A Place to Call Home

  I found that very interesting and let the interest show on my face, which encouraged her to confide more. Tweet tiptoed to the kitchen doorway and glanced furtively across to the closed, glass-paned door to the back porch. Then she came over and sat down beside me. “Roan doesn’t know this, he thinks Matthew and I met in a class when we were in pre-vet, but we met in a support group on campus. For adoptees.”

  I inhaled sharply. “Why haven’t y’all ever told Roan where you met?”

  “Because he doesn’t understand how adopted people fantasize about their biological parents. Look, I knew my parents; I have great memories of them. My foster parents are nice people, but they’ve never taken my mom and dad’s place. Good, bad, or indifferent, your family is a big mystery to Matthew, and he barely remembers his mother or her sisters. So, in a strange way, I’m at peace about my parents because at least I knew they wanted me, but Matthew can’t stop wondering about his.”

  I sat back, blinking in amazement. “I can’t believe he’s never admitted that to Roan. They’re so close.”

  “That’s the problem. Matthew knows how much it would hurt Roan to admit it. He doesn’t want Roan to feel betrayed. Roan’s always been dead-set against Matthew contacting any relatives. When Roan suddenly told us he was going back to Georgia to see if he could help you, we were shocked. We thought Roan had no good memories about your family. No reason to ever go back. That’s one reason Matthew never pushed it. For Roan’s sake.”

  I was stunned. “But Roan was mainly concerned about protecting Matthew when Matthew was underage; he thought my family might find him and interfere. He was wrong—I’ve been trying to convince him that they would have been good to Matthew and him, too, if he’d let us know where he was. And now, of course, Matthew’s grown. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Except that Matthew wants Roan’s approval,” Tweet whispered, glancing toward the kitchen again. “He won’t do anything that might make Roan feel discarded. But Roan doesn’t appreciate the larger concept of family the way Matthew and I do.”

  “The larger concept? That’s not true.”

  “Even Matthew says Roan is hard to figure out. For example, Roan enjoys women, he really likes them, they like him, he’s been involved with some really nice ladies, and he didn’t treat them like one-night stands—I mean, he’s always been very gentlemanly and discreet about his female friends—but marriage? Forget it. He’s never been interested in marriage or raising more children. I hope you don’t think I’m tacky for saying that.”

  I dismissed the subject with an impatient shake of my head. She was missing the point. “You’re talking about a man,” I emphasized slowly, “who devoted himself to bachelor fatherhood when he was barely grown himself. Family means everything to him.”

  “I know, I know, it doesn’t make sense. I’m sorry. That thing about women—he certainly doesn’t feel casual about you. There’s never been anybody like you. For one thing, he’s never brought a woman to, hmmm, sleep over, around us before.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen to me. If Matthew wants to meet the family, Roan will support his decision. He’ll do what’s best for Matthew. You have to believe that.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Roan’s been wonderful to Matthew. And to me. When I lost my scholarship during my third year in pre-vet, he paid my tuition. He’s done so many things like that. Not just with money, but … accepting me. Including me. Treating me with respect.” She tapped her wineglass to mine. “Baccarat crystal. You should see the complete set. It was one of our engagement presents from Roan. And the day after we picked out our china and silver—you know, set it up with a bridal registry—the store delivered everything we listed to our apartment. One of Roan’s wedding presents. And you should have seen our wedding this spring.”

  This spring. Roan had visited me in the hospital but couldn’t stay. He had to be at Matthew and Tweet’s graduation from the university and at their wedding. Trying to do the right thing for me and for them. Two sides of an impossible situation.

  “You look upset,” Tweet said anxiously. “I upset you. I’m sorry. I’m better with animals than I am with people.”

  “No. Go on. Tell me about the wedding.”

  “Roan paid for the whole thing. Three hundred guests, an orchestra at the reception. Lots of important people who are business acquaintances of Roan’s. I didn’t come from that kind of background. It was amazing. It was magical.” She dabbed her eyes. Her mop of shaggy golden hair danced in the firelight. One of the parakeets swooped across the room and sat on her shoulder, picking at her hair. “Matthew asked Roan to serve as his best man. Roan was really pleased to be asked, I know.

  “But he looked absolutely miserable during the ceremony. Everybody commented on it. He hates to be put on display in front of a crowd. That’s what he calls it. Put on display. In fact, he was kind of strange during the whole spring and now we understand why—he was going nuts over your circumstances, but he didn’t tell us about you until after we were married.”

  Tweet didn’t understand Roan’s motivations—neither she nor Matthew could understand because they hadn’t seen how Roan grew up. He had been put on display too often in his life, and never without humiliation. He had learned to stay behind the scenes. What people didn’t know about him couldn’t hurt him.

  “He didn’t want to ruin your special moments,” I told her. “You see, don’t you? He did what was best for Matthew, and for you, and that’s all that matters. Trust me. He knows the value of family loyalty.”

  “I’m just saying he’s not comfortable with the whole family ideals thing—ceremony, traditions—he’s not interested in that. I’m just saying he’s not sentimental enough to understand that Matthew is very sentimental about relatives he’s never met.”

  I chewed my tongue. Roan and I lost each other for twenty years because he committed himself to making a family for Matthew, to prove he deserved a family. I’d be damned if I’d let anything or anyone else take more time from us. I wanted to say that to Tweet, but it would only sound bitter. “You look more upset,” Tweet said. “I’m sorry. I squawk nonstop. Like a parrot.”

  “At least you don’t shit when you talk.” That was a little blunt. I was thankful when she grinned. I exhaled and took a deep swallow of wine. “I’m just trying to sort through everything. About Matthew—you have to realize that Roan only told me about him two days ago. And I’m the only person in the family who knows.”

  Tweet leaned toward me. “Be honest with me.” Her round, sweet face became fierce; her voice shook with emotion. “I don’t want Matthew to visit your family if they’re going to reject him.”

  “Matthew’s family,” I corrected. “And they won’t reject him.”

  “Hmmm. Matthew can see Roan’s point of view. After all, his mother wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community, and she died when he was little, and apparently his … your uncle—”

  “Is dead, too. He died in a hunting accident. You’d have to have known my Uncle Pete to appreciate how appropriate that was. And Matthew’s half brothers, Harold and Arlan, well, Harold died in a stock-car wreck and Arlan just sort of wandered off to see the world. I know they don’t sound very appealing, but—”

  “Is most of your family really as openhearted as you? Will they be happy to learn about Matthew?”

  “Yes. And you’ll be doing him a favor if you encourage him to meet them.”

  “He won’t go if Roan doesn’t agree.”

  “He will agree. You and Matthew,” I said slowly, “you don’t know Roan the way I do. From childhood. He won’t let you down.”

  “We know he was poor, of course. He’s told Matthew some things, but he doesn’t discuss it much.”

  “Do you know how my family treated Roan?” I asked carefully.

  “He’s always told Matthew they were good to him, but that he had trouble getting along with some of your relatives. And that your parents finally decided he’d be better off in a foster
home. That sounds pretty, hmmm, cold to me, Claire. That your family could have felt that way.”

  “My parents have never forgiven themselves for sending him away,” I said, weighing every word. “The circumstances were different then. It’s hard to describe. You had to be there. You had to know Roan and the family back then. We’ve all changed. He changed us.”

  She bit her lip. “Roan must have been a tough character.”

  “Roan didn’t do anything to deserve being sent away, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “No, no. I just mean—I can see why they might have been afraid of him.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on, hold on. He’s been wonderful to me and wonderful to Matthew. It’s just that—I was afraid of him when Matthew took me home to meet him—before I got to know him. God, Matthew and I were only seventeen. College freshmen. And he took me home with him to meet his … surrogate father, who wasn’t old enough to be his father, and when he introduced me to Roan all I saw was this big, dark-haired, serious, almost sinister self-made businessman who seemed so old psychologically. So driven. I kept expecting him to say I wasn’t good enough for Matthew or that we were too young to be so committed to each other. I expected him to ask me if I was after Matthew’s money. But he never did. He was great to me.”

  “Then you understand that he’s not someone to fear. What happened between him and my family wasn’t his fault. And, believe me, nobody wanted to lose track of Matthew either. It was just such a mess. So different then. I’m trying desperately to get everybody back together. I need some sense of redemption myself. Roan counted on me when we were kids and he got hurt because of it. And then this year someone else got hurt because she depended on me—”

  She frowned. “You sound so much like Roan. You and he are both really into guilt and responsibility. I’m missing something here. I mean—what?” She chuckled. “Was it something they put in the drinking water when you two were kids?”

  I stared at her a moment. Then, “You and Matthew certainly know enough about Roan’s history to appreciate how hard it is for him to trust people. You know about me, of course, and what happened with Roan’s father.”

  “Oh, yes.” She nodded somberly. “You were Roan’s only friend. He was poor, you tried to help him, his mother died when he was little—you see how much he and Matthew have in common?—and then, of course, Roan’s father was kind of disreputable and he died young, and then Roan was sent away.”

  Kind of disreputable? And he died young? That was a benign description of Big Roan Sullivan’s life and how it ended. I studied her with growing dread. “Roan’s father died when Roan was fifteen,” I went on vaguely, trying to draw her out, my heart in my throat. “He died … suddenly. But you know that.”

  “Of course Matthew and I know the important details about Roan’s past. Do you think he wouldn’t share that kind of information with Matthew?” She gazed at me impatiently, then counted on her fingers and recited with parrot-like efficiency: “Roan’s dad was a disabled Korean veteran. He drank too much. He was moody and undependable. Roan pretty much raised himself.” She paused for a breath. “And then his dad died of a heart attack.”

  Oh, my God. Matthew and Tweet had no idea what a monster Big Roan had been, or how badly Roan had suffered because of him, or even that Roan had killed him. Killed him for my sake.

  “Oh, come on, let’s lighten up!” Tweet exclaimed suddenly. “Everything’s going to be fine!” She clicked her wineglass to mine again. “Look how much we’ve learned about you and you’ve learned about us already! I feel as if Matthew and I have known you forever! I’m so glad you’re here!” She threw her arms around me and hugged me.

  I sat there, frozen. I finally understood. If we brought Matthew back to Dunderry, Roan could no longer hide how far he’d come himself or what he’d done to survive.

  • • •

  We stayed up late talking to Matthew and Tweet. I made good on my plan to ask Matthew a lot of harmless questions about himself and he warmed up to me, while Roan watched us with a wary half-smile, aware that I was a professional snoop and an expert at putting people at ease.

  It worked. When we said our good nights, Matthew hugged me. And so did Tweet again. I liked them together. They were comfortable with each other, they adored each other, they traded quick pats and reassuring glances. Mama would melt with romantic approval when she saw them together. Everyone would.

  I felt sick with worry.

  I took Roan’s arm and we walked into the guest room. He shut the door. My facade crumbled and I slumped on the bed. Roan sat down in a chair by the window without turning on a lamp. The bedroom was small and cluttered, filled with storage boxes in one corner and veterinary texts stacked in another, with camping gear piled in a third. But the bed was large and covered with a white down comforter, and I wanted desperately to sleep with him and say nothing at all.

  He sat very still, one foot slung out and the other back. In his dark trousers and gray sweater and hiking boots, he looked as resilient and all-weather as the spruce tree that brushed rhythmically against the windowpanes. He steepled his big-knuckled hands beneath his chin. “When you were a little girl I always knew when you wanted something from me that I didn’t want to do,” he said quietly. “Your cheeks would turn bright pink and you’d stare straight at me without blinking. Those big blue eyes never blinking. I was convinced you tried to hypnotize me. I felt hypnotized.”

  “It works. Great-Gran taught me to do it to people.”

  “What do you want from me tonight, peep? You’ve given me the blue-eye since before dinner.”

  “You need to explain something to me, boy.”

  He frowned but moved over and sat beside me on the bed. He took one of my hands, turning it, smoothing his fingers over the palm. Then he touched one hand to my throat and slid it gently down to my breasts, stroking with the backs of his fingers across my sweater.

  “That won’t distract me. Not right now.”

  “Too bad.”

  “How much have you told Matthew about yourself? About how you grew up in Dunderry?”

  He lay back on the bed and latched his hands beneath his head. “He knows I didn’t have much. He knows I worked for your family. He knows I left after my old man died.”

  “You’ve never told him the truth about how your daddy died. And my part in how he died. Roan, this is really unavoidable. You’ve got to tell him.”

  He sat up again. Silence. The tension grew. He shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he looked so tired. “I tried to tell him when he was little. I tried when he was older. I’ve tried to tell him a hundred times, but something always stopped me. He was too young to understand, I decided. Then he was older and having a hard enough time growing up with kids teasing him about not having any real parents. There was a window of time when I should have told him—when he wasn’t too young to be confused or too old to resent me for keeping secrets. I missed that chance. To be honest about it, I didn’t want to tell him. I couldn’t stand to screw up a good thing.”

  “You wouldn’t have ruined how he feels about you. I’ve only been around him a few hours, but I already see the tremendous love and respect he has for you. Tell him the truth now—and tell him why you waited so long, the way you just explained it to me—and he’ll understand.”

  “He’ll pity me,” Roan said stonily.

  “No, he’ll be sympathetic. There’s a difference.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t think of me as a father, but he does look up to me. I’ve been as good to him as I know how to be. I don’t ever want him to feel sorry for me. Or embarrassed to be a Sullivan. Not for any reason.”

  “Embarrassment. That’s what you hate the most. Come on, Roan, he’ll never reject you.”

  Roan turned toward me angrily. “After all these years of me saying nothing about myself, now I’m supposed to tell him: Oh, by the way, I blew my old man’s brains out with a pistol after I caught him slapping Claire
around the floor with her clothes half pulled off.”

  “If you need to be that blunt about it, yes.”

  “And tell him how your family—his family, the family that you want him to love—shipped me off because they couldn’t stand the sight of a Sullivan in their house anymore?”

  “Yes.” I was trembling. “Tell him exactly how it was and we’ll deal with it.”

  “You take family loyalty for granted. That’s a luxury you can afford. I can’t.”

  “You owe him the truth. Anything less is nothing but a self-serving excuse.”

  “You think I’m selfish?” Roan countered tightly. “You think I’m only worried about protecting my own goddamned pride?”

  “You want us all to prove how much we love you, but you can’t even comprehend why we love you.”

  “I don’t want him to see the Hollow. I don’t want people to tell him about me—about white-trash Roanie Sullivan who had bad teeth and smelled like garbage. His idea of how I grew up poor is the way he and I were poor when he was little. He thinks it means my old man bought me secondhand bikes for Christmas instead of brand new. He thinks it means shopping on a budget and wearing jeans with patches in the knees. He doesn’t know what my kind of poor was like. He doesn’t know what I was.”

  “You were special. You were strong and decent and gentle. Anything ugly that he’ll learn will only help him know how special you are because you overcame so much.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it if he doesn’t want to go back. I keep telling you it’s his decision.”

  “Roan. That’s not true.” I took his face between my hands and repeated everything Tweet had told me about Matthew’s attitude and motivation. “He wants to go,” I finished. “He’s always wanted to see who he came from—good, bad, or indifferent. But he’s loyal to you, and you have to let him know you agree.”

  Sorrow, shock, and finally resignation sank into Roan. “Oh, God,” he murmured, bending his forehead to mine. “He’s never even hinted. I didn’t have a clue.”

  “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. You’re not the only one who can keep a poker face about your real feelings. He learned it from you.” I put my arms around him and we said nothing for a while. “He won’t go unless you tell him you want him to go,” I repeated. “I know you’ll do it.”