Hopeless Sam

05 The Lights

Part I Autumn

I woke up to Kathy snoring in my ear, and Molly's tail in my mouth. Instead of watching Frankenstein Kathy and I had fallen asleep compiling a list of words hidden within the painting to look up at the library. Once I'd rubbed the sleep from my eyes I searched around for the scrap of paper we'd written on, when I found it, it was clutched tightly in Kathy's hand as she snored with Molly resting on Kathy's shoulders her tail flicking around lazily. 

Instead of waking up Kathy, I collected the photographs and other sheets of paper we'd scribbled notes on into Kathy's saddlebag.

"Morning Sammy" My mother called from behind me. Kathy and I had fallen asleep just after 2 in the morning, and I hadn't heard my mother come in at all. I craned my neck to look at her, she was standing in the kitchenette holding a cup of coffee. Her long red hair was piled on top of her head and she was wearing a long silk floral print robe. It was another thing she had stolen from my stepmother. Back at home, she had a beautiful white robe lined with satin with her initials embroidered on the front. She yawned and glanced over at the black cat clock on the wall. 

"I've got to head into work, Kathy needs to be home by four and you need to write your dad so she stops calling me," My mother says setting her coffee down.

"What time did you get home?" I ask her in concern. I study her face, her eyes are encircled by deep black bags and she hadn't even wiped her makeup off before she went to bed. 

"Late" She responds tiredly leaving the kitchen. 

"Past two is a little more than late mom," I tell her sadly.

"Sam" She sighs, "Just call you dad," She says without turning around, without waiting for me to respond she heads into her room to get ready. The light slam of the door jolts Kathy awake causing Molly to jump in fear. 

"Wha, what happened" She yawned, snatching Molly back up. 

"Mom made coffee, that's all," I say ripping the blanket off, and racing into the kitchen like nothing was wrong. In actuality everything was wrong, I hadn't seen my father in four years. I know my mother follows him under a fake name on Facebook, and sometimes I would look. He had created an exact replica of our family. One of the more recent pictures had been taken in front of my mother's garden by the lattice me and my father had built for her grapes. 

My stepmother Janice was dressed in a flowy white maternity gown standing hand in hand with my father who was wearing a matching white shirt. Holding his hand tightly was a little five-year-old boy, my half-brother Lincoln and by the angle of the photo, you could see Janice's protruding baby bump. Standing grumpily in the front was Gramma. She was the only person I'd seen from Georgia since we moved. She wasn't happy with how my father handled Loretta's death but she was too stuck in her ways to leave her childhood home. 

I smiled bitterly as I remembered Loretta, and how things were before Janice. I had no desire to write or call my father, but I could only imagine how miserable my mother felt when Janice called to complain about how unhappy my father was when I didn't call him.  

I pushed those thoughts from my head. Kathy had already topped off my mother's cup and began drinking. 

"So the game plan for today, we hit the library do some basic research about those girls and find a dictionary to translate the words then we split up, you take the dictionary and I'll convince my dad to take me to the archive," Kathy said matter o factly before taking another large swig of coffee. ________________________________________________________________________________