~~~~~
When she was twenty two, Katherine told Caleb that she would be happy to help him.
That was not an altogether uncommon conversation between the two of them. In fact, they had it on a regular basis in both directions. She would be happy to help him find a couple (or several) more references for his paper. He would be happy to help her by being the subject for one of her photography projects. She would be happy to help him put together a package to mail home to Sylvie (the two of them had managed to turn the concept of a reverse care package into a near art form). He would be happy to help her mow the yard for her Grandpa (or pull weeds or whatever it was with which the elder Vances might be in need of help).
They helped each other out, and they were happy to do so. It was just as much a part of how they worked as talking to each other multiple times a day or finishing each other’s sentences.
It should, then, become clear just how huge of a project that he knew that he was undertaking when he didn’t ask Katherine for her help. That was alright. She didn’t need for him to ask. As soon as it was that she understood what he wanted to do, she volunteered. He had started to object, but she hadn’t let him. He knew her looks as well as she knew his, and he knew that it was not a point on which he would win an argument.
He had always wondered off and on -- she knew (she had watched him do it) -- about all of those things that she supposed most adopted children wondered about. He had all the standard questions (and he had the additional ones that came from all of the things about him that his parents had always cautioned him not to share). When they had had their lengthy (and awkwardly suspicious and entirely uncomfortable) conversation with Drake and David, it had both helped with his questions and made his wondering worse at the same time.
It had taken days (which, in Katherine’s opinion at a later, less caught up in the moment date, had been amazing in the shortness of the time involved and a very clear indication of just how much the possibility of finding someone with the same questions loosened the otherwise tightly controlled tongues of everyone involved) of short exchanges of words alternating with long pondering (and occasionally tinted with sullenness) silences for the four of them to feel each other out and actually openly converse about just the adoptions (let alone getting around to tackling all the rest of it).
Katherine was finally a fully acknowledged secret keeper by the end of the information exchanges (which was strangely a less monumental occasion than one might have expected it to be). She and Caleb had existed for so long in the she noticed things but didn’t demand answers while he noticed that she noticed but pretended that there was nothing to notice state of being that there was actually very little to be known that she hadn’t already noticed and very little to be told that Caleb hadn’t suspected that she already knew. The switch between the before and after of the open acknowledgement of the details seemed to be less of a before and after situation and more of an “oh, I guess we’re saying that out loud now” type of a deal.
Putting together what pieces he and David knew in common in conjunction with the pieces that one or the other of them had that the other did not took them some time. David had kept with his work for a bit, travel for a bit meandering. Caleb had kept up with his classes. Nothing changed to the extent that either one of them uprooted their lives because of any new revelations. Caleb didn’t tell his parents; she suspected that Drake and David did a similar lack of sharing. Their next long weekend home didn’t display any difference that Katherine could discern. She visited with her dad and talked about anything and everything. She hung out at the Twists for about an equal amount of time. She played with Sylvie and talked to Ruby about classes; she discussed with Spence how long she might be able to make it until her car would be in need of new tires. Caleb had similar conversations and didn’t mention Drake or David or anything that even hinted in that direction.
On the ride back to school (because they saw no reason for both of them to drive when they weren’t moving large amounts of stuff), he thanked her for following his lead and not saying anything. He didn’t elaborate on why; she didn’t ask for an elaboration. She merely asked him how long he planned on keeping it that way.
“Until I know what I’m going to do about it,” was his reply.
“You don’t think they might be able to add some insight?”
“I don’t want them to feel like they weren’t good enough at being my parents,” he told her. “They were the best parents. They are the best parents.”
“That is strangely ironic,” she replied keeping her eyes on the road in front of her despite the compulsion to turn toward Caleb so he could see just how far her eyebrows had risen into her hairline.
“Huh?”
“When your mom was pregnant with Sylvie, did you know that they both singled me out to talk to me about it?” She asked. She had never told Caleb that his parents had sort of asked her to check up on him during that time, but she thought that the current occasion warranted it. It was a strangely inverted conversation that she was having now to what those had been, and she thought it might be good for him to know that.
“Why?” He asked sounding a little confused and a little as if he was reworking some ideas in his head to bring them in line with the newly found information.
“They were worried about you,” she offered in explanation. “They didn’t want you to think that you were being replaced or that they were going to love you any less or anything like that. They thought I was a more likely candidate for you to confess something like that to than they were given the circumstances.”
“Huh,” he had repeated as the conversation went on from there.
He had still kept it quiet from Spence and Ruby. Now, however, in the aftermath of their graduation and the midst of their job interviews and immediate future planning, Caleb had decided that he was ready to do some serious digging into his past in the hope of finding more answers. He had told her that sitting on her front steps drinking lemonade right after she had told him that she was staying in town (a point that had been in contention because all of her job offers had been back in the vicinity of her grandparents until a place 20 minutes from her dad’s house that she had applied for so long ago that she wasn’t even thinking about hearing back from them anymore had called her).
He had smiled and slung his arm around her shoulders. He told her that he was glad, then he had blurted out his declaration that he wanted to know the details of his adoption with the same breath.
“Okay,” she had said. “How do I help?”
After overcoming his attempt at disagreement, they had talked over places to start and for what little details they might need to be looking.
“Are you going to talk to you parents?” She asked him.
“That’s my next step,” he replied.
“They can probably tell you more about the adoption agency than what David found,” she offered.
“And,” he told her staring straight ahead, “they should know.”
“They aren’t going to be angry,” she told him. “Your parents aren’t like that.”
“It just feels weird, you know?” He told her. “It’s not like I’m trying to find other parents.”
“They’ll understand that, Cale. Besides, they’re your parents; you’re turning this protection thing a bit backwards, aren’t you?”
He turned his head to look at her and gave her an accusing look. “I could bring up a certain lack of mention of crank phone calls that turned out not to be crank phone calls about now.”
“True enough; your point is taken. I won’t lecture you about it. You should just know that I think you’re doing the right thing by including them.”
“Why do I feel like I’m getting into something that’s way over my head?”
“That would probably be because if everything is sealed as tightly as it seems to be, then it’s for a reason.”
“Yeah, there is that.” He gave
her shoulders a small squeeze. “Do you think I should just let it go?”
“That’s not my call; it’s yours. I’m just here to have your back.”