“I told you I wouldn’t interfere when you tried to persuade him,” Roan said. “But I never promised I’d help.”
Amazed, I drew back and looked at him. “That’s not fair. What kind of life can we have together if you won’t make peace with the past? You can’t keep the truth from Matthew. You can’t hide Matthew from my family. It’ll all come out eventually, no matter what you do.” I paused. “Unless you and I go our separate ways and don’t see each other again.”
He pulled me back on the bed and bent over me. “You know that’s not an option.”
“Then trust me.”
“We could be happy out here. Washington State. California. Alaska. Anywhere you like. You went for years without visiting home. It’s a habit you could cultivate again.”
“I don’t want to cultivate loneliness and estrangement again. Anyway, this dilemma isn’t about where we should live our lives. It’s about where we belong and how we should live. It’s about being honest, Roan. You’ve always been honest with me, and you’ve got to be honest with Matthew.”
“He doesn’t belong in Dunderry,” Roan said flatly. “He won’t be accepted there. Ever. No matter how bad you want it. And neither will I. Stop counting on fairy tales.”
“Badly,” I corrected sarcastically. “How badly I want it.”
He got up and jerked the comforter over me, then walked out of the room and shut the door.
He came back an hour later and I pretended to be asleep, and he pretended to let me sleep until he brushed against me in bed and then we both sighed in defeat and made love to each other with tenderness and anger.
But we didn’t talk.
Matthew and Tweet drove us to the ferry docks on the Juneau waterfront the next day, and the four of us boarded a sixty-five-foot double-decker named the Ice Dancer. It was a small tourist ferry that offered an observation deck scattered with lounge chairs on top, behind its pilothouse, and a cozy, gingham-curtained dining room below. The Ice Dancer took a payload of two dozen tourists out every afternoon in the spring and summer months, and its five-member crew served gourmet meals on jaunts to the glacier fjords.
Matthew and Tweet had hired the ferry for a private excursion. “It’ll take all afternoon, round trip,” Matthew explained politely. “You can sit, Claire. Take it easy, watch the world go by.”
“I’d pay money to see her take it easy,” Roan countered. I squinted at him, then craned my head, feigning an innocent perusal of the box filled with photo albums that Matthew had carried on board. I opened the tote bag I’d brought with me, set a half-dozen books on the linen-draped table where the four of us sat, drinking hot lemon tea while the Ice Dancer chugged out of Juneau proper, and said, “We have plenty to do. Sit and look at pictures, and talk.”
Matthew stared, bewildered, at the collection of books I had spread on the table. Some were oversize paperback editions, quaint self-published volumes, and a couple of hardbacks with the imprints of small regional publishers on their spines. “Books about the Delaneys, the Maloneys, and the history of Dunderry,” I explained with feigned nonchalance. “Nothing fancy. Your Aunt Jane and my mother, your Aunt Marybeth, wrote one of the Delaney histories. The most recent Maloney update was put together by my Uncle Winston a few years ago. I edited it for him. He writes like a man who’s president of the North Georgia Poultry Council. In other words, there’d be a lot of chicken-related stories in the book if I hadn’t intervened.”
Tweet stared at the books. “How many Delaneys and Maloneys are there?” she asked. “As compared to chickens.”
“Enough to crow about each other each time a new generation hatches,” Roan told her. He walked out to a lower-level foredeck and stood in the wind, facing the silver water of the channel slipping behind us.
Matthew scowled, red splotches blooming on his cheeks. “Sorry. He didn’t have to say that.”
“I’m not insulted. Go outside and warn him that I’ll come after him if he doesn’t cooperate. Tell him I want his input when we look at the Sullivan family albums. We’ll look at those first. After we get some food into us.”
Matthew frowned and went after him. I smiled at Tweet, who was staring at the books incredulously. She blinked. “How many relatives does Matthew have?”
I counted Delaneys on my fingers. “Twenty first cousins. Four aunts—including my mother—and three uncles. About forty second cousins. And I’m not including great-aunts, great-uncles, or in-laws.”
“Good lord.”
“About half of them live in Dunderry or within an hour’s drive.”
“Good lord.” She grinned.
Matthew and Roan returned and sat down. I shuffled the books aside as a bearded waiter in blue jeans and a white jacket began setting cups of fish chowder on the table. Matthew’s expression grew agitated. He pivoted in his chair and clamped a hand on top of the photo albums. “Claire, I don’t think there’s much use in showing me a bunch of family pictures.” He jabbed a thumb at himself. “I won’t find any baby pictures of yours truly.” He glanced at Roan. “What do you think, Bigger?”
Roan didn’t show me any mercy. “I think you’re right. There’s no point in it.”
“Claire, I don’t care what these two say,” Tweet muttered. “I’m going to look at the pictures after we eat.”
“Thank you,” I said with as much grace as I could. I watched Roan throughout the meal. He’d completely dissuade Matthew from ever meeting the family if he could. He wouldn’t risk exposing his own history to Matthew, not even if I begged him. He’d let Matthew go on avoiding my family when it could be so different. How could he be that heartless to Matthew? And how could he do it to me?
The glacier ice was blue. An opalescent blue, like the sky behind a frosted window. The Ice Dancer’s captain idled the ferry at the center of an inlet, where the water had a soft, milky shimmer from the glaciers seeping finely ground ice and rock into it. I sat on the end of a teak lounge on the foredeck, my hands hooked over the deck rail.
Roan stood beside me, his elbows on the rail, and my eyes swept from the walls of striated azure ice to him. His face was silhouetted against the massive ice floes. He glanced at me. “The ice is the color of your eyes in bright sunshine,” he said. “Stop looking at me that way.” He smoothed a fingertip beneath my lashes.
“Obviously I’m not able to mesmerize you. I can’t change your mind. I can’t persuade you to do anything until you win the battle with your own personal demons. I can’t make you see how disappointed I am. How much you’re jeopardizing our happiness, and Matthew’s, too. So just ignore the truth. You know how to do that.”
We didn’t have time to say more before Matthew and Tweet stepped out on the deck to stand with us. Matthew wrapped his arms around Tweet, hugging her from behind, resting his chin atop her head. They were cozy and unabashed; it made me realize how private Roan and I were with each other in public, how we pulled inward together for safety. “Isn’t it beautiful here?” Tweet enthused.
Pride came up in me; this world was fine, but Matthew should see our round, blue-green mountains at home. I talked about Dunshinnog, the legend behind its name, how Roan and I had climbed up it to hunt for mistletoe with my grandfather, and that its sides were lush and sprinkled white-pink this time of year, with the laurel not quite finished blooming. “Roan and I loved Dunshinnog when we were kids,” I finished carefully. “When you see it, you’ll understand why.”
Matthew grew more still and less exuberant, with troubled eyes, and my mind turned in weird circles. He’s so familiar, but not the way he should be, I thought, which made no sense. Roan shifted beside me, straightened, and slowly rested a hand on my shoulder. His firm grip conveyed relentless disapproval.
As we watched, a slender slab of ice broke free from one of the glaciers with a ripping, deep-pitched groan. “We call that calving,” Matthew explained. “When the glacier loses a piece of itself.”
The water boiled at the glacier’s base. The birthed chunk of ice, compress
ed and nurtured over hundreds or even thousands of years, sent deep ripples across the water, and the ferry rocked with the motion, so we were part of that amazing moment, which had been coming our way for many generations.
I saw portents in everything.
“I think we should look at the Sullivan pictures first,” I said.
• • •
“Are you a vampire?” I called to Roan with forced humor.
“What?” He stood across the foredeck from us, and I’d already noticed his restless inclination to pace and smoke cigars during the two hours Matthew, Tweet, and I had spent going over their photo albums. They and I shared my lounge chair, sitting sideways in a row, me in the middle, the two of them offering commentary on each page of each album I spread on my lap.
“You’re invisible,” I went on. “There are hardly any pictures with you in them. I assume your image doesn’t reproduce.”
“Someone had to take the pictures.”
“Bigger didn’t like to be photographed,” Matthew said drily. “He was afraid someone would steal his soul.”
“He was afraid someone would steal you,” I replied. “Somebody, somewhere, might have recognized him. The family might have found you then. Might have taken you away from him. That’s what he believed. I wish he hadn’t felt that way.”
Roan and I traded looks. He nodded slightly. I turned to Matthew. “But I believe wholeheartedly that both of you could have come home and that you’d have been accepted and loved.”
Matthew scrubbed his hands over his hair and sighed. He glanced at Roan and smiled sadly. “Sometimes I’d get totally ticked off with you when I was a kid. You wouldn’t pose for any pictures with me. All the other kids had pictures with their families, but I didn’t. When I was old enough to understand, you explained why pictures weren’t a good idea.”
“I tried not to scare you,” Roan said.
“I know, but I was scared anyway. I used to have nightmares about the police busting into our house and dragging me away. Why do you think I went through that phase when I tied one of my feet to the bedpost at night and slept with all my dogs on the bed? So the dogs would bark and wake you up, and before the cops could untie my foot, you’d have time to run into my room and save me.”
Roan stared at him. From the expression on his face I knew he’d never heard that story before. It seemed to cut him from the inside out—to know that he’d ingrained that brand of nightmarish fear in a child, even with the best intentions.
Tweet’s eyes filled with tears. She peered at Matthew. “You still sleep with the dogs on the bed,” she managed to tease. “And I thought you liked it when I tied your foot to the rail.”
Matthew laughed, but Roan still looked as if he’d been punched. I figured out why the anecdote burned me up.
“This isn’t funny,” I said between gritted teeth. “Your family,” I emphasized to Matthew, “deserve better than a reputation as boogeymen in childhood nightmares. Yes, some of them were petty and self-righteous; yeah, some of them never wanted to admit you were a Delaney; and some of them were too worthless to give a damn about. Pete, your daddy, was like that, all right. Your half brothers were nasty little shits. But most of the other Delaneys are very good people. My mother wanted to adopt you. Even Roan will admit that.”
Matthew looked at him. Roan nodded vaguely, frowning with distraction, a “what have I done to this boy” expression in his eyes.
I slammed shut the last Sullivan album and dropped it at my feet. I’d seen what kind of life Roan had given Matthew—Little League, soccer, football, academic awards, birthday parties, pets, and friends. But plenty was missing from it, and I was the only one who could fill in the blanks.
I snatched a stack of dog-eared snapshots from my tote bag. My hands trembled. Roan tossed a half-smoked cigar overboard and stood beside us grimly. I had the feeling he’d have gladly taken my pictures and thrown them in the ocean if I’d let him. “Matthew,” I said suddenly, softly. “Are you a damned coward?”
He gaped at me. So did Tweet. “This must be a joke,” he managed.
“No, it’s a serious question.” I shook the photographs at him. “These can’t hurt you. They can’t hurt Roan either. If you want to look at them, have the cojones to admit it.”
Matthew turned as red as I must be, because my skin felt blistered. He frowned at Roan. “I would like to see if I can pick out Pete Delaney without you or Claire telling me who he is.”
Roan’s jaw worked. He appeared tortured. “If you want to make a game out of it, go ahead.”
“I guess I sound morbid, but I need to know if I look like him. If I can recognize him.”
I smiled. “That’s not morbid. I did the same thing—tried to pick you out of the crowd at the airport without Roan helping me.”
“Could you?” Matthew asked hopefully.
“Without any effort at all. You look like a Delaney,” I lied. I quickly asked Tweet to hold half the photographs. She took them as if they were precious. I shuffled the others. “I’ll choose a few to get you started, Matthew. Your Aunt Marybeth Delaney Maloney, who’s my mother, and my four brothers, who are your cousins, of course, on the Maloney side—”
Matthew held out a hand. “I want to see if I can pick out Pete Delaney first. Please.”
“We’ll be docking in Juneau in a few minutes,” Roan interjected. “I say put this away until later.”
“Later? Maybe a hundred years or so?” I suggested coldly.
Matthew sighed. “Come on, it’s not a major thing. I’ll just look and get it over with.” He flipped through his stack quickly. Tweet hopped up and handed him the rest, then huddled beside him, one arm stretched soothingly across his lanky shoulders. She peered at the pictures with him, biting her lower lip. I clenched my hands in my lap and glanced at Roan. He’d become a guardian, standing at stony attention. They’re only pictures, I urged silently.
“This one,” Matthew said. His voice shook. He planted his forefinger on a snapshot. Tweet gasped. “Oh, yes, honey, that has to be your … Pete Delaney. You look so much like him. I mean, you look exactly like him.”
In the old black-and-white picture, without benefit of color to mark the contrast between sandy and red hair, the stalwart, crew-cut young man gazing up at us seemed undeniable. He couldn’t have resembled Matthew more if Matthew had posed in an army uniform circa 1970. I finally understood what had puzzled me every time I looked at Matthew.
I felt as I had when Terri Caulfield’s ex-husband shot at us and I lost control of my Jeep. Spinning, horrified, out of control. I pulled myself together like some chimera built of different parts that fought one another. I said calmly, “No, that’s your cousin. My oldest brother. Josh.”
I lifted my head and gazed hopelessly at Roan. His eyes were bleak but honest. I shoved another picture into Matthew’s hands, then made myself say, “That’s Pete. That’s your father and those are your half brothers.”
“Well,” Matthew replied in a gruff voice after studying the photo for a long time. “It’s no wonder nobody forced Pete Delaney to admit I was his. Little fair-haired bastard kid. I didn’t look remotely like him or his other sons.”
And then he tossed the picture in my lap and got up and went to Roan. The wind was high and cold, and the Ice Dancer was pulling into the docks by then. “You were right,” Matthew said gruffly. “It wasn’t worth the trouble. I only care because—”
“You need to know who you are and where you came from,” Roan said with the slow, stunted agony of a man coming to terms with forces he can’t conquer. “Even if your old man was an S.O.B., you need to know. I see that. You’re not going against my wishes. That’s not why I’ve been a horse’s ass about it. I know what you’re feeling. I’m scared for you. Because it’s hell when you want to love your old man but he makes you hate him instead.”
Matthew shook his head. “Maybe the Delaneys were right to ignore me. I don’t think I’m a Delaney at all. Not judging from the pictures.”
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I was reduced to helpless rage. All the failures rose up in me at once: Roan killing Big Roan; Roan being taken away, with me unable to stop it; being in the crumpled Jeep, lost in Terri Caulfield’s bloody, violated face; trapped in beds and on crutches and inside my own mistakes.
“You are one of us,” I yelled at Matthew, and when Roan looked at me like I was tearing his heart out, I put my head in my hands and burst into sobs that made Tweet look like an amateur crier. Roan was beside me in an instant, kneeling down and wrapping his arms around me. “Don’t say any more. Not here, not right now,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. Peep, believe me. I understand, Sssh.” He stroked my hair. I nodded against his shoulder and cried harder. It was not a good day for Maloney dignity.
Now I knew the only secret that mattered, the secret that had always made a simple homecoming for him and Matthew impossible.
Matthew was my brother’s son.
When I was ten and Roan fifteen, during the spring when he lived at the farm, there was a huge work party one weekend to restore the Delaney covered bridge. Great-Grandfather Thurman Delaney built the bridge after the Civil War to replace a ferry barge he’d operated; it became a proud monument connecting the rutted wagon road that ran from Dunderry to Gainesville. Delaney Bridge Road was the first road paved as part of a local WPA project in the 1930s, and the bridge was shored up with iron beams then, but by the time I was a girl the bolts had rusted through and the beams showered big, red-brown flakes into the river with the slightest vibration.
The old bridge, a hundred years old then, was a quaint eyesore rather than a crossing point over the Slow Forks River east of town. The state highway department had rerouted the road a few years earlier and built a new steel-and-concrete bridge upstream; the old wooden bridge shed rotten shingles on the rooftops of every car that drove through.
A Place to Call Home Page 31