Roan’s distrust of easy comforts was deep and pervasive. I began to worry that he was hiding something else from me but convinced myself he wouldn’t do that.
I couldn’t see Uncle Pete’s pugnacious face in Matthew’s large-boned features, and had no strong recollection of any distinctive McClendon traits to pinpoint except Sally’s hard emerald eyes. There was something Delaneyish about the bulldog set of his jaw maybe, but physically he was a troubling cipher. I tried to shake the inventory from my overwrought mind. Sullivan. Matthew Sullivan. That was what Roan called him. What he called himself. That was how I’d think of him.
Dr. Matthew Sullivan and Dr. Mildred “Tweet” Sullivan. Both of them were veterinarians, fresh from the state university in Washington. Smart and motivated, obviously. Young, compassionate, hardworking, and not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Roan’s adopted son and daughter-in-law. But I couldn’t really imagine Matthew as Roan’s surrogate son. At twenty-four he was only eleven years younger than Roan. Only six years younger than me. If he ever called me Mom I’d thump him on the head.
Roan radiated satisfaction every time he discussed Matthew and Tweet with me. He’d confided that they were conservative and a little shy. They went to church, did volunteer work, and they planned—seriously—to have a half-dozen children. “Dr. Sullivan,” he had emphasized more than once. “I raised Matthew and now he’s a doctor. And he married a great, smart girl who’s a doctor, too. Isn’t that something? Sullivans who are doctors. It made me proud of the name finally.”
Such honor for the disgraced Sullivan name. I wanted to shake him and make him understand. He had redeemed his name already.
As we drove, Tweet kept turning to smile at me and wipe tears from her eyes. I felt sorry for her; she seemed so eager to be friendly and none of us knew quite how to act. I reached between the front seats and tapped her shoulder. “I hear that you and Matthew are veterinarians.”
She swiveled and peered at me gratefully, nodding. “Brand-new doctors! This summer in Alaska is our combination graduation-and-wedding present from Roan, but it’s a working honeymoon, too. We’re sorting out our options. We’re going to set up a practice together. Matthew’s big animals. I’m small animals.”
“How do you feel about chickens and llamas?”
She gave me a puzzled look. “I’m planning to specialize in house pets. But Matthew wants to work with livestock. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said, and smiled.
“We’re hoping to intern with an established vet for a couple of years first. Maybe in Oregon. Or Washington. We’re doing some volunteer work for a conservation group up here this summer. Wildlife rehab.”
“Rescue work,” Matthew added crisply. “Eagles who’ve swallowed fish hooks, wolves hit by cars, that kind of thing.”
I glanced poignantly at Roan. He nodded almost imperceptibly. He was very proud.
“I’ll tell you the major reason we picked this place for the summer,” Matthew said. “Roan said he’d probably have to tell your family about me, and I wanted to be someplace where it wouldn’t be easy for them to find me unless I wanted them to.”
Painful silence. Tweet faced forward and clamped a hand over his forearm atop the Bronco’s center console. The way her fingers dug in, I assumed she was urging him to keep his cool.
“The plan was my idea,” Roan told me quietly. “And I never meant it to exclude you. Which is why I brought you here.”
“I see.” I swallowed hard and nodded. “You deserve to make up your mind your own way and to keep your privacy, Matthew. Just keep an open mind, please.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he agreed tightly.
Tweet swiveled and forced a fresh smile. “Claire, we hear that you’re a newspaper reporter.”
“Used to be,” I said, and stared out the window.
“I, hmmm, we … Roan told us all about …” Her voice trailed off. Uncertain and blushing, she looked toward my legs then quickly away. “What you were doing was very heroic. I hope you’re … recovering okay.”
“Doing better. Can’t complain.”
I didn’t deal well with discussions like that. Roan took one of my hands and cradled it in both of his. “I know what I want,” he announced. “I want Claire to have a little longer tour of town.” He rubbed my hand with soothing motions. “Drive around for a few minutes, Matt. Just keep it simple.”
“Simple?” Matthew repeated grimly, as if nothing could be simple now that I had found him. But he swung the Bronco up a tree-shaded street that climbed gracefully higher.
Matthew drives as badly as Evan, I thought, as he nearly sideswiped a mailbox. Evan’s driving habits had remained notorious in the family since his teen years. Matthew whipped the Bronco along narrow streets that snaked up steep, crowded hills. My head swam. Roan and I had been traveling for hours, fueled by adrenaline, airport food, too much coffee, and uneasy catnaps. Dazed and bleary, I leaned against him in the backseat of the Bronco, my loafers off. He lifted my feet onto his thigh and slid his hand under the hem of my long skirt, massaging my ankle and knee, squeezing and releasing with silent communication. His dark hair was wildly ruffled; his mouth was set in a perfunctory line of control.
“Tweet and I got the guest room ready for you, Bigger,” Matthew announced, darting a clumsy look at us in the rearview mirror as he downshifted up a hillside where tiny flower gardens clung desperately to maniacally terraced yards. “It’s nothing fancy, Claire, but it has a private bathroom and a big …” His voice trailed off.
“Big what?” I mumbled. “Bigger what?”
Tweet pivoted in her seat, blushing again. “A bed that’s big enough for both of you,” she finished. Her face was very red. “And Bigger is Roan’s nickname.”
I glanced at Roan. “My goodness, R.S., how many nicknames do you have?”
“When Matthew started elementary school he figured out that I wasn’t old enough for him to call me his dad around the other kids,” Roan explained with gruff exasperation. “And brother wasn’t exactly right. So he decided to call me his Bigger. It just stuck.”
“Bigger,” I repeated softly. “It’s good. It sounds funny, but it suits you.”
“I didn’t think it sounded funny when I was a kid who needed somebody to look up to,” Matthew said with a sudden edge in his voice. He studied me in the rearview mirror and I saw anger in his eyes. Okay, under his polite exterior he was tense and defiant. No surprise in that. “As far as I’m concerned,” Matthew added stiffly, “he’ll always be the biggest man in the world.”
Roan leaned forward, his jaw set. “Take it easy,” he ordered quietly. “Claire isn’t here to—”
“Believe me, Matthew,” I interjected. “He’s the biggest man I know, too.”
Roan settled back, frowning. Matthew exhaled sharply. “I’m sorry, Claire. I just don’t know what to say to you. You came here because you care, and I appreciate that, but Bigger and I’ve done pretty well on our own all these years without anybody’s concern.”
“You said hello to me,” I replied softly. “You made me feel welcome. That’s all I need right now, and all I expect.”
“You need to rest,” Roan said.
He was worried about me but also probably none too eager to promote a full-blown discussion. There was so much tension in the air. I took deep breaths to find oxygen. “I hop around like a one-legged duck. Until a few weeks ago I was a basket case. I spent more time in bed than anywhere else. Roan changed all that. I may not be Wonder Woman yet, but if you feed me dinner and give me a place to prop my feet up, I’ll answer any questions you want to ask about our family, Matthew.”
“Your family, not mine,” Matthew countered.
“Your family, whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t have many questions. They didn’t want me. They didn’t want Roan either. He’s the only family I care about. Him and Tweet. So why should I want to learn anything about the Delaneys? I’m sorry, Claire. You’re welcome h
ere because Roan loves you. I know all about you. He told me. But about me … If you came here just for my sake, you came a long way for nothing.”
“We’ll see,” I said. I watched Matthew scrub a hand over his hair and then tug at both earlobes as if settling his head firmly on his shoulders, and I thought with amazement: My brothers do that when they’re worried. So does Mama. So do I. It’s obviously an inherited Delaney trait. I was certain then that I could coax him home to Dunderry, and he would sit on the veranda and eventually he’d smile a Delaney smile. “But you know,” I said suddenly, all charm and patience, “all I really want to do right now is hear all about the two of you.”
“What a sweet thing to say!” Tweet exclaimed, turning in her seat again and reaching back to grasp my hand on her shoulder. Tweet was a frequent crier, apparently. She was teary-eyed every time she looked at me. “I’m so glad you’re here! You’re Matthew’s cousin! His cousin! It means so much to … we really do want to know about you, too! We do! Matthew does, he really does!”
“It’s okay to dislike me, Matthew,” I said patiently. “I understand what I represent to you.”
“I don’t … dislike you,” Matthew said, tugging at his ears again. “I’m even glad to meet you. You’ll always be welcome in my home.”
“Thank you, that means a lot to me,” I said. I realized I had begun tugging on my ears as I spoke.
I glanced at Roan, who was watching me closely through narrowed eyes. I smiled innocently. He lifted one hand and tapped his forefinger to my right earlobe, then my left. He’d caught on. He remembered. I was planning to sugar his boy, and he knew I’d made up my mind.
Juneau was more of a big, picturesque, old-fashioned town than a metropolis. Quaint old buildings shared the streets with modern state government offices. The original waterfront district hugged a broad plaza dotted with benches and tourist kiosks, merging with long concrete docks where two megalithic cruise ships were berthed. Turn-of-the-century shops crowded the streets near the docks, catering to the cruise-ship tourists.
Almost everything farther inland was uphill; the Governor’s Mansion was set above the city in a neighborhood of pleasant houses with manicured yards, tall fir trees, and pretty flower beds; I studied a cluster of bleeding-heart plants in one yard, their long, delicate green stems dripping rows of the tiny red and white valentine blooms. The Governor’s Mansion was amazingly humble: a pleasant, large house with no security walls around it, no gates, not even much of a yard. A pickup truck was parked under the porte-cochere in front, and I could have walked a few yards off the tree-lined street and peered in a downstairs window if I’d wanted to.
So I decided Alaska had practical priorities to Matthew and Roan, very little pomp and circumstance about its human habitation; the grandeur was all in the place, and that appealed to me. Bald eagles swooped in flocks over the scraps from a salmon cannery on the waterfront. People took bald eagles for granted there.
The house was a wood-shingled bungalow perched a good hundred feet up on a steep hillside above a steep street. A wooden staircase zigzagged in three long sections through brave, high-altitude-loving shrubbery, and at least a dozen bird feeders clung precariously to the posts of a friendly porch draped in hanging plants.
I leaned on my cane, stared up at the three tiers of almost vertical wooden stairs, and felt Matthew watching me to see what kind of stuff I was made of. “Bigger and I can carry you up between us,” he said.
“Oh, I can climb these stairs on my own, but thank you.”
Nobody, not even me, believed I could make it up those stairs. Matthew and Tweet gave each other embarrassed looks. Roan took my arm. “You probably need a little more time before you start mountain climbing,” he grunted. “Even though I’m sure you could do it.” He guided me a few yards along the edge of the narrow yard and we studied a wooden platform about three feet square, set on a base of steel-pipe supports that rode a wooden monorail and cables straight up the hillside, to one end of the porch. “You can ride up on this,” Roan said. “We use it to haul groceries and furniture—”
“She might fall off,” Tweet called anxiously.
“No, I’ll climb up beside her.”
“It’d be safer if Bigger and I carried you, Claire,” Matthew repeated. I met his eyes. Green eyes. Sally McClendon’s eyes. Full of challenge. “Nobody’s carrying me,” I said. “If y’all can winch my ass all the way up on this low-rent freight elevator, then do it.”
Tweet whooped. “I’ll turn the crank!” She trotted up the stairs, her short, sturdy legs pumping and her trousered rump undulating athletically. Envy tightened my chest; I was tired of being an invalid.
“Honey, don’t let the dogs out yet,” Matthew called after her. “You know what happens when they see you cranking the platform.”
“Dogs?” I said. “What happens?”
Matthew feigned melodrama. “They jump all over her and sometimes she lets the crank slip.”
“So the platform plunges down the hill, eh?”
He arched a brow. “Yeah, but you probably wouldn’t fall more than a dozen feet before you were knocked unconscious.”
I flicked a hand. “No problem then.”
“He’s yanking your chain,” Roan said.
I surveyed the multitude of bird feeders planted above us. I looked at the tiny platform jutting from its crude rail. I was scared of the damned thing but wouldn’t admit it. “Give me a chunk of raw salmon to wave and a thousand bald eagles’ll probably swoop down and fly me to the porch. It’d be patriotic, too. Bald eagles. Oh, all right, I’ll just take your elevator. But let me off at the housewares floor. I need to buy a hostess gift.”
Matthew contemplated me intensely, his sandy brows a flat line, some new edge dawning in his appraisal. Then he stepped over to Roan, threw an arm around him, and gave him a quick hug. Roan slapped him gently on the back. Matthew nodded to me. “Bigger told me you never back down and never give up. I see what he means.”
We’d established the first round of respect then. Roan helped me sit gingerly on the contraption’s platform. As Tweet cranked a handle-and-gear device from the end of the porch, the platform jerked roughly up the rail. Roan and Matthew climbed on either side of me, plowing through the shrubbery, each extending an arm in front of me to block me if I went off headfirst. I didn’t flinch, didn’t bat a nervous eyelash. I finally realized how much I’d inherited from my Grandmother Elizabeth’s regal and obstinate English dignity. A person can hide a lot of fear and worry behind an aristocratic posture.
She would have been proud of me that day, and proud of Roan, and proud of Matthew, her lost grandson.
Matthew and Tweet had two dogs, one big, one little, shaggy mixed breeds, who wagged and slobbered and flopped on the main room’s braided rugs with their bellies exposed for me to scratch. A multilevel collection of perches sat in one corner of the living room over wide wooden trays filled with kitty litter. Two large green parrots, two cockatiels, and two parakeets fluttered on the perches, squawking and relieving themselves with a cheerful bawdiness that reminded me of Grandpa Maloney’s pull-my-finger jokes.
My newly found cousin and his bride had a deceptively spartan honeymoon lifestyle—from a pair of expensive kayaks strapped to the ceiling of their back porch to the clustered diamonds of the wedding ring Tweet wore on her pragmatic little hand, they were enjoying the Eddie Bauer version of newlywed pioneer adventure, thanks to Roan.
It wasn’t that I thought they were naive and pampered. They’d both worked as veterinary assistants during college, and Roan had told me how he’d taught Matthew as a boy to manage money and make money. I knew that during the early years he and Matthew had lived in a lot of cheap apartments and in dilapidated houses Roan had bought to restore and resell—not exactly a luxurious upbringing for Matthew. But then Matthew hadn’t grown up hungry, neglected, and tortured, fighting bullies in the neighborhood and a bad-tempered alcoholic father at home.
I knew I could pry more pe
rsonal information about him from Tweet. Reporters develop an instinct for the easy interviews, and she was one of the most openhearted people I’d ever met. While Matthew and Roan shared God-alone-knew-what-kind of dark discussions over salmon-grilling duties on a back porch beyond the kitchen, I sat down with Tweet in the living room.
The house was tiny—living room, kitchen, two bedrooms—adorable, and filled with comfortable furniture, bookcases stuffed with veterinary textbooks and novels, and funky craft-show lamps and knickknacks, mostly depicting animals. I curled up on a plush gray couch with an afghan draped over my legs, chilly enough in the Alaskan June evening to like the cover and the fire binning in a soot-stained stone hearth near the couch. The afghan’s woven motif was a tree filled with songbirds.
“Maybe I’m reaching here,” I said to Tweet, as she nuzzled each of her bird flock and told me their names. “But I’d bet money that your nickname—”
“Yep,” she confirmed, grinning. “I love birds. I always have. I’ve raised every one of these from babyhood. This one”—she stroked one of the parrots, and he chewed her fingertip—“was my first bird. My parents gave him to me. He’s an old bird.”
I imagined Tweet visiting the farm, strolling among rows of commercial chicken houses. I hope she doesn’t fall in love with edible birds, I thought. “Where do your parents live?”
“They don’t.” She retrieved a glass of wine from a handsome oak table and sipped it. I sipped from my own glass and waited. “They were killed in a boating accident when I was twelve. Near where we lived. Seattle. Out on Puget Sound. I was raised by friends of my parents,” Tweet added. She smiled the way people do to put others at ease when a wornout personal grief has to be dispensed. “So I grew up like Matthew. Adopted.”