After we finished dinner, Ray and Brandon adjourned to Ray's office to go over the ins and outs of his potential campaign. Ray was clearly not a man who liked changes or surprises, so when he demanded some extra time with Brandon, I wasn't surprised when Brandon gave me an apologetic smile and agreed. Although I still had questions myself and would have loved to take part in the conversation, it was clear that Brandon needed some time alone with his foster father.
So instead, I allowed myself to be steered upstairs to tour the rest of the small house with Susan, who showed me the master bedroom, the bathroom, and the bedroom that had once been Brandon's.
"I'm surprised you kept so much of it intact," I said as I walked around the room curiously.
Half of the room had clearly been converted to a crafting space for Susan. A sewing table was set up next to several large shelving units filled with materials for assorted projects. I had glanced at them briefly, but that sort of thing was like a foreign language to me. Other than my musical abilities, I didn't really have a creative bone in my body.
The other half of the room, however, still looked like the bedroom of a broody teenage boy. The extra-long single bed still had the faded blue-and-white plaid bedding and Star Wars-themed sheets. There was a desk, which Brandon had told me before used to be Ray's in his grad school days, which was piled with the clutter of Brandon's youth: stacks of comic books, sci-fi novels, an old boom-box, and a shelf full of CDs and cassette tapes. Old Red Sox posters hung over the bed, as well as a few pictures of a teenage Brandon in various baseball uniforms.
I smiled as I drifted my fingers over the tapes, lingering on several different Springsteen albums. Brandon had told me the story about how Susan bought it for him when he'd come to live with them. If there was a soundtrack to Brandon's life, it was these tapes.
I turned to Susan. "I feel like I just dropped back in time. Like if I closed my eyes, little Brandon would be right here."
Susan chuckled and touched one of the pictures lovingly. "Well, he wasn't ever little. Already six feet tall when he came to live with us. This was taken that day."
She ran a finger over the edge of a brass-framed photo of the three of them in front of their house: a tall, gangly preteen standing between a much younger Ray and Susan. I leaned in to examine the picture. Brandon's hair was even longer then, reaching nearly to his collar. He looked overly thin, even for that age, all elbows and knees, newly grown shoulders hunched over. He didn't smile in the picture, instead looked at the photographer with a blank, almost desperate stare that was still, even with the lack of focus, penetratingly blue.
"He came after his mother was locked up for the last time," Susan said as she traced his face. "Poor dear. He was so hot and cold. One moment he'd be the angriest thing you ever saw, and the next the absolute sweetest." She sighed. "You should have seen him when I took him to the comic shop for the first time. You would have thought I'd given him a winning lottery ticket, when it was only a few tapes and posters."
"He told me about that trip to Newbury Comics," I said with a smile. "Obviously it meant a lot to him."
Susan nodded, still entranced with the picture. "Oh. Well. He deserved it, the poor boy." She shuddered and looked at me. "Has he told you much about before he came here?"
"A little. About his mom and dad some, and how she died."
Brandon had told me about his mother during one of our first dates. She was a drug addict while his father was an abusive criminal. On more than one stint during his childhood, he'd been removed from her custody when she was deemed unfit to watch him. Three years after he had come to live with the Petersens, she had tried to get back custody one last time. Since Brandon was fifteen and his foster parents were willing to let him stay, the judge had given Brandon his say. He had chosen the Petersens. Two days later, his mother had died of an overdose.
Susan whistled and looked at me with a new appreciation. "Goodness. I didn't think anyone else knew about that except for us and Kieran. I'm not even sure Miranda really knows. Do you know Kieran?"
"She was my mentor in law school. I'm actually starting at her firm after the bar."
"Well, if she vouched for you, that means more to Brandon than just about anything. She's been a really good friend to him over the years. One of his only real ones."
Susan pointed to another photo tacked onto the corkboard over the desk. I followed her finger to a picture of a teenage Brandon and Kieran that must have been taken close to twenty years ago.
In this photo, their skinny arms were around each other's shoulders. It was far sight from the polished, professional appearances both of them maintained in their jobs as two of Boston's best attorneys; Kieran was rocking a nearly shaved, Sinead O'Connor-looking haircut, and wearing a pair of stonewashed jeans and a loose men's shirt. Brandon had filled out quite a bit from the first photo, but still with the long, lithe muscles of a teenager evident even through his baseball uniform and backwards hat. Kieran was making a face at the camera while Brandon was flashing his trademark smile. Both of them, however, had eyes that were much older than your average seventeen-year-old's.
"Were they ever...involved?" I wondered. I had never noticed anything resembling romantic affection when they talked about each other, but Brandon and Kieran clearly cared about each other a great deal.
Susan shook her head. "Oh, no. Only ever friends. Brandon always said Kieran was basically his sister. She didn't have it easy either, poor thing. Single working mom, so she basically raised herself in that neighborhood, from what I understand."
Susan reached across the desk and picked up a picture of Brandon in a baseball uniform and smiled. "When he came to us, the social worker told us he had been abused. Not just by the people who ran the homes he stayed in, but sometimes by the other boys who lived there. He was just getting big enough that he could defend himself against...the worst of them."
I shuddered at the thought of what she was alluding to. "Did he...ever talk about it with anyone?"
Susan smiled sweetly, but there was sadness in her eyes. "Not to us, just a therapist. That was part of the requirements of allowing him to stay. He was very...difficult in the beginning. And it was clear to both Ray and me that he could never meet any of his potential with all that anger in the way."
"Potential like becoming the youngest graduate ever of MIT?"
I was exaggerating a bit, but not by much. It was no secret that despite being angry, Brandon was also a bit of a wunderkind, which was part of why he had attracted Ray's attention in the first place. He's graduated from high school at sixteen and gone straight to MIT, where Ray taught. Yet for all of the academic support his foster father had provided for him, Brandon had never gotten what he truly needed from a parent: love.
"Yes, well," Susan said, not without some bitterness. "I had my reasons for wanting to keep Brandon here, and my husband had his." It seemed that she was somewhat critical of Ray's motives as well.
"Susan?"
She looked up at me with a kind expression that would have put anyone at ease. It was sad that she'd never been able to have children of her own. Susan was the definition of maternal.
"Yes, dear?"
"Why...why didn't you and Ray formally adopt Brandon? After his mom passed, that is?"
She opened and closed her mouth and reached back to adjust the barrette holding her hair back. "I, well, I..." She sighed and gave me a look that screamed guilt. "I wanted to. But by that point, Ray said it would have been a waste of time and money to petition the court. And Brandon, well, he still had a father out there, Skylar."
"You mean the father who used to beat him with household tools?" I asked.
Susan had the decency to look ashamed, and I immediately felt bad. I took a seat on the twin mattress, and she sat down beside me.
"It was different in those days," she said. "If I could go back and change things, I would. But Skylar, dear, Brandon was a very different person at sixteen than he is now. Very angry. Very aloof. Most of the time we barely saw him. There was a time when I was legitimately afraid that he was going to follow both of his family's footsteps."
I looked at the photo of Brandon and Kieran. It was hard to imagine the smiling young man in the picture being angry.
Susan followed my gaze and smiled. "It was Kieran, you know, who put the bug in him to play baseball and keep going to school. He was so very smart, but he used to hang around with the worst kids, always getting into trouble. Luckily, he'd see Kieran there too. And you know Kieran. She won't put up with anyone's nonsense, much less Brandon's." Susan smiled fondly. "A lot like you, actually."
Then she turned serious. "Skylar, Brandon isn't someone who's had a lot of love in his life, even from that godforsaken wife of his." Her petite feature wrinkled momentarily with distaste, but then her eyes twinkled back at me. "I'm so glad to see that he's found someone else who can see just how special he is, and not just for his money or his brains."
She reached out to clasp my hand with her small one, and I squeezed it back.
"You could still do it," I said. "Adopt him, I mean."
Susan chuckled. "Adopt a thirty-seven-year-old man? Can you imagine Ray's response for that?"
I tipped my head from side to side, as if weighing the possibilities. "It's not like you'd have to pay for it. You know enough lawyers now, after all. If you want, I'd take care of all the paperwork for you. I actually specialized in family law, and I work on a bunch of CPS and child custody stuff last quarter with Kieran. This would actually be really easy because Brandon can give his own consent." I paused. "I think it would mean a lot to him."
Susan sat there for a moment, her small hands on mine with a tightened grip. She was quiet, but the spark in her eyes told me she liked the idea. She liked it very much. But instead of agreeing to do it, she just sighed and stood up.
"We'll see," was all she said.
I stood up and followed her out of the room, pausing again to take in some of the more recent photos in the upstairs halls. One in particular caught my eyes: a candid photo of Brandon and Ray at his college graduation. He was maybe twenty, still so young, dressed in a cap and gown, towering over Ray. The photo was taken next to the Charles River, and Ray was looking up at Brandon with something that actually resembled love. Brandon's face, however, was pensive as he looked out over the river toward the Boston skyline beyond him. He was on the precipice, you could tell, of great things, but still kept his arm securely around the aging man at his side. He never stopped caring about the people around him, no matter how they treated him.
"My favorite thing about Brandon isn't his successes. It's his heart," I murmured to Susan. "Once you see that about him, he's just so easy to love."
Beside me, Susan smiled. "That he is, my dear. That he is."
~
"Susan seems a lot younger than Ray," I remarked later, once we had been picked up by another Uber driver to take us back to my apartment in the North End.
It was an easy way to play a shell game with potential spies, we'd decided, so Brandon had sent David driving his fancy Mercedes all over the city so that we wouldn't have to take separate cars home. I had sent a quick text to Eric letting him know we were coming over. In response, I'd received a gif of Roadrunner hightailing away.
Brandon smiled at me, eager to converse. He was obviously conscious of the fact that I was still processing the evening. This was the first thing I'd said since we'd left the Petersens.
"Yeah, she's almost twenty years younger," he replied.
"So that stuff about falling in love and control?"
Brandon snorted. "Oh, it's just a petty jab. Ray has always thought I was too impulsive, that I wear my heart on my sleeve. But Susan was his student. It nearly cost him his career, and he ended up transferring schools just to get away from the department gossip." Brandon chuckled. "And it's not like he was a young, impulsive man. He was two years older than I am now when they met. And married."
I gawked with wide eyes. "And she was..."
"Nineteen," Brandon said. "Sort of makes our age difference seem like nothing, huh?"
"Not to mention makes him a bit of a hypocrite about the whole divorce thing."
I thought bitterly of the multiple times now when Ray had characterized my presence in Brandon's life as little more than a dalliance, someone who would only complicate things even more for him.
Brandon shrugged. "Honestly, I think that's why he's so hard on me. Because he knows what it's like to be stuck between two relationships."
The thought made me tense. I saw the look on Miranda's face when she'd walked in on Brandon and me. It hadn't been the face of someone who had been separated for three years. It had been the face of someone, as Ray put it, who "wasn't having it."
"Are you stuck between us?" I wondered.
Brandon reached into my lap and picked up my hand, then kissed it lightly across the knuckles. He sighed, and the tiny lines around his eyes crinkled.
"I don't want to be." He turned to me then with a solemn expression. "We'll get through it."
I didn't say anything. I still felt somewhat shell-shocked. To be truthful, I often felt that way around Brandon, someone who had the gravity of the sun. But I didn't know how to take all of this. Increasingly it was looking like our relationship was going to be more of an inconvenience than anything else. What kind of political candidate would run for office fresh off a divorce and with a twenty-something girlfriend?
"Skylar," Brandon interrupting my ruminating. "I meant what I said in there. I won't do this without you."
I sat still. I had so many questions, but none of which I was ready to say. What did this mean for us? Would he have to keep me a secret even longer? How would it work if we ended up together for an even longer time...even (and I wasn't ready to consider it yet) marriage? And then there was the matter of my visit to the clinic only a month before...would anyone find out?
"Will I have to give up my career?" I asked finally.
It seemed like the most important point. I had absolutely no desire to be a housewife-turned-politician's wife, dedicated to making babies in order to fulfill the average voter's fantasy of the American nuclear family. That wasn't why I went to law school.
Brandon snorted. "Absolutely not. It's not like Michelle Obama stopped working when her husband ran for office. Hell, by most accounts she was a better lawyer than he was."
"She had to eventually," I pointed out. "She had to be 'mom in chief' when he became president."
The blood drained from my face as I imagined myself chasing kids around the White House, having to watch my speech all the time and constantly have my picture taken.
Brandon tipped his head, then turned to face me. "Listen to me," he said. "I will not do this if you don't want me to, Red. Absolutely not."
"But you want to do it." It wasn't a question.
Brandon shrugged. "I'm intrigued. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Ray sometimes has a point. I could be using my life for something more important. Maybe this is it."
I understood the feeling. I had left a burgeoning career on Wall Street to attend law school in the first place. I still wasn't a hundred percent sure what I wanted to do with my new degree, but passing the bar and keeping my dad out of trouble was a first step. After that...well, I had some other decisions to make.
"I just need time to think about it some more," I said finally.
I turned away and pressed my face against the cold glass of the window. Cambridge flew by as the car wound through the back streets to Boston proper. Beside me, Brandon kept hold of my hand, pressing his fingers into the pads of my palm meditatively.
"All I want is you, Red."
I turned back to find Brandon watching me, blue eyes full of concern. And full of love. The numbness in my heart that had been there since he'd made his massive announcement started to dissolve.
"Do you believe me when I say that?" he asked, reaching his other hand out to cup my cheek.
Instinctually, I leaned into it, closing my eyes as I basked in the feel of his warm palm on my skin. This part was the easy part. When it was just us, skin to skin, face to face. He was so easy to love, and I was learning to accept the fact that he loved me too.
"Yes," I said, without a doubt. "I do." It was just all the other stuff that was so difficult to figure out.
Brandon relaxed, and pulled me into his side so he could cradle me into his chest and stroke my hair.
"Good," he said. Then after a few more seconds, for the second time that night: "Fuck it."
He pulled out his phone and opened the Uber app. He typed in a difference address, then looked to the driver.
"Change of plans, my friend. I've got a new address for you."
~