock. I still am.” Sam sipped her tea as silence overtook the room. She set her cup down gently and asked, “Are you really my mother?”

Helene nodded.

Sam swallowed against the growing lump in her throat. Her insides quivered. She didn’t want to ask the question but had to. “How?” She fixed her gaze on the teacup.

Helene stood up and faced the sink, her back to Sam. “Your parents should be telling you this.”

“Helene, c’mon. For eighteen years you made me think you were simply my kind and loving nanny, and now I find out you’re my mother, and you can’t tell me how?”

Helene’s head drooped. She too bore a heavy burden. She turned around slowly and leaned back against the sink. “Your parents found me in Montréal.”

“Found you?”

“Your mother couldn’t have children—“

“She must have been devastated.” Sam felt bad for the woman she had called Mother for eighteen years.

“I think she was. That’s why they looked for a surrogate.”

“And that was you.” So it wasn’t an accident. I wasn’t an accident. “How did they find you exactly?”

Helene sat again. Both cups of tea went untouched. “I was eighteen and had moved out on my own. My mother—“

“My grandmother?”

“I guess so. She died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Helene. I didn’t know.”

“Thank you. Back then my father left us right after my sister Chantal was born. I guess he wasn’t too keen on being a family man. He drank himself to death a few years later.”

“You never talked about your family before. I feel stupid that I never asked about them.”

“You did ask. When you were little, but I never gave you many details. You stopped asking after a while. So, anyway, my mother was having trouble raising the two of us in the small town where we lived, so as soon as I could I moved to the big city.”

“Montréal.”

“Yes. I moved out and rented a room from two girls who had a three-bedroom apartment. I got a job waitressing and sent as much money to my mother as I could spare. That whole apartment thing didn’t work out. The other two always forgot to pay their share of the rent.” Helene made air quotes around the word forgot.

“And I bet they weren’t as neat as you are either.”

“No, they weren’t.” Helene chuckled. ”I moved into a studio apartment on my own. My waitressing job paid for the rent and not much else. Luckily Vinny, the owner of the restaurant, took pity on me and let me eat for free, but there wasn’t a lot of money left over to pay bills after I sent money home. I had to choose between paying the electric or the water bill.”

As Sam listened to Helene tell the tale of her difficult early adult life, she felt guilty about the riches she took for granted. She took in Helene’s blond hair, and minus the streaks of gray, it was the same color as hers. And Helene’s facial features, they were so much like her own. Sam realized with a start, that her life could have been incredibly different. It was a sobering thought. She took a sip of her now cooling tea, not really tasting the sugary concoction.

“After a while,” Helene continued, “I knew I had to do something. Then one day, a regular customer of mine made me an offer.”

“Daddy?”

“No, it was someone that worked for him.”

“Oh.” Sam wondered how much money Helene’s surrogate services had been worth but figured that was one of life’s questions she was better off not knowing the answer to. “He told you about becoming a surrogate mother?”

Helene nodded. “Except it’s illegal in the Province of Québec.”

“How about in New York?”

“It’s illegal here, too.”

Sam’s eyes grew wide. She wasn’t legally born.

“Your father has wide influence, Samantha Rose. You know that. What your father wants, your father gets.”

“But doesn’t everybody think Mother is my biological mother?”

Helene nodded slowly.

“How did you guys pull that one off? And why are you still here after eighteen years? Why did they keep you around? I don’t mean to be blunt, but my father easily rids himself of potential problems. And, I’m not sure I want to know, but how did you get pregnant in the first place?”

“Whoa, slow down with the questions. You always were such an inquisitive child.” Helene laughed and got up. She went to the cupboard and pulled out a box of shortbread cookies.

“Ooh, my favorite.”

“I know. We need sustenance because I think we’re going to be here for a while. More tea?”

Sam shook her head, and Helene sat back down.

“Okay.” Helene opened the box of cookies. “Let me try to answer your questions. You’ve earned that right.”

“Start at the beginning. Wherever that is.” As perverse as it sounded, Sam actually enjoyed their exchange. She was going to miss Helene fiercely when she went back to Montréal. When her insides had finally stopped shaking, she reached for a cookie, amazed she could eat anything at all.

“Oh, my God,” Sam blurted. “I just realized. I’m half Canadian. That’s why I like hockey so much.”

Helene burst out laughing. Sam chuckled, too, glad she was able to ease a little of the tension.

Sam blew out a sigh once she caught her breath from laughing. Her thoughts turned serious again. “Helene?”

“Mmm?”

“I got my music from you, didn’t I?”

Helene nodded. “I’ve always thought so.”

“That makes sense. Neither Mother nor Daddy has much musical ability.”

They sat quietly for a moment, each lost in thought, until Helene cleared her throat. “Your parents told everyone around here that they were off on an extended vacation while your mother was pregnant.” She made air quotes around the word pregnant. “They were actually hiding out in Phoenix.”

“So I really was born there?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Were my parents there for nine whole months?”

“No, about six or seven. They brought me here to the US when I began my second trimester with you. We lived in a gorgeous Adobe house in an old part of Phoenix. Your father accompanied me to all the prenatal doctor appointments. He was so excited when he learned you were a girl.”

“He was?”

Helene nodded. “When the time came for you to be born, your mother stayed in the house while he took me to the hospital.”

“So no one ever realized you were a surrogate. Maybe they thought you were his, uh, his...” She couldn’t say the word mistress out loud.

Helene nodded. “They knew we weren’t married. And he was twenty years older, so, yes they might have thought that.”

“But why Phoenix?”

“You know how small towns like East Valley are.”

“I found that out today. No secrets.”

“They knew they couldn’t get away with faking your mother’s pregnancy here. I think your father made a big donation to some hospital fund or something. That way he had an in with a doctor in Phoenix.”

“Which bought the doctor’s silence.” Sam recognized it as something her father might do. “The doctor didn’t have all the facts, did he?”

“Nope. For some reason, your father never tried to get the birth certificate altered. Maybe he didn’t want to push his luck.”

“Or maybe he thought he could keep it hidden from me my whole life.”

“He did for eighteen years,” Helene said.

“You all did.”

Helene’s cheeks tinged red.

“Was I a difficult pregnancy?”

“Not the pregnancy.”

Oh, my God,
Sam thought as a wave of dizziness washed over her.
She really is my mother.
“You had trouble giving birth?”

Helene nodded. “But you’re getting ahead of our story.”

“It is our story, isn’t it?” Sam took a deep breath to keep her frayed nerves in line. “This is so surreal, Helene. I never dreamed I’d be sitting here talking to you about this.”

Helene reached across the table and gave Sam’s hand an affectionate squeeze. She cleared her throat obviously trying to keep her emotions at bay. She stood up. “I have something for you.” She went into the adjoining living room and rifled through one of the boxes she’d been packing. After a minute she pulled out what looked like a scrapbook. She also reached into her mammoth purse and pulled out a plastic shopping bag.

“First of all,” Helene said, “I’m hoping your parents will come around at some point, but in the meanwhile...“ Helene held out the shopping bag for Sam to take.