A Place to Call Home (48 page)

“In a way, Matthew has two fathers now,” I finished quickly, my own throat burning. “He has Roan and he has your papa. But I’m sure he wants to have a little sister, too!”

“Doesn’t need a little sister,” she replied with a wild shake of her head. “He’s got two papas. It’s not fair. I don’t see why he’s stayin’ with us when Roan’s his papa. You got him first,” she said pointedly to Roan. “Why don’t you keep him?”

“He needs to spend time with his family.”

“I thought you came back for Aunt Claire because she’s your family, and that means all of us are your family, and so you oughta spend time with Matthew, too. I think you oughta take him someplace else and spend time with him. Then Papa and me could visit him. I think that’d be the right thing to do. Great-Grandma Dottie says he’ll feel like a stranger till it all gets straightened out anyhow.”

I hugged her. “Everyone’s looking for you. May I at least borrow your phone and tell your papa you haven’t been kidnapped by space aliens?”

“I don’t want to go back.” She cried softly. “I really do want to have my own daddy, just mine. If people can switch around like y’all say, then I’ll switch, too. Because I
bet Roan’s a good papa. Matthew looks like he got plenty to eat and all that. So I’m going to live with Roan.” She looked at me. “And you can be my mama. I know you like me. I won’t be any trouble. I promise.”

“I have to call your papa. He loves you. I’m sure he wouldn’t let anybody else in the world have you.”

“He let Roan have Matthew. For a
long
time.”

“He didn’t know I had Matthew,” Roan told her slowly. “I thought it was a good idea for me to take care of Matthew, but I didn’t understand that his … your papa was looking for him.”

“I—I don’t care. You need a kid.
Somebody
oughta need me. Don’t you?”

This was tearing our hearts out and getting us nowhere. I warned Roan with a glance. Then, brusque and helpful, I told Amanda, “All right, we’ll let your papa know you’re going to live with us. But since you don’t want to see him anymore, we should probably go live somewhere else. So you can forget about him. Where should we live, Roan?”

He nodded. “Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t the three of us get in my plane and I’ll fly us, oh, north. Canada. I’ve heard Canada’s nice. I’d say it’s far enough away that Amanda couldn’t get back home even if she changes her mind. Hmmm. Canada.”

Amanda gaped at us, swinging her attention from him to me. She broke down in sobs. “I thought we could j-just live here! I don’t want to go to C-Canada!”

I rocked her in my arms. “Maybe you should think about it—at home—and decide later.”

“Maybe Papa might want me to stay. He wants Matthew to stay.”

“He wants both of you,” Roan said. “Just the way I would, if I were your papa.”

She threw herself at him, and this man, who had raised a child and exuded more paternal sweetness than he’d admit to and more than Matthew remembered for now, carefully
folded her in his arms and picked her up, then held out a hand to me and helped me up.

And we took her home.

Our arrival brought Josh running from the house with a forestry-service map in his hands. “Here she is!” Daddy bellowed from the door of his office in the main barn. Mama ran out onto the veranda with a phone still clutched in her hand. Matthew and Tweet climbed out of a muddy truck and ran to us, looking more lost than found themselves. Matthew’s face was stern and gaunt, and so much like my brother’s that I couldn’t bear to watch Roan watch him.

“Why did you leave home?” Josh growled to Amanda, dropping to one knee before her. She stood at attention, her tote bag hanging from one shoulder like a soft pink animal she’d captured. “Roan and Claire said I could live with them. I could be Roan’s little girl. But Aunt Claire said I oughta think about it some more.”

Josh fired a furious look at Roan and me. I shook my head slightly. Roan offered no reaction other than a thin smile. “You scared me,” Josh said to Amanda, taking her gently by the shoulders.

A tremor went through her. Her eyes widened. “I did? How?”

“I haven’t been very nice to you, have I? I know it. I felt so … worried about where Matthew was when he was growing up, because I didn’t know if he was all right and it was my fault he was lost. I didn’t tell everyone he was my son when he was a little boy. If I had, his mother wouldn’t have taken him away. I made a mistake and I felt bad about it.”

“So I wasn’t good enough to make you not feel bad?”

“Baby, you’ve been so good I was afraid I didn’t deserve to have you. I loved your mother so much, and I was afraid I didn’t deserve her either. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“I didn’t want to make you afraid.”

“Now I have a chance to be a good daddy to you and Matthew. I’m going to try.”

“Because you want Matthew to forgive you for losing him.”

“Yes, I do. But that won’t be enough if you don’t try to forgive me, too. If you’ll promise to try, I’ll promise to be better.”

She wavered, then suddenly exploded with smiles. “
I promise.
” She put her arms around him and he hugged her with a fierce affection he’d never shown before. “But—” Amanda turned a crumbling expression up toward Roan. “What’s gonna happen to Roan? I promised him—”

“No, no,” Roan said quickly. “It’s all right if you change your mind. I understand.”

“But you oughta have—”

“Let’s discuss this later,” Mama said with alarm. She hurried over and held down a hand to Amanda. “Come on, hon, let’s go get your face washed. You come inside with me. Come on.”

Josh kissed her cheek. “Okay,” she said, and went with her grandmother.

Once she was safely inside the front door, Josh stood. I said without much sympathy, jerking my head toward the house, “You’ve got a lot of work to do with her. You only primed the pump.”

He scowled. “I know that. Roan, why the hell did you tell Amanda she could stay with you?”

“It didn’t happen quite the way she described it.”

“I don’t care how it happened. That’s low, Roan. Are you trying to alienate my little girl the same way you came between Claire and the family? You stole one of my children for twenty years and now you’re trying to steal another one?”

Roan punched him. It happened quickly, a recoil and release that slammed into Josh’s mouth and knocked him on his back. Roan loomed over him, feet braced apart, his
fist drawn back again. “Claire’s all I ever wanted from this goddamned family,” Roan said.

“Easy, boy, easy,” I urged softly, darting glances at Matthew, who leaped forward, slack-jawed with horror as he stood halfway between Roan and Josh. “He deserved that, Matthew,” I added.

Daddy said, “All right, all right, that’s done.” He pushed Roan back carefully. “That needed to be done. Roan, you hear me? He had it coming. But it’s done. Back off.”

Josh groggily raised a hand to his bloody lower lip. He nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.

Roan remained on guard until he noticed Matthew’s humiliated stare. When Matthew dropped to one knee beside Josh and offered to help him up, Roan’s fist unfurled in defeat.

Roan and I went to Dunshinnog that night, gathered a small pile of limbs on the mountain’s stony brow, and sat beside it, watching the fire burn to embers.

“Read this one,” Roan said, handing me an old letter he pulled from his pants pocket. “He was maybe ten years old when I wrote it.”

I put the letter down. “You didn’t break a sacred vow today,” I said gently. “You didn’t even break any teeth.”

“I’ve worked all my life to be different from my old man. Matthew was ashamed of me today. I saw the look on his face.”

“You’ve got to talk to him, Roan. Tell him. Tell him everything,”

In the dark, the tip of a cigar glowed between Roan’s fingers. Ashes scattered across his shirt and fell. “Next thing he’ll do,” Roan said slowly, “is change his last name. He’ll stop calling himself Sullivan.” He threw the cigar in the fire. I put a hand on his chest.

“Warm,” I whispered. “A good, solid rhythm. So many people care about this heart.”

“You can’t imagine how it feels, can you? To not have family. I can. I don’t know another Sullivan in the world who’s related to me.”

“We’ll research your family tree then. Believe me, you’re related to thousands of Sullivans.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. Real family. Not names on a chart.”

I took his right hand and smoothed the swollen, broken skin along his knuckles. “I do understand. You need to look into the faces of Sullivan grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, and see yourself.”

“I want to be part of a family. That’s the hell of it. I want to see someone like me looking back at me.”

I sat for a minute, lost in thought. “I want to have children with you,” I said finally, softly.

He quickly turned to me and took my face between his hands. “We’ll have good children. I know it. I think about it.”

“But you want somebody to give twenty years back to you. Erase everything that happened to me and to you. That’s not possible.”

“This situation isn’t going to work out. For Matthew, for me, for the rest of the family.”

I drew back, watching him, the dread rising in my throat. I shook my head. “I know what you’re trying to avoid. But if you don’t tell him the truth about Big Roan, he’ll hear it from other people. You
have
to trust him.”

“I’ll tell him soon. He’ll never look at me the same way again. I know that. If I stay here, I’ll ruin everything for him. We’re going to have to make some hard decisions. You and me. Maybe we could travel for a while, let things settle down …”

We’ll never come back, I thought desperately. I’ll never get you back here.

We had to find a way back to achieve a way forward; Roan was not far enough from that boy who’d lived in the Hollow, hiding his fear and pain behind pride, and I was still the shadow of the little girl who’d tried to change his life; we had to get past those memories. “When we were kids,” I said slowly, “there were times when I was ashamed
for you, but there was never a time when I was ashamed of you. You always fought for me, and I fought for you. Matthew will feel that way once he knows everything.”

“If he doesn’t—” Roan continued.

I pressed my fingertips to his mouth. “Have some faith,” I said.

I went over to the farm to see Mama and Grandma Dottie. “Get Tweet for me,” I told them. “Just get her away from Josh and Matthew for an afternoon. We’re going to talk.” Mama was fired with grim agreement; Grandma Dottie chain-smoked and nodded.

When I met Tweet the next day, we hugged sadly. I drove her up to the top of Dunshinnog. We sat on the rock ledge overlooking the valley. Muggy June heat cloaked the afternoon; I could feel my surgeon’s prediction of arthritis in my healing leg.

“Matthew’s not too happy about me visiting with you today,” she admitted. “He thinks Roan’s sent you to ask him to apologize. I’m sorry, Claire, but Matthew doesn’t have anything to apologize for.”

“Roan’s not waiting for an apology. But he doesn’t owe Matthew one either.”

Tweet shoved her hands into her straw-mop hair as if she wanted to sweep her mind clean. “You don’t protect adopted people by hiding their identity from them! It’s not fair! It causes more problems than it solves.”

I stared out over the valley and quietly told her how Roan grew up. About the Hollow. How Big Roan really died and why. And what the family did to Roan afterward. When I finished, Tweet was pale and dry-eyed. That was the past’s powerful effect. It dried Tweet up. She was speechless for a while.

I told her Matthew knew us—the family—well enough now. He could see that we were neither all good nor all bad, that there was kindness and generosity in us. All he had to do was study the proud, ruthless, unsmiling portraits
of tough Sean and Bridget Maloney to understand the clannishness that had helped us prosper. But he needed to see the Hollow, too, where Roan had survived to become the imperfect, self-made, endlessly devoted man Matthew wanted to dismiss. He needed to understand the place Roan had won and lost in our family because of the family’s pride.

“What do you want me to do?” Tweet asked urgently. “Poor Roan. This explains so much about him. How can I help?”

“You can’t. And neither can I. It’s up to him. Let’s leave it alone a while,” I told her. “That’s all I can think to do.”

“Oh, Claire,” she began to murmur. “He’s got to tell Matthew.” She looked at me with sorrow and sympathy. “Now I understand Roan, but I understand you, too.”

I craned my head warily. “My dear Tweetie Bird, there’s nothing mysterious to understand about me.”

“Until you get this resolved, you won’t trust yourself again.”