Hoping to maintain peace, Lia set Sammy up with a recipe to try while Lia went and manned the register. Almost an hour passed before she had a breath to pop in and check up on what was going on in the kitchen.
Albennie had her headphones on, shaping rolls. Sammy was standing next to the mixer, which was moving at high speed. But…she was crying.
Lia rushed over. “What’s wrong?”
“I ruined it,” Sammy said, shaking her head. “I accidentally did tablespoons. I’m such an idiot.”
Lia turned off the mixer, gave Sammy’s shoulder a squeeze. “No big deal. It happens.”
“Itisa big deal. I ruined it! It’s all…ruined.” She was sobbing now, and Lia didn’t know what else to do but wrap her arms around Sammy and hold on. Albennie shot her a questioning look over Sammy’s head, headphones around her neck now, but Lia didn’t know what to do or how to explain.
“I’ve got the front if you want to…” Albennie gestured outside with her chin.
Lia nodded and started guiding Sammy out the back door. The wind was whipping around, cold and biting. So she led Sammy over to her car and gently nudged the girl into the passenger seat.
When she got into the driver’s side, Sammy was leaning back in her seat. Her face was red and blotchy and wet, but it seemed like she’d actively stopped sobbing.
“Your car smells,” she said in a squeaky voice.
“Sammy, sweetheart, I know you’re having a hell of a time, and you’re upset about your mom. You get to be that. And if you want to take it out on me? That’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.”
Sammy closed her eyes, looking exhausted and wrung out. “Whatever.”
They sat in silence for a while. Lia handed Sammy a tissue and eventually she blew her nose, clearly starting to calm down. When she opened her eyes, she stared outside. “Why can’t I be enough?” she asked, a few more tears trailing down her cheeks.
Lia didn’t have any answers, because that had been a question she’d spent most of her life haunted by.Why can’t I be enough?To make someone stay. Or care. Or anything.
Liawantedto tell Sammy that shewasenough. That she wasn’t defined by the adults in her life or their decisions. She wanted to say a lot of things, but she knew from experience in a dark moment all those things just felt like platitudes.
She wanted to give Sammy something more than that. Something real and honest.
“You know, my parents…they died before I remember. And they’d lost custody of me even before that.”
Sammy blinked over at her. There was some suspicion in that gaze, so Lia figured she had to lay it out. Really out. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to, but none of these details were going to…fully give her past away.
“They were addicts. I’m not sure if they ever had custody of me, but if they did, it was brief. I was told I was with a grandparent when I was a baby, but then when I was two or three, I had to go live with my dad’s brother and his wife. They always made sure I knew what happened to my parents—no sugarcoating there.” Though Lia decided to sugarcoat a little by not mentioning to Sammy her parents had died of overdoses. “My aunt and uncle called them junkies. I always hated that.”
Lia didn’t expect Sammy to say anything to that, but she still paused, because she wasn’t sure what she was trying to explain. Just that she understood. Just that…it wasn’t as bad as the moment felt.
She knew. Sheknew.
“They were dead by the time I was old enough to understand, so there was no hope of them coming back. I don’t know how it feels to deal with recovery and relapses. I won’t pretend to. But Idounderstand that feeling of not being enough for anybody, because in that regard I never was.”
“Was your uncle nice?” Sammy asked quietly.
“No. He was horrible. So was my aunt. So were my cousins. Not a one of them ever treated me like anything other than a burden on her way to being ajunkie, just like her parents.” She left out the part where she’d run away from it all at fifteen. Sammy probably didn’t need any ideas in her head about running away.
“So you’re saying I should be grateful I have Gard,” Sammy said darkly.
“No,” Lia replied. Shewantedto say that, but she understood in dark moments people suggestinggratefulnessnever went over well. Besides, gratefulness often meant having the experience to realize you should be—and that was tough for any fifteen-year-old. “No, you don’t have to be grateful, Sammy. You got dealt a terrible hand. You get to feel that. Having a decent adult in your life doesn’t mean you can’t be pissed off about the ones you don’t have or the ways they’ve failed you. Because it’s their failure. Not yours.”
Sammy wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hands. “I keep trying to…accept it. That’s what Matilda says. The goal is not change. It’sacceptance.”
Lia didn’t know who Matilda was, but she nodded along, letting Sammy talk.
“Mom’s always going to do this. She’s always going to disappoint me. I’ll never be enough to make her change, but things had been so good for so long, I forgot how to protect myself.”
Lia reached out, wiped some of Sammy’s tears off her cheeks herself. “There’s protecting yourself and there’s shutting down. Don’t shut down. This sucks, and it hurts, but don’t forget there are things that don’t.”
