The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain

by Kevin David Jensen

"I was thinking I might move here when I retire."

  "Oh, really, Mom?" Mom was talking with her own mother, who had just arrived from Spokane to visit for a few days. Dad was hiding in the den, where they couldn't see him from the kitchen. Zach, though, dressed in shorts and seated atop the dining table with his bare legs dangling over the edge, watched him sit up stiffly, attentively. He didn't look happy.

  Mom must have read his thoughts—she glanced toward the den as if she had seen him. "When are you thinking you might retire?"

  "Not for a few more years," responded Nana Maggie—that was what Jasmine, Brooke, Marissa, and Jayda called her. She was entirely different from Grandmom. Where Dad's mom was "pleasantly plump," as she had put it, Nana Maggie was slender like Mom, and almost as tall. They looked a lot alike, except for Mom being younger and Nana Maggie's hair starting to turn gray. And where Grandmom had gotten to know Zach slowly, cautiously, Nana Maggie had jumped in head-first, assaulting Zach with a massive bear hug the moment she had seen him. It had been so uncomfortable it had nearly hurt. There was truly a lot of touching in families.

  "But it's hard being so far from my grandchildren," she explained to Mom, looking toward Zach. It wasn't uncomfortable when she looked at him, only when she hugged him. When she looked at him, it was like Mom looking at him, only…different. He liked her, but she wasn't quite the same as Mom. Mom was gentler somehow; Nana Maggie liked to, well, jump in head-first.

  "Why don't you just move to Seattle right now?" Zach asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dad grimace. Oh, yeah—Mom had said he liked her better in Spokane. It was probably because of the hugs; she had given him one, too.

  "Tenure," Nana Maggie told him.

  He wrinkled his eyebrows. "What's that?"

  She came to the table and sat down in front of him. She could see Dad now; he instantly took on a more pleasant demeanor. "Tenure means I've been in my job long enough that I get the best pay, the best work times, all the best stuff. If I changed jobs, I'd have to start over."

  "What do you do?" he inquired.

  "I'm a physical therapist," Nana Maggie answered. "I help people recover from sports injuries."

  "I have a sports injury!" Zach exclaimed.

  "You do? How exciting!" She leaned forward with interest. "What did you injure?"

  "My leg," he said. He stretched his right leg across the table. "See, right there." He touched the tiny purple spot that remained; it didn't hurt at all anymore.

  "When did you get that?"

  "A few weeks ago. I got hit by a pitch in my first game."

  "A few weeks? It must have been huge then."

  "Yeah, it was." He showed her the extent of the original bruise with his fingers. "And it hurt really bad."

  "Until you wanted to stay in the game," Dad spoke up. "Then it suddenly got a lot better."

  "It still hurt, though."

  "Hmm…" Nana Maggie turned his leg this way and that. "Did it swell up?"

  "No. It just made a big, purple bruise."

  "And it feels okay now?"

  "Fine," he said.

  "It looks like it's nearly healed. But we'd better check it to be sure."

  "Check it?"

  "Mm-hmm. Hop outside. Let's give it a test." With a wink at Mom, she stood up and gestured for Zach to follow her. They went out the side door, where Paws joined them.

  "Hello there, Paws," she greeted him in a sing-song voice. She gave him a bear hug, too; he licked her face. Apparently, Paws was okay with bear hugs. "Let's go over here," she instructed, pointing to the corner of the yard. "Now, I'm a professional, you understand, and we're going to do a professional examination here. I want you to run across the grass to the fence, touch it, and come back. If you can run faster than Paws, then I'll know your leg is healed."

  That sounded like a strange professional examination, but what did Zach know about physical therapy? Nana Maggie looked entirely serious, so he prepared himself.

  "Ready?" she said. "Go!"

  Zach raced off at full speed. Paws galloped merrily alongside him. He reached the fence, turned back, and was only beginning to breathe hard when he reached Nana Maggie again. Paws came in a close second.

  "Wow, you are very fast, Zach," she pronounced. "It is my professional opinion that you are all healed up."

  Zach sat down cross-legged on the grass to rest. Paws stood at his side, panting.

  "So," Nana Maggie said, kneeling down to face Zach, "where have you been keeping these finely toned muscles all these years?" She squeezed one of his calf muscles and whistled at how strong it was. Did he really have strong muscles for his age? He looked at his arms, wondering. She continued. "I've never had a grandson before—only granddaughters, whom I believe you've met. What do grandsons do for a good time?"

  "I like to play with Paws and do stuff outside," he answered, "and read books."

  "Hmm. Ever read books outside?"

  He shook his head; that was a new idea. He'd have to remember that one later.

  "Do you ever take Paws for a walk?"

  "Only if Mom or Dad comes with me. I'm not supposed to go by myself."

  "I can understand that." She looked up at the sky. It was clear, with no clouds at all that Zach could see. "I hear you met your Grandma Fleming last week. What did you think of her?"

  "She was really nice," Zach replied. He told Nana Maggie about the quilts and the brownies, and about the card games she had taught him while he was there—Go Fish, which had been too easy, and Rook, which had been more fun.

  "I met her at your parents' wedding," Nana Maggie said. "She was pleasant to talk with, just like your dad. He's quite a charmer. Your Grandpa Timothy and I liked him the first time your mom brought him home with her from college. He was shy at first, but very respectful. I always thought he would make a good father…" She looked at Zach questioningly when she said that.

  "Yeah, he's great," Zach said. "He teaches me stuff all the time. Did you say my grandpa's name was Timothy?"

  "That's right. I didn't know your parents were planning to name their son after him. He died three years after they got married. It would have been about a year before you were born, I guess."

  They had not told Zach about Grandpa Timothy—not about his name, anyway. I was named after my grandpa! "What was he like?"

  "A lot like you, I'd say—curious, liked everybody. Strong muscles, too," Nana Maggie winked. "I fell in love with him because he was so kind. We were neighbors growing up in Idaho, and he used to shovel our driveway when it snowed in the winter. That's no big deal here in Seattle, but there we would get a foot or more of snow at a time. Timothy knew my father had a hurt back, so he helped us out. He was always doing things like that."

  She pulled a phone from her pocket and touched the screen a few times, then handed the phone to Zach. "This was him just before he got sick." Zach recognized Grandpa Timothy from pictures Mom and Dad had shown him in the photo albums. His grandpa had gray hair streaked with dark brown, almost black, and the kind of easy smile that meant he smiled a lot.

  He gave the phone back to Nana Maggie. "Tell me something, Zechariah," she said. "When did you decide to come to your parents? How long before you really did come?"

  Zach considered. "A few days, I guess."

  "Two? Three?"

  Silently, he counted backward from the Thursday of his arrival. "Maybe three."

  "But if you knew they were out there somewhere, why didn't you find them sooner?"

  He shrugged. "I didn't know I could. I never thought about it until the nanny said she would have to leave."

  "And you needed a place to go."

  "Uh-huh. So I looked in the phonebook, and they were there."

  Nana Maggie narrowed her eyes at Zach as if she suspected he wasn't telling her everything. "So all that time you thought those people who raised you were your real grandparents, and you never asked them a
bout your parents?"

  "Grandmother told me about them when I was little," Zach replied, "but then she died, and Grandfather would never talk about them."

  "Hmm." Nana Maggie pondered that thought a while.

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "Of course."

  Zach hesitated; he could tell by the fact that Mom and Dad never talked about this subject that it was a sensitive matter. But maybe it would be okay to discuss it with Nana Maggie. She wasn't exactly like them. "Sometimes Mom and Dad talk about a baby girl they had—"

  "Tiffany, yes. You want to know about her."

  Zach nodded, watching Nana Maggie closely.

  Her eyes drifted to the grass. She took a deep breath, then clicked her tongue. "Tiffany was a beautiful three-month-old girl, just gorgeous. Big brown eyes. Lots of hair. Very lively, like you." She grinned at Zach, but the grin quickly dissipated. "When your parents couldn't have children of their own, your Uncle Ben persuaded them to adopt. So they tried. It was very expensive, and they didn't really have the money, but they tried anyway."

  "Did she die?" Zach asked solemnly.

  "No. She's still alive and well out there…somewhere. No, your parents went through all the training to adopt a child, and all the arrangements were made. Tiffany's case manager met them and introduced them to her. They fell in love with her from the moment she smiled at them. They decided to adopt her, and the case manager helped them work out all the details. Then when Tiffany's foster parents couldn't keep her anymore, he even arranged for your mom and dad to be her foster parents until the adoption was finalized. They had her for—"

  "Fifty-one days," Zach recalled.

  "Yes, exactly. The adoption would have been finalized two weeks later."

  "What happened?"

  Nana Maggie kicked angrily at a leaf on the ground. "The case manager left for a new job, and another case manager took oversight of Tiffany. She looked at your parents' finances—and cancelled the adoption. She said they didn't have enough money." Nana Maggie spat that last word.

  "Did they?"

  "No. They were flat broke. They couldn't pay their bills without help from me and Ben and your dad's parents. They had gone into debt trying to adopt Tiffany. But they were going to be fine once they got past all the initial expenses. And…" She inhaled sharply through her nose and blinked hard once. "And well, you don't take a couple's baby away at the last second because you think they don't have enough money! If she had taken the time to get to know them…! Anyway," she continued after another breath, "the woman showed up on day fifty-one without any warning and took Tiffany away."

  "Why didn't they stop her?"

  "They tried, but she had full authority over Tiffany. There was nothing they could do. That was the last time they ever saw Tiffany. The woman wouldn't even tell them what family she went to."

  Zach swallowed, feeling bitter toward the woman himself. No wonder Mom and Dad didn't want to talk about it.

  Nana Maggie suddenly grabbed Zach and hugged him faster than he could think to escape. "But you're here now, and all that stuff about Tiffany—that was a long, long time ago. Now your parents have you, and you have them."

  "Yeah," Zach agreed, cringing from the crushing embrace. "And Paws."

  Nana Maggie pulled Paws into the hug. "Yes, and you too, Paws."

  *****