Caretaking

From Omnictionary

Dec 1st, 8:00pm

Margo would not speak. She would mumble incomprehensible junk and cry a little, but she would not speak.

It was driving Sam up the wall. He'd tried to be patient, he really had. He'd held her hand and made her a smoothie (after exerting way too much energy washing, cutting, and peeling four kiwis) and consoled her. He'd told her everything would be okay, and she could let go of her worries and spill.

She was helplessly hysterical. Various parts of her body would twitch periodically, and she would blubber on aimlessly about anything.

"Look, Margo. I know you are dealing with extreme trauma and all that, but some sort of reasonable response would be majorly appreciated. Give me something to work with."

She sniffled.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, Sam!" she wailed.

Sam swallowed, thrown aback. He didn't know how to deal with weepy breakdowns. He wasn't a touchy-feely-let's-talk-about-it type of person, and the situation was growing more and more uncomfortable by the moment.

"It's just... it's just... ohh, it's so awful, Sam!"

"Uh..." Sam mumbled awkwardly, patting her on the back. He desperately tried to recall any motherly words his sister might have drilled into his head over the years. "It's not you," he said seriously. "It's me."

She wrinkled her nose. "What?"

Sam recoiled quickly, supposing he'd said the wrong thing.

"Well, uh, you know. It might be you. Who knows who it is? I certainly don't know who it is. It's probably me. But, you know. It could be you."

She pouted sadly. "You don't make any sense."

"Well, I... I know. Just ignore me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I just need to go take a bath right now. A very long bath. With lots of soap. Sounds like a plan to me. You can go... eat. You must be hungry. Have some pie," Sam rambled nervously, "we've got tons of pie. My mom, you know. She goes crazy with the pie. Boysenberry, cranberry, blackberry, apple, everything. We're like the pie heaven. Go on! All you need is a fork and you can have at it! All yours, totally."

Sam shoved a fork at Margo, shot her a drunken smile, went into the bathroom, undressed, and promptly proceeded to sink into his bathtub, wiping his brow tiredly.

He tried to relax a bit, sort out what had happened.

And then he remembered the skeleton.

Oh. Well.

Well, then.

He didn't want to think about that now, not with Margo here. Maybe the police would find it. But he couldn't help wondering who it was and what had happened. What was a skeleton doing in the woods?

But Margo first.

He got out of the bath after a good long soak, he got dried and put on a bath rhobe.

The phone rang. He quickly rushed to it, hoping it might be his folks. He hadn't heard from them in days, as they were on vacation in Rio. He picked up the receiver.

"It's Merilee, man. Look, do you know where Margo is?" Merilee sounded exhausted.

"What?" Sam asked, suddenly confused again. "How do you-"

"It's just a feeling. So, do you know?"

Sam was annoyed for some reason. "She's here."

"WHAT?" Merilee half-yelled. Sam winced and held the phone slightly away from his head. "Why the hell didn't you tell me right away!? Look, hold on." Her voice suddenly got softer as she spoke to someone on her end of the phone. "Yeah. Yeah. She's AT SAM'S."

During all the upheaval, Sam suddenly realized had completely forgotten about Katherine. It was almost as if she had gone missing. From his mind, at least. She had gone from being the person he thought about most to being just in the periphery of his mind.

Merilee was yelling something at him again. "Look, I'm coming over to see her, okay?"

Sam was suddenly sick of Merilee. "Okay, okay. Look, do you want to talk to her now?"

"Yeah. Actually, I'm going to put Alli on, I figure she'll be better at talking. Hold on."

"Hello?"

Sam picked his way across the dry floor with his wet feet. "Hold on, Allison. Margo?"

Margo had been sitting in his kitchen, eating pie, when he'd gotten into the bath.

Now, all there was left was a plate with a forlorn slice of half-eaten pie and an abandoned fork.

Margo was gone again.

"She's gone!" he yelled into the phone.

"What?" Allison said in shock.

"She's just gone, she was there one minute, and gone the next. She left my door open. How rude, my puppy Willy could get out!" Sam complained. He went to check in his room to see if Willy was asleep on his bed, which he had a cute habit of doing. He was. He was curled up in an adorable little ball of white fur. He gave a sigh of relief. He realized he probably should have warned Margo not to leave the door open but, with all that was going on, it had slipped his mind.

"Okay, I think, I know where she went! Meet us at the old Henderson place. You know it, right?" Allison asked.

Sam sure did. He hated the creepy old house.

There were many horror stories related to that house. He knew that they were all make believe like Spiderman and Canada, but he still avoided the place like the plague.

"The creepy place, right?" he said in a nonchalant voice.

"Yeah, that one."