Ties That Bind by Natalie R. Collins

patience. Well, I have patience.”
    Sam sighed. “Yes, Dad, you do. Unending patience.” She reached across the table and put her hand over his old, weathered one. “You have the patience of a saint.”
    Her father just chuckled and pulled his hand away. “Don’t be condescending, Sammy. It doesn’t suit you and it irritates me. Now I need to get your mother ready for bed.”
    “It’s seven o’clock,” Sam said.
    “I told you, she had a rough night, and now she needs her rest. Come on, Ruthie, time for bed.”
    He stood up and walked to her chair, putting his hands on her elbows and guiding her upward out of the chair. She cooperated, shuffling away from the table with Sam’s father following behind.
    “Good-bye, Sammy. Come again soon,” her father said over his shoulder.
    She had been dismissed. What a strange relationship her parents shared, and yet it always seemed like everyone else was a complete outsider. Nobody else believed her mother was “still there.” Not Sam. Not Susanna. Certainly not the neighbors or ward members. They’d given up on that long ago. And yet her father never, ever gave up hope.
    What would it be like to be that optimistic? That patient? Sam stood up and walked to the back door, letting herself out into the large yard where she had played as a child. The tree was still there. She’d begged her father to cut it down, remove it from their lives, but he’d refused. The tree was not at fault. Of course it wasn’t, and yet …
    She wondered if she could do it herself. What would happen if she revved up a motor-driven saw and decimated the tree that had changed their lives so drastically?
    What would her father do?
    The tree was larger now, with more branches and leaves, reaching skyward. Large, bumpy roots cratered the ground around her, as well. This tree had a life of its own, perhaps the one it had taken from her sister.
    Sam turned away and fought the urge to run, prickles of fear running down her spine as she tensed, watching for the branches of the tree to reach out and grab her, pull her in, and destroy her, like they had Callie.
    She gave in to her fear and ran like a child, around the side of the house and to the front driveway, stopping short at the last square of pavement next to where she had parked her car. There, etched in the aging concrete, were the familiar names and handprints she had seen many times before.
    “Susanna, Amelia, Callie, Samantha.” Next to each name was the print, Sam’s so small it seemed impossible she had ever been that young, that fragile. She bent down and placed her hand palm down onto the print, her long fingers engulfing it and obscuring it from view, although she could still feel the grooves and ridges beneath her fingers.
    Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me. Red rover, red rover, send Sammy right over. We’re waiting.
    Sam shook off the childish voice in her head. Who was waiting? It had been so long ago, so many years, and so much agony. This was a wound that time would not heal, unlike the claims of so many proverbs. Instead, every year seemed to make the pain worse, the ache stronger. How could her family grieve, mourn, and then walk away with her mother perpetually frozen and gone? They had lost two members of the family that day.
    Both Sam’s mother and Callie, gone forever. Looking back over the house, along the roofline, Sam could see the long branches of the tree as they reached up, like spindly, spidery arms, poking upward and waving gently in the summer breeze, as if they were taunting her.
    I’m still here, and I’m still growing.
    A shiver racked through her spine, and goose bumps rose on her arms. The warm, sultry August evening seemed to darken.
    It’s a tree, Sam. Just a tree.
    She turned to her car again, and the uncanny sense that someone was watching her, something real and live, and evil, washed over her along with another wave of chills.
    “Quit creeping yourself out, Sam,” she admonished herself,