Before and After You

Chapter 10: Guess How Much I Love You

Eric felt the words settle against his skin like knives flaying him alive but he maintains a stoic face.

Samantha, on the other hand, does not back down. "I ASKED HIM TO LEAVE!" Her voice echoes in the kitchen and cracks as she continues. "We lost a baby! After Clara and Charlie got into an accident, I got into an accident and I lost our baby! And I didn't know what to do or how to feel or how to talk about it so I pushed everyone away!"

Sam's tears stream freely and it takes everything in Eric to keep himself from wiping them away, knowing better than to step in between the sisters. He knows that there are things that Sam needs to say, it's the only way to process them and he will not take that from her. He will have his talk later, both with her and with Mara. For now, Sam has to let it out.

"I-I was falling apart from the inside," Sam confesses and angrily wipes her tears away before she continues, "I was coping. We both were."

Mara shakes her head. "You dragged your kids through hell because you didn't know how to communicate?"

"And you don't get to judge because you don't know the pain we went through." Sam's voice cuts through the air and momentarily stuns Mara. "You don't know how it feels to see a car crash on your children and not be able to do anything to save them. You don't know how it feels to pray so hard and call on to all the saints to spare your children." Her words stumble out of her mouth without second thought, muffled through her sobs but cuts like a sharp knife just the same. "You don't know how it feels to lose a child." It isn't a pain she would wish on anyone, much more her own sister. But people react differently to pain, and she lost a part of herself to hers, one she's never been able to recover completely despite her attempts to heal.

Mara feels dizzy and she has to grab a hold of the first solid surface she could find which turns out to be the dining table. She doesn't know how to feel upon finally knowing what happened. She's tried to coax it out of Sam before but she was tightlipped, always diverting the conversation every time it comes up.

She had no idea. Feeling like a fish pulled out of water, she staggers. "I-I n-need to go," she sputters and almost runs out of the house, colliding with her own husband along the way.

Eric did not need to be told twice to reach for Sam the moment Mara took her leave. And he did it right on time because she would've fallen if he hadn't caught her. He settles on a chair and pulls her to his lap, holding her tightly as she quivers in the aftermath of the confrontation. He holds her head to him, her face buried on his neck. The tears had stopped but the trembling continued. He doesn't say anything, not yet. He just holds her tightly, more for his benefit if he's honest. He's scared that if he lets loose just a little, she would disappear. And he can't have that, not when he'd only gotten her back.

He gently runs circles on her arm, beckoning her back unhurriedly. He whispers then, "I love you," over and over and over again in a quiet voice, hoping that it's enough to tether her, to remind her that there is a love equally as large as her pain, willing to soldier on to keep it away.

"I'm sorry for that," she whispers, voice hoarse but Eric shakes his head and pulls back a little so he could look at her and he cup her cheeks.

He peppers her face with tiny kisses, her red nose, her tear-stained cheeks, in a futile attempt to chase away the tears that have long dried up, before he pulls her into another tight embrace. "I'm here, Sam. I'm here." And I'm not going anywhere.

...

https://open.spotify.com/track/3OlYxhUI4YtdVw2zZ85Syr?si=1394f83a191a4703