It Happens When Nobody is Watching - Darcy Vebber

Sam opened the front passenger side door of the car. Lisa heard the click of the handle and the noise of the door moving on its hinges and then felt the weight of him settling into the front seat, depressing the spring slightly. She did not sit up.

He cleared his throat. He seemed to like the sound of it and cleared it again, more dramatically. “You OK back there?”

She considered her response, searching for the right thing to say. A dozen possibilities moved through her agile mind but it did not occur to her that nothing she could say would make things any different. She had been taught that the right words always made a difference. The true words anyway.

Sam stretched out, legs over to the driver’s side, arms folded behind his head against the passenger window. “My mom and I lived in a car about this size this the winter I was five. We were in California, down by the beach. I liked waking up in the car, in the fog.”

She still couldn’t think of what to say but she rolled over onto her back, her bent knees in the air, to listen.

“I think it was the first time I was rescued,” he said. “I didn’t know then not to tell. She had to scrape money together for a motel room, just to keep me. I liked that car much better.” He fell silent.

Lisa tried to imagine Grace sleeping in a car. She imagined rumpled red hair, a perpetual scowl, blankets and pillows, amulets and half read books, Sam in the back, tucked up in a ball. “Where is she now?”

He knew she meant his mother. That kind of communication was always so easy, like a ball tossed back and forth. “Fresno. Near Yosemite? She’s still doing the fortune telling thing, still living with Bill. Man, he is one patient guy.”

“He loves her.”

“Maybe.”

She could hear Sam fiddling with something, a latch on the glove compartment or the radio tuner. “I love you,” she said. The true words.

Later she would have to acknowledge, at least to herself, that he did not hesitate or miss a beat. “I love you too, Lisa but –- “ He sighed.

Then neither of them said anything – what more was there to say? -- for a while, until Bobby came out. He peered through the windshield, then opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat, testing the atmosphere.

“What happened to that girl?” Lisa asked.

“Swam away,” said Sam.

“Breakfast?” asked Bobby as he put the key in the ignition.

“No,” said Lisa. It was the first time she had ever said no to being with them and it scared her a little. “Home, please.”