Daddy shot a hard, shocked look at me, then at Roan. “Oh, my God,” Daddy said, and hurried down the slope.
“You deal with me,” Roan said as he reached Josh and blocked his way. “Goddammit, you talk to me first.”
Josh halted, blinking. He looked dazed. His face was flushed. Larger, older, heavier than Roan, he brushed at him with a benign shove of one hand, then tried to sidestep him. He simply didn’t seem to have interest or time for anything but Matthew, who stood, openmouthed, a few yards away.
Roan raised a fist and I knew he would hit my brother. I yelled something, limping forward as quickly as I could. Daddy got there first and planted himself between them. Mama went to Matthew and Tweet, holding out her graceful hands to them. “Please don’t think we meant to ambush you two. This is all getting out of hand, but it’s because we care so much. And there’s no easy way to do this.”
Matthew gave her a blank look, then bolted to Roan and Josh, shouldering in beside Daddy. “Bigger, I don’t know what’s going on, but calm down.” Roan pulled Matthew aside and stepped in front of him. Daddy clamped both hands on Josh’s shoulders and held him still. Josh simply continued to gaze at Matthew.
I was the one who suddenly became unhinged. Twenty years. Twenty years Roan had sacrificed for Matthew, for the family, for Josh’s pride and cowardice. Twenty years lost. When I reached Josh, I grabbed his shirtfront. “Don’t you dare,” I ordered furiously, forestalling any rejection he might offer. “How could you? Why? Why?”
Josh barely flinched. Never taking his eyes off Matthew, he shook his head slowly. Mama and Tweet tried to defuse the situation, begging or ordering restraint and retreat as they pulled us all away from one another. We were a human tangle of people staggering in a tight group, trying to shield, avoid, or attack one another, until Daddy tilted his balding head back and thundered, “This is a helluva family reunion. Step back or I’ll start tossing you bulls into the lake. And you, too, daughter.”
Some sense was restored. We all stepped back a few inches, breathing tensely. “Who are you?” Matthew asked Josh.
My brother struggled to speak. “Josh,” he said finally in a gruff tone. “Josh Maloney.”
Slowly alarm dawned in Matthew’s expression. His chin rose. “You’re the one in the picture. I picked you out of an old photo Claire brought.”
Painful surprise showed in Josh’s eyes. “You did? God! I was right. I can just look at you and know. And you recognized me.”
Roan spoke bitterly. “You don’t owe him a damn thing, Matthew. Remember that. He has nothing to do with who you are. Don’t forget everything I taught you. Nobody can take you down.”
Matthew held up both hands. “Nobody can take me up, down, or sideways,” he yelled, “because I don’t understand what the hell is happening here!”
Josh nodded. He reached past Roan and clasped Matthew’s shoulder. “I’ve tried to find you for years. This isn’t the way you need to hear about it, but I couldn’t wait to see you. You’re not Pete Delaney’s son. You’re my son.”
Beside me, Roan sucked in a breath as if Josh had stolen his air. And in that shocked moment, that welcome we’d never expected, I saw the unexpected joy in Matthew’s eyes.
Roan, dear God, saw it, too.
Roan believed the family he’d created for himself was destroyed, almost by whimsy, in a bizarre turn of events we’d never predicted; he was a man who guarded against every possibility, but now he and his vigilance were suddenly unnecessary. In a terrible way, the best for Matthew was the worst for him.
Mama and Daddy celebrated Matthew, their firstborn grandson, in style. I knew it was an event when relatives began arriving with food and guitars. Everyone said what a blessing the reunion was and they thanked Roan, who had come full circle in their minds, sacrificing once again for the family, taking and bringing back.
A kind of break-your-heart generosity flowed. We sat in the living room, Roan and I with my parents. Mama perched beside Roan on the main couch. She clasped his hand in both of hers and he looked sadly uncomfortable about her doing it.
“I expect to be your father-in-law,” Daddy told Roan. “As good, I hope, as the father you’ve been to Matthew.”
“You couldn’t be more dear to us, Roan,” Mama said softly. “I know you don’t believe it, but we’re so sorry you thought we’d turn you and Matthew away.”
“You might do it yet,” Roan said.
“Stop it. Don’t you ever say that again!”
I sat on Roan’s other side, hardly able to take my eyes off him. He met my gaze. In him I saw that hard inner frame he’d kept from his childhood, and I think he saw the same stubborn strength in me. Roan looked at Mama and Daddy, his head up, his face strained.
“He’s my family,” Roan announced gruffly, holding his fist over his heart. “I never tried to make him hate anybody here, but I told him the truth. I told him the good as much as the bad. I taught him to build his own life so he wouldn’t ever feel empty if he came back here and found nothing and nobody who cared about him. So he doesn’t hate any of you. He just doesn’t know you. Whether he decides to hate you—that’s his business.”
“He’ll be fine,” Mama insisted, “if we give him a chance. And so will you, Roan.”
And so a mostly unspoken understanding was settled between my parents and Roan.
Matthew responded to his homecoming welcome with blind fervor. Suddenly he and Tweet had more family than they’d ever imagined, and they were both drunk with pleasure. So was Josh.
Many people said Josh had suffered enough for denying Matthew years before—his guilt, his shame, his worry. When his wife died after Amanda’s birth, he felt cursed, I suppose, and he withdrew from Amanda’s affection because what man could take himself seriously as a father to one child when the memory of a rejected one burned in his conscience? We finally understood his coldness and his moods.
But I didn’t sympathize. Matthew had nearly been lost because of him. Roan was the only reason we had him back. Roan had suffered for his dedication. I had, too, in different ways. All because of Josh. “When did you and Daddy first suspect?” I asked Mama that night.
She bowed her head. “You remember the time we had the big work party to restore the Delaney bridge and Sally showed up with Matthew? Well, I’m sure you were too little to pay attention to Sally and Josh, but your daddy and I watched her stare at Josh as if she wanted to scald him. And she held Matthew up toward Josh, and Josh was so upset he nearly fell off the roof of the bridge. He dropped the tool he was holding …” Mama went on about our cousin Robert getting hit on the head. I said nothing.
Mama and Daddy couldn’t believe what they’d witnessed meant what they feared it meant, and for a while each was too uncertain and too upset to admit the fear. Then it was too late—Sally disappeared in the aftermath of Big Roan’s scandal and Josh confided the truth, and for years they’d quietly helped him search. They’d hired investigators through Uncle Ralph’s legal contacts, but no information had ever turned up.
They had always looked for Sally and Matthew McClendon, of course, or Matthew Delaney. Never for Matthew Sullivan.
On the night we brought Matthew to the farm, lights glowed from every window of the house, cars filled the yard and the driveway, and dozens of Maloneys and Delaneys gathered on the porches and under the trees, deep in conversation. The other grandchildren swarmed around Matthew, some shy but all curious. From teenagers to toddlers, they were all introduced. Amanda was the only one missing. She’d gone with Rebecca’s daughters to summer camp, a few hours’ away, for a week. The issue of how Josh should tell her about her half brother had been thoroughly debated already.
And how to thank Roan—that was debated, too.
“I know what brand of honor it took for you to come here after all this time and risk this,” Daddy said to him. “You were armed for trouble and instead you got a kick in the stomach you never expected. But nobody’s turning their back on you this time. Not Matthe
w and not us.”
“We kept Josh’s secret because he grieved over it and wanted to make it right,” Mama told him. “We’re not washing our hands of his guilt. We know who did right when it counted. I’ll never look at Matthew without knowing the truth. Everything fine about him is your doing.”
“We’ll do everything we can to make up for the time he’s missed,” Daddy added. “And we’ll do the same for you.”
Roan, who was quietly devastated, said, “I only want one promise from you. From the whole family. I don’t want anybody to tell him anything about me. Nothing. Don’t tell him about my old man, the Hollow, what happened, nothing. I have to be the one to tell him.”
Mama and Daddy promised.
“We have to work the boy out of his loneliness,” Daddy said to me in a private moment. He and Mama were upset. “Get him talking about the past. Get it settled. Get that poison out of him. And out of us, too.”
In the meantime, Matthew had a fine homecoming party.
It was already clear that he and Tweet could fit into the pattern of the family as tightly as a new seam. Every Maloney aunt and uncle came to the same conclusion that night—summed up out loud by Arnetta, who had not given many compliments inside the family since Uncle Eugene divorced her to marry his secretary at the car dealership. “The boy couldn’t have turned out any better if he’d been brought up here by his own people,” Arnetta announced in front of Roan.
His own people. An embarrassed hush followed that statement. Roan smiled thinly and walked outside. “How could you?” I said to Aunt Arnetta. And to the rest, “I’m ashamed of you all.”
I followed Roan to the veranda. “Time to regroup,” I ordered, snagging his hand as I shoved aside the curious farm dogs with my cane. “We’re going to the barn loft.”
“Just like old times,” he said.
He had to carry me up the staircase, but we made it. I sat on a bale of hay. He stood, leaning against the door frame, looking out at Dunshinnog under the stars. “The view hasn’t changed.” He sounded defeated.
“You’re wrong. Nothing’s the same, and it’s because of you.”
“I raised Matthew. I fed him, put clothes on him, educated him, stood up for him, and now I bring him here and it’s as if I never existed.”
“No. Give everyone time to sort through it. Nobody meant to patronize you tonight.”
“You can’t change their reaction to me,” he said wearily. “I don’t doubt I did the right thing by bringing Matthew here. They want him. They don’t really want anything to do with me, but they want him. And God knows it’s clear he’s where he needs to be. He found out his old man didn’t really desert him. That’s powerful medicine.”
“You’re his old man.”
“No. I never was. I forgot that fact sometimes, but it was always in the back of my mind.”
“You think he’ll blame you about Josh? You didn’t know Josh was looking for him. Matthew won’t fault you for not telling him about Josh.”
He turned, dropped to his heels in front of me, and took my hands. “I wish I had your faith.” He lifted my hands to his face, kissed the palms, rested his cheeks against my fingertips.
I kissed him. “You’re in so much pain you don’t know what you wish.”
He bent his head to my knees and I slid my hands over his hair. We heard heavy footsteps on the loft stairs. Roan stood quickly.
Josh made his way among the tiers of stacked bales and stopped by the door. He and Roan were both silhouetted by stars. “Roan, I believe you’d give me a fighting chance before you pushed me out this loft door,” he said in a big, jovial voice. “But I think Sis would push me from behind and never shed a tear.”
“You’re damned right,” I said slowly. “Are you turning this into a joke?”
“No, just trying to ease the tension with humor.”
“Stop it. I know a shit-eating politician when I see one. I used to interview guys like you. All mouth and no action.”
Josh shifted angrily. “That’s enough, sis.”
“Enough? We’re supposed to hug and smile and stand in a prayer circle holding hands because you had the guts to welcome your own son home after Roan took care of him for two decades?”
“I’m not asking for any parenting awards. Roan, I give you full credit. I’ll never be able to do enough to thank you.”
Roan moved quietly, warningly, toward my brother. “I don’t want any thanks from you. I want answers. Tell me why you used Sally. Besides the obvious reason.”
Josh leaned against the loft door, his head down and his hands shoved into his pockets. He gazed blankly into the night sky. “Sis, do you remember the night I came home from the army? When the family came down to Atlanta to pick me up at the airport?”
“Yes.” I remembered Daddy carrying me on his shoulders down the Delta concourse, a crowd of Maloneys around us, and that we were dressed up in the middle of the night. I felt so proud because Mama had given me a long-stemmed red rose to hand to Josh, and Grandpa had whittled the thorns off with his pocketknife. I was so excited I waved that rose at everyone we walked past. I was so proud of Josh. We all were.
“As I was getting off the plane,” Josh went on, “one of the other passengers asked me if I’d been in ’Nam. When I said yes, he spit on me. Called me a killer.”
“What did you do?”
“I wiped the spit off my jacket so the folks wouldn’t notice.”
“Oh, Josh.”
“I respect your support of Roan. I’m ashamed to admit I was one of the ones who agreed with the folks when he was a boy, after he killed Big Roan. That he’d be better off somewhere else. I didn’t want him to be spit on for doing the right thing. Now it looks like he’s the one who intends to do the spitting.”
“I’m not here to prove any point,” Roan said. “And I’m not here to listen to your self-pitying stories. People misunderstood you, so you treated Sally like dirt? Is that it?”
“I didn’t know how to act around the family anymore.” Josh spoke in a low, strained voice. “I couldn’t talk to anybody about Vietnam—the things I saw, the way I lived. I had habits I wasn’t proud of, and bad dreams, and … But when I came back home everybody expected me to want one of the nice girls I’d dated in high school. I didn’t even remember who I was, though, for a while. Sally seemed … uncomplicated. But after a few times my mind started to clear. I looked into her eyes once and saw that she hated me. Despised me. Like the bar girls in Saigon had. That’s when I realized I was trying to make life as ugly here as it was there, so I’d have excuses. I knew I had to get myself under control, try to figure out a new place for myself at home. I had to forget.”
I snorted. “You could have done better than forget you had a son.”
He pivoted toward me. “Look, sis, at first I wasn’t even certain he was mine. I’d been careful with Sally. Not perfect, but careful. I thought there was a good chance he was Pete’s boy, like everyone assumed. He might have been. I told myself that. And Sally had other … customers, too.” Josh paused. “I told myself he could be Big Roan Sullivan’s son.”
“I wish he were,” Roan replied flatly. “He’d be my half brother. I’d have a blood tie to him. I wouldn’t have had to hide him. I could have brought him back a long time ago. I could have told Claire, and Claire and I …”
Josh nodded. “I understand what you say, Roan. If he were your brother, you could tell us all to go to hell. And you would.”
“Yes.”
I hunched forward. “You were sure about Matthew that day at the Delaney bridge.”
“I was sure, sis. Yeah. I was sure. I spent too much time debating what the embarrassment would do to Mama and Daddy. And to me. My plans. A lot of gutless debating,” he added sarcastically. “I did manage to tell the folks. I did that on my own, sis. But I told ’em after everything went crazy around here that summer. Big Roan … Daisy McClendon screaming nonsense about Sally, threatening to say what she knew … and Sally had already d
isappeared with Matthew.”
“Lucky for you,” I shot back.
He tossed both hands into the air and yelled, “There hasn’t been a goddamned day since then that I haven’t thought about him, sis. Wondered where he was, if he’d starved or been hurt, if he was in prison somewhere, or dead.”
“Good. Good,” I yelled back. “I spent twenty years torturing myself over Roan for the same kind of reasons. I’m glad you know how it felt.”
Josh’s arms sank limply by his sides. “I couldn’t look at Amanda without thinking of Matthew.”
“What are you going to tell her now?”
“That she’s got a half brother. That he’s terrific. That no matter how he came into the world he’s part of the family and we’re going to love him.” Josh pivoted slowly toward Roan. “And we’re going to do our best to convince him to stay in Dunderry.”
Roan went absolutely still—that lethal quiet I remembered so well. “He’s got friends on the West Coast,” he said finally. “That’s his home turf. I doubt he’ll change all his plans.”
“I’d just appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to influence him.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said in a low, furious tone. “Don’t you dare lecture Roan and dismiss him like a deliveryman. As if he’s been some kind of hired surrogate whose job is done and now we can all just go merrily—”
“That’s not what I meant, sis, goddammit, and you know it. Roan. You’re going to have to do what I did when I came home from the army. Make a new place for yourself. I want you to do that.”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“Oh, hell, you’re welcome around here. You don’t want to believe it, but you are. Ask Claire to marry you. Settle down. You’ll be close to Matthew. Keep being what you’ve been to him. But understand that we’ll have to come to terms about that. You’ve known since he was a kid that I was his father. Accept the new situation.” Josh tapped Roan on the chest. “You’re not his father. I am.”
A Place to Call Home Page 34