“He said it, didn’t he?” Maggie replied defensively, even as her conviction began to waver.
“Have you considered for an instant that maybe that’s the only way he can let himself think?” she asked Maggie. “If he lets himself be vulnerable, if he lets himself envision being reunited with his family, what happens if he’s rejected again?”
She let that image sink in before she continued. “Can you imagine what it must have been like for him to be abandoned when he was only nine? It was devastating enough to shape the rest of his life. Can’t you remember how skittish he was just being in the same room with all of us, as if being around a big family scared him to death? It’s only because of your persistence that he’s let the walls around his heart come down at all.”
As she listened to her mother’s interpretation, shame flooded through Maggie. How could she not have seen that, when her mother had grasped it at once? Of course, that was it. This was a way for Ryan to cover emotions far too fragile for him to deal with.
“Go with him this morning,” her mother encouraged. “Don’t let him do this alone. Be there for him no matter how it turns out. He’s taking a first step, Maggie. And he may say he’s only doing it for you and for all sorts of practical reasons, but he’s doing it for himself, as well. Whether he admits it or not, there has to have been an empty place inside him all these years. He’s about to reach out and try to mend at least some of the hurt. That must be a very scary thing to a man whose heart’s been broken the way his has been. Some people never truly recover from deep childhood hurts.”
“You’re right,” Maggie said. “I’m the one who’s been an idiot. What time did Father Francis say he was going over there? Can I still make it?”
“He said Ryan had left a message saying he’d be there at ten. Here’s the address. You should have just enough time, if you hurry.” She smiled. “He’s a good man, Maggie.”
“I know that. I think I was just expecting him to be a saint.” She recalled what Ryan had said to her the night they’d first met, that he wasn’t the man Father Francis was likely to make him out to be. If only she’d listened then, perhaps her expectations wouldn’t have been so unreasonable.
Ryan had so many qualms about going through with this meeting that he’d almost turned right around and driven back home a half dozen times. It was the prospect of facing Father Francis’s disappointment—and Maggie’s, assuming she ever started speaking to him again—that kept him going until he reached the street on which Sean’s apartment was located.
It was in an older neighborhood, where brownstones had been converted into multifamily dwellings. It wasn’t exactly shabby, but it wasn’t an area that had been gentrified either. Even so, it was head and shoulders above the neighborhood they’d lived in as kids.
He spotted Sean’s building, drove around the block, then found a parking space just down the street. But once he’d cut the engine, he couldn’t seem to make himself leave the car.
Suddenly he was awash in memories.
Because they’d been the oldest, barely two years apart, he and Sean had been best friends. Sean had been his shadow from the moment he learned to walk. He’d even insisted Ryan walk with him on his first day of school, rather than their mother, because he hadn’t wanted to look like a baby. They’d played baseball together at the small park down the street. Ryan had taught him to ride the secondhand bike he’d managed to buy from a church thrift store with the pocket change he’d earned by helping elderly neighbors carry their groceries or wash their cars.
None of that had changed when Michael came along. Ryan and Sean had welcomed their new brother, waiting impatiently until he was old enough to go with them everywhere. They were brothers, and that’s what brothers did.
But when the twins were born, everything changed. They were fussier babies, and the mere fact that there were two of them in a an increasingly crowded apartment added to the tension. Tempers flared more often. Ryan couldn’t count the number of evenings he and Sean had fled from the apartment in tears because of the shouting between his parents. Michael, too little to follow, had huddled in his bed and cried just as hard as the babies.
In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised when their family collapsed under the weight of all that stress. But coming home after school to an empty apartment, standing inside the deserted rooms with Sean’s hand tucked in his, had been a shock.
They’d been there only moments when the neighbor caring for Michael came in with him in tow, her face pale and tears welling up in her eyes. She’d still been trying to explain that their parents had disappeared with the twins when the social worker arrived to take over.
They’d gone to an emergency foster care home together that first night. Michael had finally cried himself out and fallen asleep, but Ryan and Sean had huddled together in bed, whispering, trying to make sense of what had happened, trying desperately not to be afraid.
They hadn’t been allowed to go back to their old school, which was across town. Instead, while the social worker tried to locate their parents, they had waited, terrified to ask what would happen if their parents weren’t found.
The memory of what happened next was burned forever into Ryan’s brain. The social worker had lined them all up on the sofa in the foster family’s living room and explained that for now they were going to be wards of the state, that they would be going to new families who would care for them until all the legal issues could be resolved.
Ryan
