The Long and Winding Road

by T. J. Klune

  “And it’s not going to change everything,” Otter says.

  The Kid snorts. “Yeah, I don’t believe that.”

  “Okay,” Otter says. “Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. But you? Us? That’s not going to change. You mean exactly the same. Nothing is going to take away from that. No one ever could.”

  The Kid rolls his eyes, like he thinks Otter’s full of shit, but I can see it, on his face and in the way he’s holding himself. When you spend half your life monitoring every little expression, every little tic because you’re worried that something bad could happen, you recognize things for what they are. Because Otter has nailed it exactly. Things are changing. And that’s what the Kid is worried about.

  “You’re fucking stupid,” I tell him, instead of saying something nicer.

  Otter says, “Bear—”

  “Excuse me?” Ty asks, eyebrows climbing.

  “No. That’s what this is about. You’re being fucking stupid. We’re not leaving you behind, you idiot. We’re not going to love you any fucking less just because we’re having a kid—”

  “Two kids,” Otter reminds me.

  “Two kids,” I say and try desperately not to let that overwhelm me. “This is your home too, and it always will be.”

  “And Izzie?” he asks, deflecting like an expert. “What about her?”

  “What about her?”

  “Is this her home too?”

  I blink. “Well. Yeah. It’s….” I squint over at Otter. “Are we having three children now?”

  Otter grins crookedly. “Just getting that now, are you?”

  “I don’t…. Are you fucking shitting me?”

  “Oh boy,” the Kid says. “Here we go.”

  “You know what?” I huff a breath out my nose. “No. Not even going to worry about that right now, because if I start to think about the fact that there is a little girl in our house with nowhere else to go, then I will probably start to freak out even more than I already am. So. No. Not even concerned. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  They don’t look like they believe me.

  I hate them both. “I am. So yes. Izzie will stay here, and we’ll figure it out. There’s a woman inside that I’ve knocked up with my super jizz—”

  “Do you have to keep saying it like that?” Otter asks with a wince. “Because you really don’t have to keep saying it like that.”

  “And we’re having twins now, so yes. This is your home, and our home, and Izzie’s home, and home to Thing One and Thing Two—”

  “Absolutely not going to call them that,” Otter says. “So let’s stop it now.”

  “—and it’ll be fine.”

  The Kid nods. “Except.”

  I shake my head. “No. No except. You take your except and you shove it.”

  “Except this is a three-bedroom house,” Otter says, picking up on what the Kid was going for. “And we’ve already made a nursery.”

  “That better not have been my room,” the Kid says with a scowl. “I had so many important things in there.”

  “Bullshit you did,” I say. “You don’t need a PETA handbook from 2002. Or that poster of Anderson Cooper I caught you kissing when you were twelve.”

  “You swore we’d never talk about that again!”

  “I lied!”

  “I was practicing.”

  “For who?”

  “Dom,” he says smugly. “And look at where that got me.”

  “This is your fault,” I tell Otter.

  “How is it my fault?”

  “You bought him that poster! If you hadn’t, he’d probably still be a virgin!”

  “Um, no,” the Kid says. “Corey saw to that.”

  “I am going to murder him.”

  “He’s not going to murder him,” Otter says. “He’s all talk. Most of the time.”

  “I bet there are plenty of places to hide a body in the desert,” I say. “Like oodles of places. And then I’d—wait, how is Corey, by the way?”

  The Kid shrugs. “Good. We thought we were going to see each other over spring break, but that weird guy Paul he’s friends with was getting married, so he stayed there for that. Maybe I’ll go see him before I have to go back to school in the fall.”

  I blank a little on the name. “Paul? Isn’t he the one you don’t want me to meet for reasons you won’t explain to me?”

  “It’s for the safety of the world,” Ty says solemnly. “Trust me. It’s better for all of us.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why would—what the hell are we even talking about? What was the point of this?”

  “The Kid was being an asshole,” Otter says dutifully. “And we’re having twins. And Izzie. And not enough room in the house.”

  “I’ll keep you,” I say, just because Otter sometimes needs to be reassured. And then—“Is it weird that I’m not sad right now? Because I don’t know if I am.”

  The Kid knows. “About her.”

  “Yeah. Are you?”

  He hesitates before shaking his head. “I—don’t know. I don’t know that I’ve processed it yet.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “When did you find out about it? And when did Izzie get here?”

  “Today. This morning.”

  “And when did you find out you were having twins?”

  “At the same time.”

  He sighs. “Of course that’s how it went. Everything all at once. I think… we’re allowed. Not to be sad. Or maybe we will be, once all the shock wears off. And we’ll be allowed that too. With her, I think we’re allowed to feel however we want to. And no matter how we feel, it’ll be the right thing. She was our mother, but she wasn’t our mom. That was—” And his voice breaks a little. He clears his throat. “That was someone else. So no, Bear. It’s not weird. I think it’s okay.”

  “We’ll have to deal with it,” I tell him quietly. “I don’t know where her… body is. Or what happened to get Izzie here.” The thought that she had hitched rides all the way from Idaho scares me more than I care to admit. “But if you can’t—if you can’t do that, then you can just be here with Izzie while I deal with the rest.”

  “While we deal with the rest,” Otter says, and his hand is in mine.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We. But I’ve—we’ve got some phone calls to make. If we….”

  “You have to keep her,” the Kid says suddenly. “Bear, you have to. You can’t let her go. You can’t let her be taken away. That’s not fair. To her. To anyone. She has to stay here. I know it’s a lot, that you already have—Jesus, you already have twins on the way, but you can’t let her go. Promise me. And if you can’t, then I’ll—I’ll do something about it. I’m an adult now. I can call Erica Sharp and figure something out. Get a job. And an apartment.”

  “Tyson.”

  “What?”

  “Shut up. She’s not going anywhere. She’s here, and we’re not going to let her go.” I looked up at Otter. “Right?”

  And because he’s Otter Thompson, he says, “Right,” without any hesitation at all. “But that still doesn’t mean we have more room.”

  I shrug. “We can get bunk beds for the Kid’s room. She can have the top, and he can sleep on the bottom.”

  “I am not sleeping on a bunk bed,” the Kid says with a scowl. “Are you out of your damn mind?”

  “Fine. The pullout couch.”

  “You said that was only for people you hated who stayed over at our house!” the Kid barks.

  I throw my hands up. “Fine. Then where the hell are you going to sleep?”

  “He could totally move in with Dominic!” a muffled voice says, sounding suspiciously like Creed.

  We turn slowly toward the house.

  Our entire family is pressed up against the glass doors, watching us. Izzie’s standing on the island behind them, looking over their heads. Megan’s off to the side, hand on her belly.

  And not a single one of them looks guilty.

  Some of them even wave.

  Stacey’s there too, and she
’s grinning up at Dom, jostling him a little. Dom himself looks like he’s blushing, something so rare, I’ve only seen it a handful of times.

  “He has already taken most of your stuff to his house,” Otter says thoughtfully.

  “He’s what?” the Kid squeaks.

  “And come to think of it, wasn’t Ty’s stuff supposed to be delivered yesterday from New Hampshire?”

  How the hell had we forgotten about that? Yeah, we’d been distracted, but—

  Creed makes everyone take a step back so he can open the sliding door, leaving only the screen to separate us. “Yeah,” he says. “About that. Dom might have accidentally changed the address so it goes to his house.”

  “Accidentally,” the Kid says, sounding like he’s about to be apoplectic.

  “Oh, I am so glad I got here just in time to see this,” Stacey says gleefully. “Pregnancy, new children, and my ex-husband sneak-moving his boyfriend into his house. Hell, I may divorce my current husband just so I can marry into this family.”

  “Most of the men here are gay,” Creed says. “It’s why I always drink bottled water, so I don’t catch it too. Who knows what else they put in the tap water? Fluoride? Check. Gayness? Double-check. You won’t catch me that way, government!”

  “You can have my husband,” Anna tells Stacey.

  Ian and Jerry sputter a little.

  “You want me to move in with you?” Ty demands through the screen.

  Dom shrugs awkwardly, suddenly finding the ceiling a very interesting thing to stare at.

  “That means yes in big-guy language,” Stacey says. “He thinks he’s been subtle about it, but then Bear caught him trying to carry your desk down the stairs by himself a couple of months ago.”

  “He didn’t have to threaten me with a knife,” Dom mutters.

  “I thought you were a burglar,” I snap at him. “I mean, who does that.”

  “I think it’s romantic,” Alice says with a sigh.

  “Just like out of the movies,” Stephanie agrees.

  “This is fun,” Megan says. “I’m having a lot of fun.”

  “You’re leaving?” Izzie says from the counter, her hands on her hips. She looks more angry than upset.

  “It’s just right down the road,” Dom tells her, glancing over his shoulder. “And you can come over any time you want. I have a spare room, and you can spend the night sometimes.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, because I want to hear the two of you having sex. I’m already messed up enough. At least if I stay here, there will be babies soon and Otter and Bear will be too tired to fornicate.”

  “She’s going to fit right in,” Creed says, sounding awed.

  “Dad,” JJ says. “What’s fornicating?”

  “When two people love each other very much—”

  “I’m bored with this,” JJ says. “Can I go outside now and pop the balloons? Tyson isn’t using them. He told me he doesn’t even like balloons.”

  “Man,” Creed says to Anna. “His first time is going to be really awkward.”

  “You’re pressing your five-month-old child’s forehead into the screen door,” Anna tells him.

  “Oops,” he says, taking a step back. “It’s a good thing babies’ heads are notoriously hard and fully developed and not soft at all. Because I would feel really bad, otherwise. Oh look, he’s got little lines on his face now! He looks like a waffle.”

  “I want waffles,” JJ demands.

  “Oh, dude. Me too. I could totally go for some waffles right now. Tell you what. Once we choke down—I mean enjoy the food Grandma made, we can totally go get some waffles.”

  “Your food is not that gross,” Jerry tells his wife.

  “Are you serious?” the Kid asks, and everyone else falls quiet. “Dom, I—”

  “It’s going to happen,” Dom says, sounding a little strangled and like he wished he wasn’t doing this in front of an audience. “One day. I know it. Because I really think you’re it for me. And if you’re not ready, that’s okay. I—I hope that you are, but if you’re not—”

  Tyson Thompson is the smartest person I know. His IQ is off the charts. He graduated from high school at age fifteen. He went to Dartmouth on a full scholarship. He found himself falling into a place many people couldn’t find their way back out of. But he did, kicking and snarling and clawing until he made things right again.

  And yeah, sure, he had help on the way.

  But still.

  He’s intelligent and sarcastic, and I am so proud of him, even when he acts like an asshole.

  That being said, Tyson Thompson is a fucking idiot.

  Because instead of landing in the arms of the man he loves, he slams into the screen door that hasn’t been opened in his desperation to get to Dom. He squawks as the screen splits, the door bending in its frame and snapping off.

  Most had already taken a step back the moment his feet left the ground, with Creed doing this spectacular little spin away as he covers AJ’s head with his hand.

  The Kid ends up on the ground, halfway in and halfway out of the house, the screen door wrapped around him, the metal frame split and lying on top of him.

  Silence.

  Then from the ground, the Kid says, “What are the chances we never bring this up ever again?”

  “Slim to none,” Creed says. “When I am lying on my deathbed, my body collapsing out from under me, eyes milky with cataracts, my teeth falling out of my mouth, I will look up at you and whisper remember that time you were so hard up for Dom that you ran through a screen door. And then I will laugh at you. And then I will die. Welcome home, Kid. Anna, I am having a beer. I just saved our child’s life with my dance moves, and I deserve it. Isn’t that right, AJ? Yes it is. Your daddy is the absolute best at everything he does. Yes he is. Yes he is.”

  HE FINDS me later, once the sky has started to color orange and pink above us. There are lamps lit already, and people are talking and laughing. It’s weird, really. Because I know part of me should be sad, that I should be mourning something, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not yet.

  Otter’s inside with Megan. She’s heading back to Eugene and has promised to call us next week to make plans. We told her we’d still act surprised when the clinic called us so she won’t get in trouble. “I’m a good actor,” I’d told her, while Otter had laughed next to me.

  And then the Kid is sitting next to me, our bare feet in the grass, toes digging in. It’s a little startling, having him here again at my side. I don’t know that I’ve quite reconciled having him back yet. I’d just gotten used to him being gone, however hard it’d been. But he’s here now, and it’s good. It’s real good.

  “Where’s your shadow?”

  “Inside,” he says, picking at a blade of grass. “Anna told her that if she’s going to be part of this family, she’ll need to learn to hold a baby.”

  “She’s okay with that?”

  “The baby? No. Absolutely not. She told Anna that babies are disgusting and that if AJ leaks on her, she’ll sell him on the black market.”

  That… sounds like someone who is related to us. Dammit. “And Anna said….”

  “She just laughed and said she’s obviously related to you and me.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the baby, though.”

  He looks over at me, our shoulders brushing together. “I don’t know how she feels yet. It’s… a lot, even for me. So I can’t imagine how it’s going to be for her.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Are you sure we can do this?”

  “Pretty sure. We’ve done it before.”

  “Things are different now, though.”

  “Yeah. But I think it’s better now.” I take a sip from my nearly empty wineglass. “We aren’t like we once were.”

  “Scared.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m still scared. Of course I am. I woke up this morning thinking I was about to have one child. Now I probably have three.”

  �
�It’s okay if you—”

  “But just because I’m scared doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. Because we’re not like we once were, Kid. We were scared then too, sure, but… we didn’t have what we have now. Not in the way we do now. The others, they—okay, they were there, but I wouldn’t let them in. Not for you. Not for me. Because I thought it was the only way we’d make it. I couldn’t trust anyone but myself, because then I couldn’t blame anyone but myself if I failed. It wasn’t easy.”

  “Nothing worth having ever is,” he says. And then, “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t get to come here and act like I did. It’s not fair.”

  “No, you don’t. And it wasn’t. That was wrong, and I expect more from you. Always.”

  “I’ll apologize to Otter too.”

  “See that you do.”

  “You mad at me?”

  “I was.”

  “Okay.”

  I wrap my arm over his shoulder, pulling him close. He tugs on my fingers that dangle over his chest. He’s here with me, finally. After all this time. After everything we’ve been through, he’s here again. He’s right in his head again, mostly, and he’s here. There’s still a bit of anger in me, but it’s fading. I could never stay mad at him for very long. It’s not something we do. Sure, he can irritate me like nobody else, but he’s my brother. He’s my family.

  “I just….”

  I wait.

  He sighs, his head on my shoulder. “It’s your life.”

  “It is,” I agree.

  “You get to make these decisions without me.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t like it. Sometimes.”

  “I know. But it’s not about you.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “And that’s how it should be. You’re kicking me out.”

  And that’s what I think this whole thing was about. Because the Kid is an idiot, but he’s not stupid. He can count. The Green Monstrosity has three bedrooms. One has been converted to a nursery that everyone oohed and aahed over earlier. The Kid’s room will be Izzie’s, however long she wants to use it. Which I was hoping would be for years.