Fools Rush in(27)

“No, he didn’t mention it. How do you feel about that?”

“It’s still pretty weird. But still, she’s his mother, and he misses her, even though he doesn’t say it much. She calls him every night.”

“How nice.” A car passed us, the driver waving. We waved back.

“So, Sam,” I ventured, “how are you doing with being alone and all?”

He shrugged, but I could feel the muscles in his arm tighten. “Not bad, I guess.” He was quiet for a moment. “Aside from doing stuff with Danny, or going to his games, things are pretty quiet. Before, Trish pretty much planned all the stuff we did.”

“Do you miss her?” I asked curiously.

“I miss being married,” he answered honestly. “I don’t know if I miss her…I mean, she cheated on me, and I’m still getting over that little fact. But yeah, I’m sure I will miss her, once I stop…”

“Hating her?”

Sam laughed. “No. I don’t hate her. I hate what she did, but I loved her.”

“Why?” I blurted, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. Trish had been like a drill sergeant with Sam, always barking orders, never even noticing how steadfast he was.

“You were always too hard on Trish,” Sam said, clearing a small branch from the road and throwing it into the woods. I snorted.

“You were,” he insisted. “I never understood how the two of you could be so mean to each other. I would’ve loved a brother or sister.”

“I wasn’t mean to her! She was mean to me!” I sounded like an eight-year-old, but I couldn’t help it.

“Well, she was jealous of you.”

“What?” I yelped. “You’ve got it backwards, Sam my man.”

“No, I don’t,” he replied matter-of-factly. “You went to college, you went away to Scotland, lived in a big city. Come on, Mil, you became a doctor. Trish never had anything like that.”

“Well, she could have! Instead, she—” I broke off.

“She got knocked up by me?”

We had stopped walking. Sam and I had never talked like this before, and the conversation was quickly heading out to stormy seas.

Yes, Trish had gotten knocked up, but I couldn’t let Sam take the blame on that one.

“Sam, I have to tell you something.” I took a fortifying breath, glad that it was dark enough so I wouldn’t have to see the shock on his face. “Maybe I shouldn’t, but I think it’s time you knew.”

“Knew what? That she got pregnant on purpose?”

“You knew?” I gasped.

“Sure, Millie. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Give me a little credit, kiddo.”

I remembered the fateful weekend as if it were yesterday. Sam had been off at his sophomore year at Notre Dame. It was a Saturday afternoon in the late fall, and we were all sitting in front of the TV, hoping for a glimpse of Sam in the masses of second-and third-string football players. And then, like magic, a time-out was called in the fourth quarter, a Fighting Irishman limped off the field, and then, those golden words…“Now playing for Notre Dame, number twelve, Sam Nickerson!” And Sam’s picture filled the screen, and there were screams and hugs and tears and all sorts of delirium in our living room. Sam took the field. Two plays later, he caught a twenty-eight-yard pass, dodged three guards and ran it in for a touchdown. Irish 21, Trojans 17. It was glorious.

Three hours after the game ended, a glass pressed to the wall that separated our bedrooms, I listened to Trish utter those fateful words to her best friend, Beth.

“I am throwing out my birth-control pills this minute.”

Why had she done it? Because Sam had seemed destined for greatness, for riches, for an NFL contract, maybe even for TV commercials, and Trish had wanted a piece of it.

Silly me. I thought it was a huge secret from which Sam—and certainly Danny—needed protection.

“You coming?” Sam’s voice snapped me out of my stupor, and I trotted to catch up to him.

“Sam, how did you know? When did you find out?”

He sighed. “I don’t remember, Millie. But it doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, I got Danny.”

There it was in a nutshell. Danny was everything to Sam, and that was it.

It wasn’t that simple for me. “But didn’t it drive you crazy? I mean, Trish pinned the rest of her life on you because she thought you were going to be a famous jock. And then…then she blamed you for not being one.”

In the third game of Sam’s senior season, in another unforgettable scene that we’d all witnessed on TV, an evil Michigan State defenseman had slammed into Sam after the whistle had blown. Sam’s right shoulder had shattered like a teacup, and it was all the doctors could do to pin it back together into some semblance of normalcy. The NFL scouts who had been wooing him fled. Sam’s pigskin dreams (and Trish’s dreams of wealth) had ended, and they’d come back to the Cape. Sam had gone to work cleaning septic tanks for my dad until he’d become a cop.

Sam sighed. “Well, what can you do? We were already married when I broke my shoulder, already had Danny.”

“And you still loved her?” I asked incredulously.

“Sure.”

“Does Danny know?”