Page 87 of The Backtrack
Bonnie cracked maybe all of her knuckles, but said, “I will try to be better with Pearl, too.”
Sam slipped her shoes off and dug her toes into the sand for comfort. “So what happens now?”
“Maybe we can start small, you know?” Bonnie shrugged. “Texting. Calling.”
Sam nodded. “Let’s start small. I can do small. Texting first.”
“I would really like that.” Bonnie’s eyes welled with tears and she dabbed the corners with her fingertips. “I think Grandma would be really proud of us.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “She will be.”
Bonnie reached her hand across the chairs and toward Sam’s. Sam initially stiffened, but then remembered that she was going to try to give Bonnie a chance. So she reached her hand out and held on to her mom’s fingertips and they both squeezed each other.
“Are you going to come back to Tybee?” Sam asked.
“Are you?” Bonnie asked back.
“I think I will, yes.” Sam pulled her hand away and looked out at the beach and the water and the endless sky. She remembered feeling so much dread on her first day back, but now she had a bit of what Pearl felt when she came out to the water: clarity. “You probably think that’s a bad thing. ‘Don’t end up stuck in this place.’”
“What?” Bonnie looked like she’d been slapped.
“Don’t end up stuck in this place,” Sam repeated her mom’s fateful words.
Bonnie frowned, like she was genuinely confused.
“That’s what you told me about Tybee,” Sam said, a little annoyed.
“But I didn’t say that. That’s not—”
“You did,” Sam cut her off.
“Ididoften say ‘Don’t end up stuck in this place,’ but I didn’t mean that about Tybee. It was about a state of being...” She stopped midsentence. “Being in the mental state that I was. I didn’t want to end up inthatplace. And I didn’t wantyouto end up like I was. Depression can breed depression, and I didn’t want that for you. I didn’t want you to end up stuck in the place I was.”
“So, just to be clear,” Sam started to say, “you were not talking about Tybee?”
“I was talking about a state of being, not the state of Georgia.” Bonnie sat back in her chair.
What was happening here? Sam had built so many of her choices around that warning, and how her mom had behaved, and now Bonnie was suggesting she was...wrong about everything? Sam leaned forward in her chair, trying to sort through the unfamiliar feeling of trusting what her mom was saying.
“I’ve been so scared that you’d repeat my mistakes.” Bonnie dusted something from the arm of her chair into the sand. Then she readjusted herself to look right at Sam. “But the truth is, you never have. You’ve charted your own path, despite what I put you through. And for what it’s worth, Damon is a good man. He’s successful, and he loves you—I could see that as clear as the blue sky above us.”
Sam was surprised to hear Bonnie say something nice about Damon, let alone acknowledge that he loved her. The kindness was so unexpected that she said, “Thanks, Mom.” It was the first time she’d called Bonnie “mom” as an adult, and she found it felt more natural than expected.
Talking to her mom had freed something up inside her.
Damon was her home. Wherever he was, Sam wanted to be. And maybe he felt the same way. She would never be stuck in Tybee, because Damon wouldn’t force her to be somewhere that made her unhappy. Sam had been on autopilot for so long—believing coming home would destroy her—when the truth was she’d been running from the one person who accepted her for exactly who she was. And now it was time to go fight for him.
Bonnie had changed. The mother she’d been was not the person she was now. Even Grandma Pearl was willing to change—she’d apologized to Sam. She was agreeing to move in with Jessie.
And what if Sam could change, too? Not everything about her life, but the parts that were willing to bend to make space for something magical. What if opening herself up to someone she trusted unearthed a new adventure?
“I need to go do something,” Sam told Bonnie.
“Do you need any help?” Bonnie was practically already out of her chair, and she gave Sam a look as if she genuinely would help.
So Sam, despite everything, decided to give her mom a chance. “Yeah, actually, I might need all of the Letos on board for this one.”
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