The Long and Winding Road

by T. J. Klune

  She only nods furiously, refusing to let him go.

  He hasn’t talked to her in close to a year.

  He’d only been with her fifteen minutes max.

  But here they are like they’ve known each other all their lives.

  I don’t know how I feel about that.

  “Stacey’s on her way,” Dom murmurs from next to me, Ben in his arms. “How’d it go?”

  “As good as it could have,” Otter says quietly.

  I shake my head. “Better than that. He’s… calmer. Than he was before. Even at Christmas, there was still that edge to him. But he’s… different.”

  Dominic snorts. “I wouldn’t go that far. I just spent a week in the car with him. He still talks as much as he always has. He’s jittery and can’t focus on one topic before jumping onto another.”

  “But you follow him,” I say.

  “Always,” Dom says, sounding fond. “He’s like that little ant. Helmholtz Watson. It’s inevitable, you know.”

  I don’t know exactly what he means, but I nod anyway. “It’s… good. I think. He’s good.”

  “She looks like you. The both of you.”

  I sigh. “I know. Like, there’s absolutely no question she’s a McKenna. We all have different fathers, but… I don’t know. It’s weird.”

  He chuckles quietly. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Say what you will about Julie McKenna, but she made some pretty people.”

  “Ha,” I say to Otter. “I told you I’m the pretty one.”

  “And you never hear me disagreeing with that,” Otter says.

  And then things get a little weird.

  Ty sets Izzie down, and she wipes her eyes furiously. She’s obviously embarrassed, glancing at the rest of us gawking at her, flushing brightly and staring down at her feet. Ty rubs the top of her head, and she’s tense but allows it for some reason. After I’d found her on the porch of the Green Monstrosity—after that initial hug—she’d been wary of Otter and me. Not because of anything we’d done. No, she’d looked exactly like I remember myself looking anytime I saw my reflection after she left. She looked exactly like the Kid did almost the entire time we were in New Hampshire. She’d made herself hard and stony, not letting anyone see weakness.

  And here she is, having cried for the second time in the space of a few hours.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if she acted like a little shit for the rest of the day.

  I wouldn’t blame her if she does.

  But all that gets pushed to the side when Ty says, “Who’re you?”

  And Megan Ridley says, “Hi. Hello, you must be Tyson. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Ty takes Izzie by the arm and pulls her behind him, like he’s shielding her from Megan, and it’s ridiculous, it really is, because Megan is literal sunshine. She’s bright and funny and radiant, and she’s smiling at him, though it’s starting to falter a little.

  “Did you bring her here?” Ty asks, voice a little harsh. “How are you related to her? You don’t get to hurt her, you hear me? You don’t get to—”

  “Tyson,” Otter snaps.

  Voices die in the kitchen as everyone starts to listen in.

  The Kid looks back at us, eyes narrowed. “Who is she?”

  I’m shocked to the point of speechlessness, so Otter says, “She has nothing to do with Izzie. And you should consider watching your tone with her. You’ve never been rude like this, so don’t think of starting now.”

  This is the absolute worst possible time to be getting turned on. But Otter parenting is apparently a kink of mine, so there’s really nothing I can do about that. I want him to whisper dad jokes in my ear.

  “Bear?” Ty asks me.

  “Right,” I say roughly, forcing myself to look at the Kid rather than climb my husband like a tree. I need to be serious right now and not think about Otter grounding our future children because they’d talked back to us, and then later, I’d ground the fuck out of him—

  “Oh god,” Ty groans. “He’s doing that thing. Bear, gross. Stop it.”

  “What thing?” Izzie asks. “Why is his face all red?”

  Dom takes a step away from me, Ben’s head on his shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” I say with a glower, even though I can feel the smugness just radiating from Otter.

  “There are children present,” Ty says. “God, man, have you no shame?”

  “Is this a sex thing?” Izzie asks. “Because if it is, I never want that to happen to me. It looks terrible.”

  “That’s our baby momma,” I blurt out, trying to get the attention off me. “I knocked her up real good with my superhuman sperm.”

  Otter sighs next to me, like he’s extraordinarily put out. He can be such a drama queen sometimes.

  The Kid’s eyes bulge. “She’s your what?”

  “Surprise,” I say, doing jazz hands for reasons I don’t quite understand.

  “Is this what it’s normally like here?” Izzie asks him. “Because if it is, I know what I want to do my thesis on when I get to college.” At least she isn’t crying anymore.

  “You did what?” Ty demands, like he’s starting to get a little angry.

  “I didn’t actually sleep with her,” I say, trying to defuse the situation. “She’s our surrogate.”

  His face stutters a little bit. “Your surrogate. Since when?”

  “I’m twenty-two weeks along,” Megan says cheerfully, like she’s completely incapable of reading a room. Which, to be fair, she probably is. I told Otter after we’d met with her for the second time that I thought she lived in a bubble where everything was perfect and wonderful all the time and that I assumed she skipped everywhere she went.

  “Yeah,” Otter had said. “I think she’ll do too.”

  Because he’d known exactly what I was trying to say. She’s just… happy, one of those people with the very rare quality of never letting anything get them down. It should be annoying, but it works for her. Add in the fact that she’s essentially giving us everything we could have asked for, and Otter and I practically worship the ground she walks on. I’ve never seen her upset or angry about anything.

  And even now, in the face of an awkwardly tense moment, she’s smiling and earnest, like she doesn’t care (or possibly get) that this might end up being one gigantic clusterfuck of a situation.

  “Six months,” the Kid repeats. “You’ve known about this for almost six months. And when were you planning on telling me?”

  “Today,” Otter says calmly. “We were planning on telling everyone today. No one knew, Kid, aside from Megan, Bear, and me.”

  “And you thought it’d be a good idea to invite her here now?” the Kid asks incredulously. “With everything that’s happening?”

  “Tyson,” Dom warns. “You might want to take a step back and cool off.”

  “Actually,” I say, grinding my teeth together. “Megan, can you do me a favor and take Izzie into the kitchen? I think JJ didn’t eat all the cookies, and I’m pretty sure Izzie would want one. Dom, can you help them out?”

  Dom looks like he’s going to argue, but Otter shakes his head at him, and he sighs, hoisting Ben a little higher. “Mustelidae,” Ben mutters in that flat voice of his. “Ursidae.”

  “That’s right,” Dom says quietly, kissing his son on the forehead. “That’s Mustelidae and Ursidae.”

  Otter pushes past the Kid and helps Megan to her feet. She smiles gratefully at him. “It’s only going to get better from here,” she says. “Ankles swollen, stretch marks, the whole nine yards. You guys are gonna love it.”

  “We’ll talk in a little bit,” Otter says. “And I apologize for Tyson’s rudeness. He knows better than that.”

  “It’s okay,” Megan says, patting Otter’s arm. “It’s a lot, I know. Twins will do that to anyone. I mean, look how you guys reacted.”

  “Twins?” the Kid says, voice high-pitched.

  “Oops,” Megan says. “That was my bad.”

  “I need a pen
and paper,” Izzie says, staring at Megan. “I have to start taking research notes. I mean, I already have a vague idea how I’m going to argue my thesis, but it’s best if I start preparing now.”

  “You can use my tablet,” Otter tells her. “It should be in the kitchen next to the pile of mail.”

  She gapes at him. “You have a tablet? I’ve never gotten to use one before. We couldn’t afford—” She blanches and averts her eyes. “I’ve just never gotten to use one before.”

  “You can use it all you want,” Otter reassures her. “Ask Creed for the password. It’s already set up on the Wi-Fi too. Just don’t be looking up anything you shouldn’t.”

  She rolls her eyes, looking so much like the Kid that my heart breaks a little. “Please. I have better things to do than to look up pornography.”

  I choke a little at that.

  Megan holds out her hand toward Izzie, but for a moment, the Kid looks like he’s not going to let her go. Then Dom clears his throat pointedly, and Ty grumbles a little under his breath but drops Izzie’s hand.

  “We could look up some baby stuff,” Megan tells her as she pulls her toward the kitchen.

  “Oh my god,” I hear Izzie say. “You are such a girl.”

  “You’re going to listen to them, okay?” Dom tells Ty. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

  Tyson ignores him, choosing instead to scowl at his feet.

  “Tyson,” Dom says sharply.

  He sighs and looks up. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  Dom nods. “I expect you to be calm and levelheaded about this, you get me? This isn’t about you, so don’t try and make it that way.”

  The Kid nods tightly.

  Dom lingers for a moment longer before heading toward the kitchen, where conversation has resumed. They were speaking loudly, like they were trying to give us as much privacy as possible. I appreciated it, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  Otter’s watching me, waiting for me to start. I know he’s going to follow my lead, and I appreciate the hell out of him for that. I’m angry, and rightly so, but I don’t want to open my mouth until I can be sure I won’t say anything I can’t take back. I may still talk too much, and ninety-five percent of what comes out of my mouth is still bullshit, but I’m not that same person I was the days when we lived in that shitty apartment with the splintered steps. When I’d worked at the grocery store, worrying about how we were going to pay rent or if the piece of crap car I’d had would start or if I would open the door one day and she’d be standing there, saying that she was sorry and she was ready to come back and could I get her a couple of fingers of Jack? Two ice cubes, because that’s how she liked it. And were there any smokes left? They’d probably be stale, but she’d still smoke them. It’d be fine.

  And you worried, it whispers. Didn’t you? You worried that you’d fuck him up more than he already was. Because even back then, even before she left, you knew he wasn’t normal. And what were you going to do about it? Oh, that’s right! You were going to leave him with her. Do you remember that, Bear? You had plans. You were going to go off to college with your bright eyes and your big dreams, and you were going to leave him behind. Would you have felt bad about it? Maybe. But that relief you would have felt would have eclipsed it. Right? And when you’d come back to visit, you’d feel bad, you really, really would, but then you’d remember that you got to leave again, and you’d feel better. How different things could have been!

  I couldn’t do this here. The room felt too warm, the murmur of the voices in the kitchen too loud.

  “Bear?” Otter asks, and he sounds a little worried.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. “Let’s go out back.”

  He nods and reaches out to take my hand. I squeeze it gratefully, letting it ground me. It’s familiar, this, and I take it for all that it is.

  There’s a sliding door out the living room that leads to a side yard that wraps around to the back. There used to be a chain-link fence that surrounded the house, a cheap thing that shook and rattled when it was windy. Otter had gotten rid of it a long time ago, replacing it with a six-foot-tall wooden fence. Our neighbors had tried to give us shit, but Otter had glared at them, crossing his arms over his chest. They hadn’t said much after that.

  There’s a deck in the back that Otter, Ty, Dom, and I built one long, hot summer when the Kid was thirteen years old. We hadn’t known exactly what we were doing, and it was determined rather early on that I should never hold a hammer for any reason, but it’d turned out better than we had hoped. There were even steps that led down to stepping stones in the grass. One night, not so very long ago, Otter and I were in bed on our sides, facing each other, heads on the same pillow. We’d been whispering back and forth, and I’d been trying to get him to tell me what was on his mind because there was something, when he finally admitted that he couldn’t wait until our kid was big enough so he could build a playground in the backyard for him. Maybe a tree house. And a tire swing hanging underneath. “You think that’d be okay?” he’d asked me almost shyly. “You think they’d like that?”

  “Yeah,” I’d whispered hoarsely, wondering again how I’d gotten so fucking lucky. “Yeah, Otter. That sounds fine. They’ll love it.”

  But that’s for later.

  Now there are balloons tied along the railings to the deck and streamers fluttering in the breeze that tastes of salt. Seagulls are calling from somewhere, the sky above covered in thin clouds, pale blue poking through in bits and pieces.

  There’s a large table set up on the deck and another one on the grass below. The ends of the tablecloths sway back and forth, and another banner for Tyson is hung on the back of the Green Monstrosity.

  “Welcome home,” I say, unable to keep from sounding bitter.

  The guilty look on the Kid’s face should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. “You did this all for me?” he asks, hands trailing along the deck railing, and it’s like he’s a kid again, a vegetarian ecoterrorist-in-training Kid again, staring in awe at a jumping castle, tugging on my fingers and asking if this was all for him, if everyone was here for him.

  “We did,” Otter says, and I can see everyone moving around the kitchen through the glass doors off the deck. They’re pointedly ignoring us, though I see them all taking turns sneaking a peek out at us. Izzie’s sitting on the counter, feet dangling, tongue pressed between her teeth in concentration as her fingers fly over the tablet. “You were coming home. Of course we’d do this for you.”

  His shoulders slump, just a little. “I—I just….”

  And maybe I’m angrier than I think I am, because I say, “I’ve done everything for you,” and it comes out flat and cool.

  He winces a little, picking at one of the streamers. “I know.”

  “Do you? Because sometimes I don’t know that you do. Every decision I’ve made, every choice that has been put before me, I’ve always thought about you, even if it had nothing to do with you. You were always there. And that was okay for a long, long time. Because we made a promise to each other that it was always going to be you and me.”

  He shakes his head. “Maybe not the best promise to make.”

  “Maybe. Because it can’t always be just you and me. We would have never survived that way. And it wouldn’t have been fair to you. Or to me.”

  “I get that,” he says, and his voice has an edge to that. “I know you think I’m just a kid, but I get that, Bear.”

  “Do you? Because here we are, and for one of the first times in my life, I’ve made a major decision for myself and for Otter, and yet within seconds, you started giving me shit for it.”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t kept it from me,” he says, and yeah, maybe he’s got a point, but that’s not what this is about. I know him too well to take his bullshit.

  “So what if we did?” Otter says.

  The Kid jerks his head up sharply, looking incredulous. “So what? Are you being serious right now?”

  “It doesn’t involve you,�
� Otter says. “Or rather, it’s not about you. You knew we were going to do this. We made that clear to you last year. And you told us that you were happy for us. That you were okay with it. So what changed?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Otter. Maybe it’s the fact that I come home and my mother’s dead and my little sister is here and you’re fucking pregnant with twins.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” Otter reassures him. “Megan is. I thought that was obvious.”

  The Kid sputters at him, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing maniacally.

  “You’re not funny,” the Kid says. “I’m serious.”

  “Hi, Serious. I’m Otter.”

  I laugh but cover it up by coughing up a lung.

  I can see the Kid’s lips quirking just a little, but he’s trying to hold on to his anger. “Is this going to be a thing for you now? Dad jokes? Because if it is, I’m moving back to New Hampshire. I swear to god.”

  “Yeah,” Otter says, scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t know why I keep doing that.”

  “It’s the hormones,” I tell them both. “Otter tells dad jokes, and I have to buy things with elephants on them. Megan is infecting us all.”

  The Kid sighs. “I’m an asshole.”

  “A little.”

  “I just… it’s—ugh. I just don’t like it when things change.”

  “Kicking and screaming into the future as always,” Otter says.

  “I just wish you’d told me.”

  “I get that,” I say. “But what we wanted was for you to focus on yourself, which was the whole reason for you going to New Hampshire to begin with. You made that choice, and we respected that—”

  “Bullshit you did. You let the air out of one of the tires on the SUV the night before I left and said I’d just have to stay.”

  “—respected your choice, because we knew it was the right thing for you. And think about how you’re acting now, okay? Because yes, you are being an asshole, but at least you’re here and being an asshole to our faces instead of across the country. I can deal with it here. I can see you. I can yell at you. I don’t have to wonder what’s going on while I was here and you were there. We didn’t tell you because again, we were thinking of you. Even when we were making a decision for ourselves, we were still thinking of you. If anything, you’re the one being unfair here. This is supposed to be good. This is what we want.”