At all.
He wasn’t removed. He just wasn’t sharing. I didn’t understand how he pulled it off but he definitely did.
I didn’t think anyone noticed but I did and it was beginning to nag at me.
We left Gitte and Kyle with Mom and Dad since they had a nice guest room and I did not and Sam and I went home. Sam told me he needed to check in with his crew of badasses and he went to the kitchen. I camped out on the couch with my photo albums. My goal, sorting the pictures I wanted to keep and dumping the pictures of Cooter.
I did not want to do this but everything in my house had to be sifted through. I’d already given away all of Cooter’s clothes. I’d also already boxed up his belongings and Dad took them to his parents’ house so they could have whatever they wanted.
But now it was onto the hard stuff and I decided to get through the worst of it first then move onto what wouldn’t suck as much.
The tension I felt in my shoulders just looking at Cooter in pictures grew tighter when I sensed Sam walking in. On the floor beside the couch was a pile of Cooter memories as well as my entire wedding album. I didn’t want Sam to see any of them. I also didn’t want to hide.
He’d mentioned more than once that he liked that I was “transparent” so, as difficult as it was, I kept flipping through the album in my lap.
Sam crouched beside the pile on the floor, picked up a photo and studied it.
I pretended to ignore him, pulled another photo out of the album and tossed it to the floor.
Sam dropped the photo he was studying without a word then twisted my wedding album towards him.
I deep breathed.
He flipped it open. I flipped a page.
“Baby, f**k,” he whispered and my eyes slid to him to see his head bent to look at the album. “Beautiful,” he finished then his gaze came to mine.
I looked down to see a full page photo of myself standing alone in my awesome wedding dress carrying my huge-ass bouquet and then my eyes went back to him.
I liked what he said just as much as I hated him knowing I was stupid enough to give it to Cooter which was to say a lot.
“Thanks,” I whispered back.
He looked down at the album and flipped a page. I looked down at mine and did the same.
“What are you doin’ with this stuff?” he asked.
“Giving it to Cooter’s parents,” I answered.
“Come again?”
I knew those words weren’t directed at the floor and I found I was right when my head turned to him again and I saw his eyes on me.
“I’m giving all of it to Cooter’s parents.”
“Why?”
Uh… why?
“Why not?”
He stared at me. Then he shifted so his ass was on the couch at my bent legs.
“You tight with them?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“It’s a nice thing to do, you givin’ them memories of that piece of shit, but you don’t have to do it,” Sam told me.
“I know,” I told him.
“So, you’re not tight with them, why you doin’ it?”
I looked at him. Then I looked at the floor. Then I looked back at Sam.
Then I said, “I don’t know.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Sam returned immediately and I blinked.
“What?”
“They know what kind of man they raised?”
“I don’t know,” I repeated but that was a semi-lie. Cooter’s Mom was beaten down and broken, just like me. Cooter’s Dad was a dick, just like him. They knew or at least his Mom did.
After Cooter died, Cooter’s Dad was beside himself with grief in the way a man like him could be beside himself with grief. He blustered and boiled over and got drunk and told anyone who would listen that if Milo Cloverfield got anywhere near him, he’d pull Milo’s intestines out with his bare hands. Cooter’s Mom retreated, got even more quiet than normal and anytime I saw her, which luckily was only briefly the day after Cooter died and then again at the funeral, she looked at me in a way that made my heart clench and my flesh crawl. Pain and grief mixed with jealousy.
And Sam, being Sam, knew this and I knew he knew it when he stated, “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“You did,” I reminded him and suddenly he stood. Using his toe to flip closed my wedding album, he walked from the room and into the kitchen.
Stunned by his actions, I stared after him and kept doing it so I saw him come back with a big, black garbage bag.
Then he crouched by the photos and shoved them and the album in the bag while I kept watching. He left it at my side when he was done, straightened and looked down at me.
“The rest go in that bag. You get done with that shit, I burn it or I take it somewhere and dump it. You need help goin’ through the rest?” he asked then tipped his head to the three albums I hadn’t yet done stacked up on the floor.
“I’m not fired up for you to see my life with Cooter in pictures,” I answered.
“And I’m not fired up to do it but that wasn’t what I asked. I asked if you need help goin’ through the rest.”
Okay now, wait. Weird.
He sounded testy.
I tipped my head to the side and asked quietly, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, and it’ll be great when you answer my question.”
Oh man.
Definitely testy.
“I think I got it.” I kept talking quietly.
“Gonna put on the game, you watch baseball?”
“Not unless there’s someone wandering by my seat offering to sell me a beer or cotton candy.”
The firmness that had set into his features softened and his lips tipped up. Then he turned, walked to the table beside Cooter’s easy chair, nabbed the remote and snapped on the TV. Then he looked at the chair. Then his eyes came to me.
“This where he sat?”
Oh man!
I nodded.
Then I felt my lips part when Sam tossed the remote on the couch at my feet, he rounded the chair and shoved it across the living room. Then he opened the door and shoved it outside, going with it. Five seconds later (I counted), he came back.
Then, without a word, he retrieved the remote, sat in the cushion at my feet, stretched an arm along the back of the couch, stretched his legs out in front of him and turned his eyes to the TV.
All right, it was safe to say I had no idea what to do with that, any of it starting with Sam not sharing (again) when I turned the direction of the conversation to him and ending with the rather dramatic act of shoving Cooter’s chair in the front yard.