I'm Not Sam

I'm Not Sam Read Free Page B

Book: I'm Not Sam Read Free
Author: Jack Ketchum
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little-girl voice. Coming from my Sam. 
    Under other circumstances I could almost smile at the sound. Sam playing the widdle gurl. But these are not other circumstances. The look in her eyes when she glances at me is not funny. 
    Okay, she won’t let me touch her but I need to do something to comfort her. Plus she’s naked. For some weird reason that bothers me. I get up and pull the blanket off the bed. Kill two birds with one stone. 
    I go down on my knees behind her and hold the blanket out to her. 
    “Sam, here. Let me…” 
    She bats at me with both hands, hard and fast, and now she’s crying again. 
    “Don’t touch me…you hurt me!” 
    “Hurt you? Sam, I’d never…” 
    “Not Sam!”  
    “What? 
    “I’m not Sam!”  
    And now I’m way beyond confusion. Now I’m scared. I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans. And now I’m shivering too. 
    In some fundamental way she’s changed. 
    But damned if I’m simply going to accept it. I put on my best comfort voice. Comfort and reason. 
    “Of course you are. You’re Sam. You’re my wife, honey.” 
    “Wife?” 
    She stares at me a moment, sniffles, wipes some snot from her upper lip, then laughs. 
    Actually, she giggles. 
    “Not your wife. How can I be your wife? That‘s silly.” 
    I wrap the blanket over her shoulders. She lets me. Clutches it close around her. 
    “I’m Lily,” she says. 
     
    There are silences that seem to peel away layer upon layer of brain matter, leaving you as stupid as a gallon-a-day drunk. 
    “Lily,” I say finally. Or at least I think that’s me. 
    She nods. 
    I get up off my knees and sit on the bed. Our familiar bed. 
    She’s stopped crying. She sniffles but that’s all. I’m still getting these distrustful looks, though. I notice Zoey sitting in the doorway, glancing first at me, then at Sam and then back at me again, like she’s trying to puzzle out the situation as much as I am. 
    “Why do you say that? That your name is Lily?” 
    “Because it is.” 
    I point to Zoey. “Who’s that?” 
    “Zoey,” she says. 
    “And me?” 
    “You’re…” I see tears welling up in her eyes again. “You’re…I don’t know who you are!” 
    Then she’s sobbing. Her whole body heaving. 
    I can’t bear to see this. I don’t know what to do but I’ve got to do something so I get off the bed and go down to her again and before she can stop me I wrap my arms around her. She tries to wriggle free of me at first but I’m nothing if not tenacious so I hold on and her body’s betraying her anyway -- the sobbing’s got hold of her bad. 
    It takes a while but at last she subsides. Her muscles seem to drift slowly from high-wire tense to slack. I’m stroking her head exactly like you would a little girl’s. 
    She seems exhausted. 
    “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.” 
    I lift her carefully to her feet and point her toward the four-poster. 
    “No,” she says. 
    “No?” 
    “No. Not there.” 
    I want to ask her why not there but I don’t. 
    Maybe I figure it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m afraid to know the answer. 
    “Okay, the couch? That all right?” 
    She nods. She turns and I see her staring into the hutch, frowning. 
    “What? What’s the matter?” 
    “You locked up Teddy. I want him. I want my Teddy.” 
    Good grief. She wants the goddamn bear. 
    “No problem.” 
    I throw the latch and open the glass doors, pluck him out from amidst his Barbies and hand him over. She hugs him to her breasts. And I’m about to tell her hang on, I’ll just get some sheets and a blanket and pillow

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