Let It Be

Chapter 32

My phone rang as I was pouring orange juice for Nate and Mason the Saturday after our marriage conversation. Sam had been away for two days taking Paula back home to England to her guardian, Loraine. To tell the truth, I was going to miss her and the way she held nothing back. Even when it did get a bit exasperating.

"Hello?" I asked, trying to dodge Mason's sticky jam-fingers, hoping it was Sam. He was supposed to have gotten home around midnight the night before.

"What kind of sandwich do you want?"

"What?" I asked, totally caught off guard. What kind of question was that?

"What kind of sandwich do you want," Sam repeated patiently.

I was still confused. "For what?"

"I am getting lunch. And I figured if I am going to be shoving food down your throat, it might as well be something you enjoy."

I smiled. "What are my choices?"

"Anything. I am at the deli in Green Oak."

"You drove all the way to Green Oak?"

"Anything for you, ma cherie," he smiled. Or so I assumed; I could hear the smile in his voice. "What do you want?"

"Um... turkey?"

"Do not say it like a question," he laughed. "It is your sandwich."

"Then turkey," I responded. "Oh... can I have cheese?"

He laughed out loud. "Yes, Abby, you can have cheese. Swiss?"

"Yes. Thank you, Sam."

"Love you."

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"Why, Abby?" he asked as I wrapped the rest of the sandwich back up in the wax paper as we sat under the big oak tree in Sam's backyard. We'd made a picnic out of the sandwiches he's bough at the deli. I had to admit, it was delicious.

"The thing was a foot long, Sam; most people can't eat the entire thing."

"Why do you not eat?" he asked more pointedly.

Oh. That. "It doesn't make much sense," I eventually mumbled, ducking my embarrassed face behind my hair. I always felt so ashamed when he brought it up.

He brushed the hair back out of my face, not letting me hide. "Try me."

"I don't think you'd understand."

"Make me understand."

"I just don't, Sam."

"WHY, Abigail," he snapped. I winced, but didn't say anything else. He would guess it eventually. And he did. "Is it because of him?"

I sighed, digging my heels into the ground. "Yes."

"He starved you."

"No, that was one thing he didn't actually do. It was more that..." I exhaled angrily, not sure how to put it into words. "He controlled everything else. This was the one thing that I had control over."

"Eating?"

"Yes. It was the only power over my life that I had: I got to manipulate it however I wanted to."