He Never Forgot

by P. D. Workman

  “They had a dysfunctional relationship. They were unable to care for you.”

  “That’s not telling me anything.”

  “As I said, I can’t say anything that might identify them. They are accorded confidentiality under the law, even though you are an adult now.”

  “You must be able to tell me something about them. How old were they? What about professions? What part of town did we live in?”

  Pace’s eyes slid over to Zachary. “She was young. He was not. He worked in a variety of casual labor jobs. She didn’t disclose how she earned money, if she did. Probably through illegal means.”

  Burton considered this information, his expression grim. “And where did they live?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Because I want to see the house. I want to go there.”

  She shook her head and waved this idea away. “It probably isn’t even there anymore.”

  “Then it won’t hurt anything to tell me where it was.”

  She considered this seriously. She looked at Burton, then looked at Zachary. “I’m sure it’s not there anymore.”

  “Then…?”

  She brushed her crumbs into a careful pile, and then off the table onto her napkin, which she laid back down on the table. She was chewing on her lip.

  “Peach Tree,” she said eventually. “Peach Tree Lane.”

  A lovely sounding name, but Zachary knew the area it was in. There were no peach trees. Not anymore. He didn’t know if there ever had been. Burton’s shoulders dipped down in relief. He knew something concrete. He knew a street. Not just the city anymore, but the street that his house had been on. Even if it had been bulldozed and replaced with a condo building or a gas station, at least he could go back there, stand where it had been, close his eyes and imagine himself there.

  “What else can you tell us?” Zachary asked.

  “There isn’t much more to tell. That’s it.”

  Burton shook his head at Zachary. He had what he’d come for. The street his house had been on. He didn’t need anything else.

  If it had been him, Zachary would have wanted more. Not the details of the abuse, maybe, but something. Something about what he had experienced in those first five years. What had made him the way that he was.

  “Why didn’t you meet his birth parents?”

  Pace shook her head. “It wasn’t in the cards.”

  That was a load of crap. If she’d said that Burton was already in foster care when she had first met him, Zachary might have believed it. But Pace’s answer was too vague. Not the kind of thing that would have gone into an official report. There had been a reason she hadn’t met his parents. A real reason.

  “Why?” Zachary repeated.

  “Mr. Goldman, I told you that there were things I would not be able to tell you. I’m sorry that I can’t answer all of your questions or tell you the reasons that I can’t answer. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “You were the one who took me to my parents?” Burton changed the subject, returning to an inquiry he already knew the answer to.

  “Yes. I drove you to your new home. Handed you over to your parents. They seemed like lovely people. I hope I did not misjudge them.”

  “No. They were always good.” Burton pondered for a moment. “Maybe not prepared to handle a rebellious teenager, but before that… they did everything right. I don’t remember having anything to complain about.”

  She nodded, satisfied. She didn’t ask Burton why, if his adoptive parents had been so great, he needed to dig into his past. She hopefully knew, after being in the business, that the one thing didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other.

  “Well, I wish you the best of luck, Mr. Burton. I hope you find what you are looking for.”

  Burton summoned up a smile and nodded at this.

  But Zachary was watching Pace’s eyes, and he could see that she was holding something back.

  She was lying when she said that she hoped he found what he was looking for.

  What she really wanted was for him to forget it all and go home.

  13

  Peach Tree Lane,” Burton said exultantly when they had said goodbye to Aurelia Pace. “Peach Tree Lane.” He said it like he could taste the words, and they were just as sweet as the name. Did they resonate with him? Did he remember that was where he had lived as a child? Five was not too young to teach a child his address in case he was ever separated from his parents or something happened to one of them.

  “Yes,” Zachary agreed. He tried to picture it in his mind. He hadn’t spent a lot of time in that area, but he knew the neighborhood generally. He frowned, trying to remember any areas that had been developed in the last few years. Despite what Pace had said, he couldn’t remember any redevelopment.

  That didn’t mean that a house hadn’t been bulldozed and replaced with a duplex or a fourplex. Just that there hadn’t been any major revitalization. Pace knew more of the story than she was willing to admit, so she might know exactly what had happened to the house.

  Zachary couldn’t help being suspicious. Maybe it was just because he’d been lied to by social workers in the past. They had told him things, promised him things, just to keep him quiet.

  “Today, we celebrate,” Burton said cheerfully, pulling out his flask and downing the rest of the contents. “Come with me. Have a drink on me. You can do it just this once.”

  Zachary shook his head. He found it particularly unpleasant when people pressured him to drink. Burton was an alcoholic and naturally wanted to celebrate by drinking. He didn’t mean it to be offensive. People who drank so much seemed to think that not drinking was somehow a slap in the face, a holier-than-thou attitude that they needed to fight back against.

  Zachary didn’t care if Burton wanted to drink. He could spend the night drinking yet again, and not wake up until noon or two o’clock. But Zachary had no interest in joining his binge.

  “I have other work to do tonight,” he said. “You’ll have to do the celebrating on your own.”

  He was surprised that Burton didn’t want to head over to the house immediately. He would have thought with how eager the man was to find his childhood home that he would want to waste no time in getting there. But he wanted to celebrate first, putting it off another day—what a waste of time.

  “I’ll drive you back to your hotel, and then I need to get back to work.”

  Burton waved his offer aside. “You don’t need to do that. I’m not a cripple. I can get around.”

  “It’s not a problem to drop you off.”

  “No. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll go to Peach Tree Lane together, right? You’ll go with me?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see it by yourself? You want an outsider there?”

  “I…” Burton rubbed his forehead, frowning. “I don’t know if I could… go there myself. I mean, physically, sure, I can take a cab. But… I feel like you understand this quest, and how important it is for me. So… is that okay? Will you come?”

  Zachary nodded. “Of course. Touch base tomorrow and let me know when.”

  Zachary looked around, unsure where he was. The walls around him seemed familiar, and yet not familiar at the same time. He stood up and walked around, looking at the hallways and decor, looking in classroom doors, walking down up the main stairs to the dorm rooms, before it finally occurred to him that he was at Bonnie Brown.

  He’d spent a lot of time there while he was in foster care, so he didn’t know why he hadn’t recognized it immediately. He’d been in and out of Bonnie Brown regularly, especially every year around Christmas, when his anxiety and depression made it too difficult for any foster family to manage him. And there were other times when he had to be moved, but they didn’t have a family lined up for him yet, and he’d find himself in Bonnie Brown again.

  It was a pretty dismal place, especially to an outsider but, for Zachary, it had represented stability. A predictable routine, strict rules that he knew,
and familiar halls never adorned with Christmas candles or lights or other fire hazards.

  Zachary spun in a slow circle, looking around. It had been decades since he had been there, yet it looked exactly the same.

  A matron walked toward him, two children with her. Zachary looked down at them curiously. Two boys. Dark hair and eyes and pale skin. They were twins. Younger than most of the kids at Bonnie Brown, but they did occasionally house younger children, especially if they were prone to violence or self-harm.

  “You can only take one,” the matron told him.

  Zachary looked at the two boys, not understanding. Take one? “You can’t separate them,” he countered. “They’re twins.”

  Though, of course, they had separated him from his siblings. And even though they had promised to keep them in sibling groups, they had broken up Joss and Heather within a year. Tyrell and the younger children had stayed together longer. But just because social services said they would try to keep brothers and sisters together, that didn’t mean that they did.

  Twins, though? They should let twins stay together.

  “You can only save one of them,” the matron said solemnly. She looked down at the two boys, a hand on the shoulder of each. Waiting for Zachary to make his choice.

  “Save one? Why? Why can’t they both be saved?”

  “Which will it be? This one?” She raised one boy’s face up with a finger under his chin. “Or this one?” She showed him the other.

  “No, no. We have to keep them together.”

  “They cannot both survive.”

  Zachary tried to reach out to take both boys from her. He was there. He could help both of them. He didn’t need to listen to her.

  But he found himself grasping at empty air. He pushed his hands forward farther, trying to reach them, but he could no longer see them and couldn’t feel them. He stretched his arms out and windmilled them around, looking for the lost boys.

  “No! No, wait!”

  “Zachary.”

  There was a hand on his arm, trying to hold him back. Zachary shook it loose, still trying to feel for the twin boys. He had screwed up. She had told him that he had to choose one of them, and then when he’d refused, he’d lost both of them. He could have saved one and he tried to take back his wrong choice.

  “I will, I will, just let me!”

  But he couldn’t see them or feel them and he was no longer at Bonnie Brown. Zachary blinked, trying to see around him. He was enveloped by darkness. Had the power gone out? Where was he?

  “Zachary.” A light turned on suddenly, power apparently restored. Zachary covered his eyes. They teared up and he tried to blink to get them used to the brightness.

  He looked around him in confusion. At first, he didn’t recognize Kenzie’s bedroom. Then he did, but it didn’t make any sense. How had he gotten from Bonnie Brown to Kenzie’s house? He continued to reach out, looking for the boys in the now-illuminated room. They weren’t hiding in the shadows. They weren’t under the blankets or pillows.

  He suddenly felt bereft, as he had when he had first been taken away from his family. Longing to hold his brothers and sisters in his arms. To comfort and be comforted. To cuddle them close and hum a lullaby until they all felt safe again.

  “Zachary.” Kenzie’s hand was on his arm again, and this time Zachary didn’t shake it off. He covered his face, eyes welling up with tears.

  Why hadn’t he saved them? Why hadn’t he been able to save one of the children?

  Even as he gradually understood that it had been a dream, Zachary’s heart still ached. It was as if he had lost everyone all over again. He turned toward Kenzie and hugged her close.

  “No,” he murmured. “No, no, no.”

  “It’s okay. It was just a dream. You’re okay.”

  “It was… but it wasn’t…” Zachary sniffled. “Why couldn’t I save them?”

  “It was just a dream. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not real.”

  “No. My family… everyone… why couldn’t I save them?”

  “You did.” She squeezed him and rubbed his back. “You did, you saved all of them.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You did. They’re all okay. Nobody else got hurt. Okay? You’re okay. They’re okay. It was just a dream.”

  “They’re okay,” Zachary breathed.

  “It was just a dream. I know it can feel real. But it was just a dream.”

  Zachary dragged in a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He kept repeating Kenzie’s words. It had just been a nightmare. A disturbing dream, but just a dream. The feelings were not real.

  “I tried,” he murmured.

  “They’re okay, Zachary.” Kenzie nuzzled his neck and kissed him. “You’re okay. It’s all over.”

  Zachary shuddered. He remembered the eyes of the twins, though the clarity of the dream was starting to leave him now. The deep, dark, sad eyes. He had wanted to save them. He had thought that he could save them both. And they had slipped away from his fingers.

  “Do you think it would be okay…?”

  “What?”

  Zachary breathed in through his nose and blew his breath out in a long stream between pursed lips. “Do you think it would be okay if I called Tyrrell?”

  “It’s the middle of the night, Zachary. Call him in the morning.”

  Zachary closed his eyes. He could just go back to sleep. He would fall asleep for a couple more hours, and then when it was a decent hour, he would call Tyrrell just to chat and make sure he was okay.

  He leaned back. Kenzie lay back down with him, cuddling up close to him, kissing him on the forehead and cheek and stroking his hair. “Better? Okay now?”

  Zachary breathed slowly. “You can shut the light off.”

  She moved away from him for a moment to switch off the lamp, then lay against him, holding him. In a few minutes, her breath had lengthened out and he knew she was asleep once more.

  He tried to match his breathing with hers, convinced that if he could mimic a calm, sleeping rhythm, he would be able to fall back asleep just like she had. But he knew better. He’d tried that trick a hundred times, and it had never worked.

  He waited a few more minutes, making sure that Kenzie was deep asleep, and then he slid out of bed.

  “Hello? Zachary?”

  “Hi, T.”

  “Is everything okay? What time is it?”

  He could hear Tyrrell moving around, sitting up and checking the time.

  “Sorry. Kenzie said I shouldn’t call.”

  “No, it’s okay, Zach. Of course you can call, any time. I’ve told you that before. Day or night, it’s okay.”

  “I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “Nothing. Just a dream.”

  “What about?”

  Tyrrell knew not to ask whether the nightmare had been about the fire. They both still dreamt about it, but Tyrrell bringing it up might trigger a flashback for Zachary.

  “About… I don’t know. I was at Bonnie Brown.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And there was… there were twin boys, and they told me I could only save one of them.”

  “Save them from what?”

  “I don’t know. I just know I had to choose.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to save them both.”

  Tyrrell chuckled. “Of course you did.”

  Zachary had to laugh at it himself. It was, after all, typical Zachary. Immediately looking for a way out when he faced a rule he didn’t want to follow.

  “Then you couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Yeah. Kenzie’s gone back to sleep and I don’t want to wake her up again tossing and turning.”

  “So does that mean you’re up for the day? Or are you going to try the couch?”

  “Probably up for the day.”

  “You’re crazy, man. I would die without sleep.”

  “Not just one night. And I did sl
eep a couple of hours.”

  “But I know you don’t sleep the rest of the time either. There’s a disease where a person can’t sleep, and it eventually kills you. You should be dead ten times over by now.”

  “I usually sleep. A couple hours, anyway.”

  “Not enough for me.”

  “I guess I should let you go back to sleep again. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Hang out with me for a couple more minutes. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I am.”

  “So, dreaming about these boys, is that because of a case you’re working on right now?”

  Zachary considered. “Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I don’t really know if that’s what triggered it. I have a client who’s looking for the house he grew up in. No twin brother, though.”

  “Looking for his house?”

  “Yeah. He was adopted, and he remembered that this is where he used to live. He wants to see his house again.”

  “Huh. Well, why not?”

  “Would you go back? If you could?”

  “I don’t know. I did my best to put that behind me.”

  Zachary wondered why he never had. He had suppressed other things. Why did he have to keep reliving the fire?

  “Tell me about your kids,” Zachary suggested.

  Tyrrell’s voice was warm as he talked about his kids for a few minutes, telling Zachary about the last time they had visited and what they were each doing in their lives.

  “You miss them,” Zachary said.

  “Of course I do. I see them whenever I can.”

  Zachary didn’t say anything. He couldn’t ask Tyrrell if he would ever choose between his children.

  It had just been a dream.

  It wasn’t about Tyrrell, or his kids, or Burton. It hadn’t been about Zachary missing his siblings or growing up without them. It wasn’t about returning to Bonnie Brown.

  It was just a dream.

  “Good thing none of us were twins,” Tyrrell commented.

  Zachary thought about how difficult it had been for his mother, having so many children so close together. She had never dealt with it well. Zachary could remember the newborns. Tyrrell, Vinny, Mindy. How amazing it had been to look at the new lives that his parents had brought into the world. The overwhelming feeling of potential and of his love for them.