by Teresa Hill
"I remember." She nodded. "A long, sad story. So's mine."
"Your father treated your mother like a punching bag. That's not anything you've done."
"I grew up that way. With the arguments and the yelling and the hitting."
"It's not who you are," he insisted. "It's what you came from. We all have bad times. We all have choices. Some people handle whatever comes along. Some people run away. Some people feel sorry for themselves. Some people hit. Some of 'em do worse than that."
"And what did you do?"
"Worse than that," he said.
"Oh, please. Look at me. I thought I was falling in love with a man who hits me when he gets mad."
"We're not even talking about the same things. Not even close."
He could tell her. He figured he owed her that. But if he told her the truth about the last eighteen years of his life, she'd probably kick him out right now, and he couldn't take that kind of chance with her safety. He wasn't leaving her alone now.
"Is that what you're so worried about with Sam?" she asked. "Telling him what you've been through? What you've done?"
"I'm not looking forward to it." Maybe that was why he'd never heard from Sam. Maybe Sam knew exactly where Rye had been.
"Sam is the kindest, most generous man I know. He'll give you a chance."
"I guess we'll see about that," Rye said.
"And I... Rye, I—"
He put his thumb to her lips, not letting her say it, wishing he could have found a way to stop the words without touching her again, because damned if he didn't still like touching her.
"I'm sorry. It's not going to happen," he said, and then made himself walk away.
Chapter 9
Emma let him go because she could see how torn he was. Not just about her and him, but him and Sam.
It's going to be all right, she wanted to tell him. You're in the right place. You've found your way home.
She wanted to take him in her arms and just hang on to him. Nothing felt quite as good as that to someone who was lost.
Except he didn't want her anywhere near him.
Was that from the shock of what he'd found out? That Sam was his brother. Would anyone really care? And they hadn't even addressed the whole age thing. Sam had just turned thirty-nine. Emma wasn't sure how old he'd been when his parents had been killed in an auto accident. If he'd been ten and Rye was just a baby... What did that make Rye now? Twenty-nine? Thirty? At the youngest?
Perfect, Emma.
She watched as he stalked across the yard, heading down the driveway to the front of the house. She knew he wouldn't leave her. Even as upset as he was, he was still taking care of her. She wanted to take care of him, too.
Emma went inside, carefully locking the door behind her. Upstairs in Sam and Rachel's room was an old cedar chest. A newer one in the family room held pictures and some of Grace's baby clothes, things Zach and Grace had made at school, certificates Emma had won, but the chest upstairs had much older things. She went to that chest, pulled off the framed photos and a delicate piece of lace used as a drape, opened the chest, and carefully pulled things out.
Somewhere, there was an album with a very few photos of Sam as a child and his parents. It was all she knew to do for Rye now—show him his past, help him to understand what he could have here in the present with Sam.
The two of them, she'd worry about later. Let him settle in, feel like a part of them. She knew what it was like to need a place to belong, and she wanted him to have that.
He wouldn't leave now.
Sam wouldn't let him.
Calm down, Emma, she told herself quite sternly.
This was not disaster in the making.
He'd found them. They wouldn't give him up.
She sat down on the floor by the chest and paged carefully through the photos. There were ones Rachel had taken of Sam, a few when he was fifteen or so and more after that. There were heartbreaking ones of Rachel pregnant and then nothing for a long time. A couple of her grandfather, who'd died not long after that, some of the house as they slowly restored it.
She moved farther back.
There was Sam at... She couldn't tell how old he was. Certainly not ten. He was with a pretty young woman who had to be his mother. A tall, serious-looking young man stood by her side, and she was pregnant, too.
With Rye?
So there weren't that many years between them?
Emma had to tell herself to calm down once again.
She wasn't losing him.
She dug through the photos, finding a handful by the time the phone rang. Emma closed her eyes and took a breath, thinking again about the crazy state of her life—scared to pick up a phone—and then, determined to see it through, she grabbed it from the nightstand by Sam and Rachel's bed.
"Hi." It was Rachel. "Sam wanted me to call and make sure... He's really there? Still? Robbie, I mean?"
"Yes." Emma settled in on the floor by the bed, ready to talk. "But he says everyone calls him Rye. It seems like he thinks of Robbie as someone else completely."
"Now that I think about it, I can see why he would," Rachel said. "He was about three when Sam left, and the Ryans changed his name."
Three? Emma thought about Zach. He'd been almost five when they'd come here. It had been so scary, even for Emma, and she'd been almost twelve. But what would it have been like for Zach if he'd been all alone?
And then, there was no hiding from the rest of it. She really had to know how old Rye was now. How to even ask? "How old was Sam then?"
"He thinks he was eight, maybe nine," Rachel said.
Sam was thirty-nine.
Which made Rye... thirty-three, at best?
All the breath left Emma in a rush.
She felt like she had when she'd looked up and seen Mark on the porch, when she realized everything was so much worse than she'd feared.
Rye certainly didn't look thirty-three. Not even thirty, but then what did she know? She didn't run around with thirty-year-old men.
"What is it, Em?"
"Nothing. I was just... trying to understand what happened to them."
And what would happen to her and him.
Nothing if he really was in his early thirties. Sam would have a fit. It was likely that most everyone she knew would raise an eyebrow at that.
Emma sat there on the floor ready to cry.
It was so odd. Most all her life, she'd felt old already. People had always said that about her. That child was born old. And that's how she'd always felt.
She'd never been too young for anything.
"I don't know much about it," Rachel said. "Even after all this time, it's hard for Sam. Their parents died when Robbie was just a baby and Sam was five or six. They went from relative to relative, until the Ryans took them. I'm sure it would have been much easier for a baby to adjust. We know it is."
Because of Grace. She'd been a year old when they'd come here, and she didn't remember anything of life except being here. She'd missed all the bad times. Rye could have, too. But Sam would have always known.
"Sam wasn't doing well there," Rachel said. "He'd been through so much at that point, and he thought they wanted to get rid of him and keep Robbie, to pretend Robbie hadn't ever had any other parents or a brother, and that's what they did. They adopted Robbie, but not Sam. It was probably harder on Sam than even losing his parents. Robbie was all he had left then."
"He thinks Sam abandoned him," Emma said.
"Sam was eight or nine. What could he have done?"
"Oh. Of course. How awful for them both. But Rye doesn't understand that part."
"Then we'll have to explain it to him. Sam is... Oh, Em. He's wanted his brother back for so long."
"Rye wants that, too." Emma was sure of it.
"He said that?"
"No, but it's what he wants."
"Then everything will be fine," Rachel said, and she started crying then. "I can't believe he just showed up at the house. I've tried
to talk to Sam over the years about going to find him again, about telling him the truth. I even thought about doing it myself and just bringing him here."
"Why didn't Sam want to find him?"
"Because the Ryans never told Rye anything. Sam went looking for him one day. He introduced himself to Robbie when Robbie was fifteen or so, and Robbie said his name was John Ryan. He acted like he'd never heard of Sam."
"Still, all Sam had to do was—"
"Tell him he'd been lied to his whole life? Can you imagine what that would have done to someone? Sam said he seemed like a perfectly normal, happy kid, and Sam thought it would tear his life apart to tell him the truth. Sam couldn't do it. Even if he could have, he was afraid his brother would hate him for it. So he just walked away and didn't say anything."
"Well, something must have happened. Rye doesn't have anything good to say about the Ryans, and when he talks about Sam... It comes off looking like anger, but it's hurt. I know, because he's like Sam that way."
"Well, they'll just have to get past all that," Rachel said. "I'm so happy for Sam. He's scared, but so happy. He's picked up the phone a half-dozen times to call, and then he puts it back down again. He says it's something that needs to be done in person. We called Ellen and told her what was going on. She'll be here late tonight, and Sam and I will leave first thing in the morning. I'm dying to meet him. What's he like?"
"A lot like Sam," Emma said. "I didn't see it at first, but I knew there was something familiar about him, and he's... He's great. He's kind and funny and considerate. He's very strong and very protective of me. Like Sam."
"Em, I feel awful that we weren't there after you and Mark broke up."
"Well, don't. I know what's going on there. I know how worried you all are about Ann and the baby. They're hanging in there?"
"So far. But I worry about you, too."
"I'll be fine. I'm not heartbroken over Mark."
"He's still upset? Still bothering you?"
"I don't know what he's doing right now. I'm hoping I won't hear anything from him again. But I'm okay, and if I need anything, Rye's here."
"And we'll be there soon," Rachel promised. "I love you, Em."
"I love you, too."
Emma hung up the phone and thought, One more day. That was it. She had one day left alone with Rye.
When she hadn't been able to keep herself from thinking...
Oh, it was crazy.
Crazy.
She'd been thinking she wanted a lifetime with him. That maybe even a lifetime wouldn't be enough.
This morning when he had her pressed against the wall, she'd wanted to take him by the hand and lead him upstairs to her bedroom.
She probably wouldn't have done it, probably wouldn't have had the nerve. But she'd wanted to.
But he was thirty-three or thirty-four years old.
And she was six weeks shy of her nineteenth birthday.
* * *
He walked up and down the block again and again. He walked for what seemed like forever in the cold, the wind biting into every inch of exposed skin, stinging his eyes and his cheeks. When he thought he was surely frozen through and through, he went back inside.
Emma was standing by the front window staring at him. He glanced at her for maybe half a second and then looked away, stomping the last of the snow off his shoes on the mat by the door and toeing them off. He pulled off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and then dared come two steps closer.
"You okay?" he asked, because she looked like something was definitely wrong.
Emma nodded, still not looking at him. "Rachel called. Her sister's leaving today to go up there and help out with Ann's kids. Sam and Rachel are leaving first thing in the morning. They'll be here tomorrow night."
"So you finally told them what's going on?"
"I didn't have to. Sam wants to see you." He glanced up at that, then just as quickly away. "He does, Rye."
"Whatever you say."
"Whatever you think happened..." she began. "You don't remember him at all from when you were little?"
"I... I'm not sure," he said, trying to keep his distance from her. "Sometimes I think I might, and at other times, I don't know. The scene's all murky, almost like a dream. Sometimes I think I just dreamed about him a few times, and that's what I'm remembering, not anything that really happened. But there are times when I think I'm standing next to someone, and he's so much bigger than I am, and..."
He wasn't going to talk about this. Truth was, he was huddled by someone's side shaking and the next thing he knew, he was hanging on to someone's leg, his arms wrapped around someone's knee. He was screaming and hands were grabbing on to him, pulling him this way and that, until someone else had him and wouldn't let go.
"Sam was eight or nine, he thinks," Emma said.
"What?" Rye asked.
"Sam. He was eight or nine when he left the Ryans, and he thinks you were three."
Rye frowned. Could that possibly be the truth? "How old is he now?"
"He just turned thirty-nine," Emma said.
Rye was thirty-three. He'd be thirty-four in the spring. They were only five-and-a-half years apart.
"I always thought he was so much older than me," he said. "We found a birth certificate, but I thought the date of birth had to be wrong, because he seemed too young and I never found anyone named Sam McRae with that birth date. We checked a driver's license data base. Nothing was right. What's Sam's birthday?"
"May twelfth," she said.
"The database shows it's August twelfth."
"He makes fives that look like eights. We laugh about it all the time. Phone numbers, addresses, appointment times, dates. You don't ever want to count on your reading of his writing for anything like that. Come to think of it, I remember one year he got his license renewed and the date was wrong. I bet someone couldn't read his handwriting."
Which meant Sam really had been nine when they were separated.
Nine-year-olds didn't exactly leave on their own, did they?
Rye eased into the chair in the corner by the window. Emma sat down in a matching one a few feet away. It was one of those odd moments when the world seemed to shift.
"I thought Sam just walked away." It was one thing he'd believed when his so-called parents had explained it all to him. "I thought he left me there."
"Tell me what you remember."
"Nothing really, except being with the Ryans. Then one day when I was fourteen, almost fifteen, I was shooting baskets at a park near our house, and there was a guy watching me. I didn't know who he was, but there was something about the way he was watching me.... He came over to me and introduced himself—Sam McRae—like that was supposed to mean something to me, and I told him my name was John Ryan. He looked like somebody had knocked the wind out of him."
"Because you didn't recognize him."
"I didn't. I'd never heard of Sam McRae. Hell, I didn't even know I was adopted," Rye said. "We talked for a few minutes. He shook my hand and left. That was it. It was so odd, I went home and told my parents about it, and they... I didn't know what I was seeing in them at the time, guess I didn't really want to know. It scared me, because they looked terrified."
"That Sam was going to tell you the truth?"
"Probably." Rye nodded. "But he didn't tell me."
"Would you have told him, under the circumstances?"
Rye closed his eyes and thought about it. A year later when the truth came out, it had rocked his world. Not so much the fact that he was adopted, but the fact that they'd lied to him about everything forever.
"It changed things between me and my parents," he admitted. "They'd never been the most easygoing people in the world, but they were downright paranoid after Sam's little visit. It was like they didn't trust me all of a sudden. Like they were watching me all the time, just waiting for me to screw up. I never screwed up back then. I was a great kid. They told me what they expected
of me, and I made sure I did that and more. But after Sam came, I couldn't do anything right as far as they were concerned. And I hadn't changed. They had."
"Then what happened?"
"It just all went to hell. It was like they tried to grab on to me and hold tighter and tighter. Always wanted to know who I was with and what we were doing. I didn't understand, didn't think it was fair. Pretty soon, I figured why behave at all. They were still all over me. I figured if they were going to treat me that way, I might as well give 'em a reason."
"What did you do?"
"Stupid kid stuff at first. Just stupid, little things. Which made them even more uptight. One night a year later, when I'd stayed out way too late just to piss them off, they told me. Just blurted it out. I wasn't their son. Not their blood. They'd taken a chance on me, thinking their day-to-day influence should be enough, that I'd turn out okay. But obviously, it hadn't worked. Somewhere in the middle of that, they started talking about Sam, that it seemed I was turning out to be just like my troublemaking brother, Sam." He shook his head and tried to play it off with a grin. "There it was. That's how I found out."
And how he came to wonder why in the hell Sam had just left him there, why he'd just walked away. He wondered where Sam had gone, what his life had been like. Couldn't he have taken Rye along? Surely it had to be better than leaving him with the Ryans. He'd never thought about Sam being a kid himself.
"He wouldn't have forgotten you," Emma said. "Not ever. If he left you there that day after he found you again, he must have thought you were better off where you were, maybe better off not knowing."
"Maybe," Rye said. He certainly had to entertain the possibility.
And what would have happened if he'd gone looking for Sam then? When Rye was fifteen and before he'd really fallen down the rabbit hole, into that other world? What might his life have been like then?
It seemed he'd taken an irrevocably wrong turn. Sometimes it still didn't feel like this could possibly be what was left of his life. But he'd never know what might have happened, because he couldn't go back. He had to deal with what was real, what had happened. He had to stay and talk to Sam, he supposed. See what they could make of this mess.
