CHAPTER 47
CARTER
He was under his bed, and really, who could blame him? I’d be under my bed too. I shut the door behind me and sat on the floor. It was cleaner in here than his workroom, but I still had to move a couple of books and a wool cap out of the way.
“Hey. How are you under there?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” His disembodied voice came clearly from under the bed. He’d pushed art supplies and a box of clothes he’d outgrown from under it.
“Okay.”
“The only way I’m getting an A on this project is if I make stuff up. So either I can go all in and say my mother is Diana Prince from Amazonia and she was sculpted from clay by Queen Hippolyta, or I can go with plausible deniability.”
“Is that the same as lying?”
“We talked about verisimilitude in humanities.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means truthy. Like truthiness. Just that. A truthy tree. I just need an A, and that means I just need truthiness and for you to sign it.”
It sounded a lot like lying, but I’d put him in a terrible spot. There was no way he could digest what he’d just learned and get an A on his family tree project at the same time.
Not that it mattered. What I observed as a cop is that people who experience trauma will get stuck on what they were doing right before the event. A woman attacked on the way to the grocery store will worry about how the attack is keeping her fridge empty.
“Here’s what you need to do. Keep the project the way it is. It’s mostly true anyway. Or it’s the truth as you’ve known it.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. I lay on the floor with my cheek to the rug. He was facing me, the light from his watch shining on his tear-streaked face. He looked like a toddler again with smooth skin and rounded features, crying over a cookie or a missed nap. When I first took him in, I thought he’d always be that small, that easy to guard. I never planned for the inevitable. Mom told me it would happen. My nephew would get older and wiser, the march of information would pass, and he’d see what I’d hidden from him.
“I can’t figure it out. She had the name Kincaid before you were married? Or together? Is that a coincidence? And who was that George guy?”
“Genevieve was my sister. George was your biological father.”
I never doubted my decision to wipe his first years clean until he looked at me from under the bed with his cheek squished against the floor and an Obi-Wan Kenobi above his head. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I wasn’t. Not really. I was uncomfortable and sympathetic, but given the choice, I would have done the same thing. I just would have done it better.
“I wanted to protect you.”
“From what?”
It was a good question. The only question. But the answer would hurt him the most. If I told him he’d been there and I didn’t want him to remember, would that trigger the memories?
I took three seconds to think about it, but Phin didn’t have time for that. He went right to the next thing.
“Is the guy coming? The one who . . . did it?”
“No. He killed himself.”
“Does he have any kids? Is his mom mad? I don’t want them to find us.”
“Phin . . .”
“I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I don’t care about the project. I don’t want to hand it in tomorrow. What if someone sees through it? What if they know? They’ll come and find us. Grandma’s here too, and if someone kills her, then, oh . . .”
He broke down into a fugue of panic.
I reached for him. His eyes were huge, just like his mother’s.
“The man who killed your mother had a nice family. They don’t want to hurt you. They feel very sorry about what he did. You are safe.”
“Then why did you want to protect me? From what?”
“Did anything you saw jog a memory?” I didn’t want to ask because I was afraid of the answer, but if he remembered, he’d need help coping.
“No.”
He was telling the truth. I knew him at least that well.
“I’m protecting you from your memories. There were things . . .” How far was I going to go? Was I going to tell him everything? “I don’t want you to remember the day you lost your mother.”
“But maybe I want to remember her.”
“You saw some pictures on the computer. Did you recognize her?”
“She’s on the show with the purple house.”
“I have a box of things from her. We can talk, and you can see if you remember the good things.”
“What’s in it?”
I hadn’t looked at it since the day Phin called me Dad and I didn’t correct him. A month after the murder of his biological parents, he’d struggled to figure it out by placing the mantle of “father” on me, and I took it. His father hadn’t been around much, and I’d played that role as long as he could remember.
“Some pictures. A bracelet. An Emmy.”
“She won an Emmy?”
“Yeah. Her residual checks pay for your school.”
That held no meaning for him. I was trying to show him how she was still in his life, taking care of him, but I’d already tried to wipe her clean. Bringing her back would take more effort.
“So you’re really my uncle?”
The term felt like a slap in the face. I’d been thinking of him as my son for so long, I’d forgotten he wasn’t. More than forgotten. This wasn’t a slip of the mind; it was a change of heart. Uncles were nice, but the term didn’t fit me and Phin.
“The minute you came into my life, you were mine. I want you to know that. When you were a baby, your dad walked away from your mom. I changed your diapers and kissed your feet, same as any father. When your mother and father died, you became mine. I’ve never thought of you as anything less than my son. So I don’t care how the blood flows. You’re everything I ever wanted in a little boy, and now that you’re almost a man, I’m as proud of you as any father. That’s the end of it. You’re my son. I won’t take anything less.”
He still fit under the bed, and his eyes were as big and green as a child’s, but he was becoming a man. The wonder drained out of him every day. No matter what his hormones did, he was almost grown. I couldn’t tell him what to think.
“If you don’t want to call me Dad anymore, I understand. But you can’t call me Uncle Carter.”
His nod was horizontal against the carpet.
“Maybe you can do what Grandma thinks everyone should do. Call me by my first name.”
The hurt of my own words cut deep. My mother wanted to deny her age. I was giving Phin the option of denying my relationship with him. It was his choice, and he had the power to wound me.
He untucked his hand and held his fist out to me. I bumped it, then laid my hand over his. He closed his eyes. I thought he was thinking, but his back rose and fell slowly. He’d fallen asleep, as he often did when he was overwhelmed.
I got up and went downstairs. Emily was asleep on the couch. I put a blanket over her, tucking it around the edges, making sure it covered her beat-up dancer’s toes.
I was sure everything was ruined. Whatever she and I had almost been to each other, it was over. Who would want to be with me? A man who lied to a child. Stole him away from his mother’s memory. Bad enough I needed Phin’s forgiveness. What would she think of my life and lies?
With Phin coming to know the truth and Emily sleeping on my sofa, I knew my life had taken a hard pivot. I wished I knew which direction it had turned.