“Tommy.” Peter’s voice was ragged and thick, and I turned toward him with my mouth hanging open. My eyes burning.

“The picture—” My voice cracked all over the place, like a window hit with a sledgehammer.

“That’s me and my wife. And our daughter.”

“Tell me that’s not my—” I looked down at the spots of blood Pest had left on the counter. I couldn’t even say the word. “Tell me that’s not who I think it is.”

“My daughter, Amelia.” I flinched. “She is… or was… your mother.”

It was, in a way, like opening that door to the office again. I tried not to see. Not to notice. Not to feel. But there were no defenses against something so big. Something so painful. It was a stone rolling over me, flattening everything.

“My mother.” I said the words, but they were only words. My brain was broken.

“That’s our last picture of her. She gave birth to you three days later and ran away six months after that, and we never saw her again. Or you.”

I couldn’t look at him. I could barely stand up.

“I’m sure…I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” Peter said, walking out of the darker hallway into the brighter kitchen, and I recoiled, stepped back so fast I hit the fridge.

“You’re my grandfather?” I asked. I mean, it was obvious. But I couldn’t grasp it.

Peter nodded, standing at the edge of the light from the kitchen, the white first-aid kit in his hand. Frozen, waiting for my permission in his own house.

I thought, I swear to God I thought I didn’t care anymore. If you’d asked me, I would have said I didn’t give a shit. My grandparents giving up their rights and turning me over to the state—it was an old wound that no longer hurt.

But I was flooded with anger. An anger so sharp it sliced.

Pest whimpered, and I realized I was squeezing her.

“Give me the first-aid kit,” I said, not looking at him. Not knowing how to look at him.

The white plastic box with the red lettering slid in front of me on the counter, and I knew he was standing on the other side of that counter. Close enough I could punch him.

I tried to open the plastic case with one hand, Pest cradled against me with the other, but it wasn’t working. I picked it up and jerked it and it didn’t open. I smashed it down on the kitchen counter.

I saw his old-man hands reach over and pop the latches, opening the case.

My grandfather.

“Alcohol swab?” he asked in a quiet voice. I nodded, wondering if he felt shame. Wondering if I gave a shit if he did.

He tore it open for me and handed it over, and I made fucking sure our hands didn’t touch. I still wasn’t looking at him.

“When the social worker found us, told us about you being in custody of the state—”

I ignored him, instead cleaning up the last of the blood around Pest’s puncture wound. At the sting of the alcohol she tried to jump out of my arms, but I held her and got the grit out of the wound.

“My wife, Betsey, she had stage-four stomach cancer.” I didn’t want to hear his voice cracking. I didn’t want to hear his reasons for signing a piece of paper that said he didn’t want me.

“I don’t care.”

“I’m sorry, son, but I think you’re lying.”

That made me look at him. Eyes burning, chest heaving. “Do not call me son. I’m nothing to you. You made sure of that.”

He nodded, swallowed. “I did,” he whispered.

I stepped away from the kitchen counter to get to the back door, but he shifted into my way.

“Are you suicidal?” I asked. I could break him with one punch. Drop him without any effort. Step over his unconscious body to get to my truck and get the fuck off this mountain.

“I look at you and I see how I hurt you. I see how Amelia hurt you. I see how everyone has hurt you. You’re bruised, son. And I can see it. Everyone can see it.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“I’d give anything to change that. To undo what I did to you.”

“You can’t,” I snapped. “And it doesn’t matter what you think you see in me. I don’t care.”

“Please, Tommy—” His blue eyes… my mother’s blue eyes, my fucking blue eyes… “Let me try to explain—”

“I don’t give a shit about your explanations. Or your reasons. They change nothing. They mean nothing. I grew up without you. Your daughter died without you.”

He looked away, chin shaking. He wiped a shaking hand over his mouth.

Good, I thought.

“She was ill. Your mom. Mentally—”

“Fuck you.”

He sighed, hung his head. “We were constantly battling her, and drugs, and men who wanted to hurt her, and friends who wanted to use her. We tried… we tried. Betsey—” His voice broke wide open on a hard sob, and I didn’t care.

I didn’t.

“My wife, she tried so hard to keep that girl with us. To keep her in our lives. To keep her safe. But Amelia didn’t care. She was so fun and so bright, but she could be so mean.”

I had no sympathy for this man who with one stroke of his pen signed my life over to one of dread and stress and fear. None.

But the woman he was describing. That was my mom.

I remembered that. Bright and fun but so, so mean.

She didn’t care about being safe. Didn’t care about me being safe.

She cared about the man treating her right. And the drugs that made her feel good.

That part I recognized, and it made me even more pissed. Because I wanted to believe, so hard, so deep in my gut that something this asshole did had caused that in her.

Nurture not nature.

“So?” I asked. “What did you do to her? What made her like that?”

If I’d punched him in his old-man face, I couldn’t have hurt him more. I saw it. For a split second the raw, open wound of his relationship with my mother was there—visible. But he shuttered it fast.

“I was too hard on her,” he said. “I wasn’t kind when I needed to be kind. I… I think I made her feel like she didn’t ever do anything right. That I wasn’t proud of her.”

“That doesn’t sound like she was mentally unwell. It sounds like shitty parenting.”

“She was bipolar. Diagnosed when she was sixteen and she tried to commit suicide—”

I jerked. Both of us held still in the aftermath of that word.

“You didn’t know?”

“I was eight when she died. We didn’t get to that conversation.”

“For a while she was better. Medicated. But she didn’t like the meds. They made her feel flat. That’s the word she used, flat. So she went off them. Started drinking. Drugs. We fought…we fought all the time. And then she came home pregnant. And she was clean again. On her meds again. She was—”

“Normal?” I snapped, hating the word and knowing he was thinking it.

“What’s normal? We certainly never tried to be that. We tried to be caring. We tried to give her boundaries.”

I just stepped away, turning as if to leave, and he put a hand up to stop me.

“She was happy. We thought. Pregnant with you, we thought she was happy. And then you were born and this house… I swear this house was brand-new. All of us were brand-new with you. You lived with us for six months,” he said in a rush, stepping forward again. “You were the sweetest baby. All eyes and smiles. Tiny.” He held out his hand, his great big palm stretched open. “I could hold you here.” He pointed at his palm with his other hand. “For hours. Right there… and then you were gone.”

“Yeah, fuck that, asshole.”

He flinched at the vulgarity and I remembered my mom had a mouth on her and I imagined her screaming that at him in this house.

Part of me felt small. Part of me, on the other side of being a teenager, felt… bad.

“When the social worker showed up on our door about you, Betsey was dying. And I couldn’t…”

“Yeah, I get it. You couldn’t take anything else on. I totally understand. Like a pet, right? Or watering a neighbor’s plants or some shit. I mean, I was just too much.”

He took my sarcasm on the chin. Like he deserved it, and he did, so I just stared at him.

“She was dying,” he said. “And it was ugly and it was painful and I wanted to die with her. I’d screwed up with Amelia, and I couldn’t imagine bringing you into our life so I could screw you up too. The social worker said you were in a good house. Your first foster home.”

I couldn’t remember the timeline. I was just a kid, after all. Maybe I was in a safe place and that was why they signed the paperwork. But it didn’t last.

Nothing ever does.

“Those were my reasons,” he said. “They’re… they’re not good. I know that. But that’s why I signed the paper. I thought you were in a safe place. A good place.”

“I was beaten; did you know that? My back, my ass, the palms of my hands—” I held one out like a sick parody of what he’d done just a few seconds before. He had the good sense to close his hands and tuck them into fists in his pockets.

“Do you know what happened to us at St. Joke’s? What happened to Beth?”

The second I said her name, it was like there was a whole new level of betrayal. Like I was standing on a porch thinking, wow, this is such shit, but I wasn’t aware of the giant house made of betrayal behind me.

“Beth,” I breathed, nearly doubling over with the pain of it all.

“Tommy,” Peter said, suddenly stern. Suddenly all guard dog.

“She knew. She… she came and found you when she ran away, didn’t she? Oh my God.” I put my body against the counter because my legs felt too weak to hold me up.

I’d told her that I had grandparents. Who owned a farm.

“She came looking for us after she ran away from her mother. But Betsey was long dead and it was only me and she just wanted… I think… to be close to you. Somehow.”

“She’s been lying to me for days,” I said.

Lying while I’d been thinking about a life. A love.

Lying. About this.

“Don’t be mad at her,” Peter said.

“Tommy?” It was Beth outside, calling for me.

And I felt my heart rip right in half.