A Place to Call Home (41 page)

“Yes. And you’ll be doing him a favor if you encourage him to meet them.”

“He won’t go if Roan doesn’t agree.”

“He will agree. You and Matthew,” I said slowly, “you don’t know Roan the way I do. From childhood. He won’t let you down.”

“We know he was poor, of course. He’s told Matthew some things, but he doesn’t discuss it much.”

“Do you know how my family treated Roan?” I asked carefully.

“He’s always told Matthew they were good to him, but that he had trouble getting along with some of your relatives. And that your parents finally decided he’d be better off in a foster home. That sounds pretty, hmmm, cold to me, Claire. That your family could have felt that way.”

“My parents have never forgiven themselves for sending him away,” I said, weighing every word. “The circumstances
were different then. It’s hard to describe. You had to be there. You had to know Roan and the family back then. We’ve all changed. He changed us.”

She bit her lip. “Roan must have been a tough character.”

“Roan didn’t do anything to deserve being sent away, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“No, no. I just mean—I can see why they might have been afraid of him.”

“
What?
”

“Hold on, hold on. He’s been wonderful to me and wonderful to Matthew. It’s just that—I was afraid of him when Matthew took me home to meet him—before I got to know him. God, Matthew and I were only seventeen. College freshmen. And he took me home with him to meet his … surrogate father, who wasn’t old enough to be his father, and when he introduced me to Roan all I saw was this big, dark-haired, serious, almost sinister self-made businessman who seemed so old psychologically. So driven. I kept expecting him to say I wasn’t good enough for Matthew or that we were too young to be so committed to each other. I expected him to ask me if I was after Matthew’s money. But he never did. He was great to me.”

“Then you understand that he’s not someone to fear. What happened between him and my family wasn’t his fault. And, believe me, nobody wanted to lose track of Matthew either. It was just such a mess. So different then. I’m trying desperately to get everybody back together. I need some sense of redemption myself. Roan counted on me when we were kids and he got hurt because of it. And then this year someone else got hurt because she depended on me—”

She frowned. “You sound so much like Roan. You and he are both really into guilt and responsibility. I’m missing something here. I mean—what?” She chuckled. “Was it something they put in the drinking water when you two were kids?”

I stared at her a moment. Then, “You and Matthew certainly know enough about Roan’s history to appreciate how hard it is for him to trust people. You know about me, of course, and what happened with Roan’s father.”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded somberly. “You were Roan’s only friend. He was poor, you tried to help him, his mother died when he was little—you see how much he and Matthew have in common?—and then, of course, Roan’s father was kind of disreputable and he died young, and then Roan was sent away.”

Kind of
disreputable
? And he died young? That was a benign description of Big Roan Sullivan’s life and how it ended. I studied her with growing dread. “Roan’s father died when Roan was fifteen,” I went on vaguely, trying to draw her out, my heart in my throat. “He died … suddenly. But you know that.”

“Of course Matthew and
I know
the important details about Roan’s past. Do you think he wouldn’t share that kind of information with Matthew?” She gazed at me impatiently, then counted on her fingers and recited with parrot-like efficiency: “Roan’s dad was a disabled Korean veteran. He drank too much. He was moody and undependable. Roan pretty much raised himself.” She paused for a breath. “And then his dad died of a heart attack.”

Oh, my God. Matthew and Tweet had no idea what a monster Big Roan had been, or how badly Roan had suffered because of him, or even that Roan had killed him.
Killed
him for my sake.

“Oh, come on, let’s lighten up!” Tweet exclaimed suddenly. “Everything’s going to be fine!” She clicked her wineglass to mine again. “Look how much we’ve learned about you and you’ve learned about us already! I feel as if Matthew and I have known you forever! I’m so glad you’re here!” She threw her arms around me and hugged me.

I sat there, frozen. I finally understood. If we brought Matthew back to Dunderry, Roan could no longer hide how far he’d come himself or what he’d done to survive.

• • •

We stayed up late talking to Matthew and Tweet. I made good on my plan to ask Matthew a lot of harmless questions about himself and he warmed up to me, while Roan watched us with a wary half-smile, aware that I was a professional snoop and an expert at putting people at ease.

It worked. When we said our good nights, Matthew hugged me. And so did Tweet again. I liked them together. They were comfortable with each other, they adored each other, they traded quick pats and reassuring glances. Mama would melt with romantic approval when she saw them together. Everyone would.

I felt sick with worry.

I took Roan’s arm and we walked into the guest room. He shut the door. My facade crumbled and I slumped on the bed. Roan sat down in a chair by the window without turning on a lamp. The bedroom was small and cluttered, filled with storage boxes in one corner and veterinary texts stacked in another, with camping gear piled in a third. But the bed was large and covered with a white down comforter, and I wanted desperately to sleep with him and say nothing at all.

He sat very still, one foot slung out and the other back. In his dark trousers and gray sweater and hiking boots, he looked as resilient and all-weather as the spruce tree that brushed rhythmically against the windowpanes. He steepled his big-knuckled hands beneath his chin. “When you were a little girl I always knew when you wanted something from me that I didn’t want to do,” he said quietly. “Your cheeks would turn bright pink and you’d stare straight at me without blinking. Those big blue eyes
never
blinking. I was convinced you tried to hypnotize me. I felt hypnotized.”

“It works. Great-Gran taught me to do it to people.”

“What do you want from me tonight, peep? You’ve given me the blue-eye since before dinner.”

“You need to explain something to me, boy.”

He frowned but moved over and sat beside me on the bed. He took one of my hands, turning it, smoothing his fingers over the palm. Then he touched one hand to my throat and slid it gently down to my breasts, stroking with the backs of his fingers across my sweater.

“That won’t distract me. Not right now.”

“Too bad.”

“How much have you told Matthew about yourself? About how you grew up in Dunderry?”

He lay back on the bed and latched his hands beneath his head. “He knows I didn’t have much. He knows I worked for your family. He knows I left after my old man died.”

“You’ve never told him the truth about how your daddy died. And my part in how he died. Roan, this is really unavoidable. You’ve got to tell him.”

He sat up again. Silence. The tension grew. He shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he looked so tired. “I tried to tell him when he was little. I tried when he was older. I’ve tried to tell him a hundred times, but something always stopped me. He was too young to understand, I decided. Then he was older and having a hard enough time growing up with kids teasing him about not having any real parents. There was a window of time when I should have told him—when he wasn’t too young to be confused or too old to resent me for keeping secrets. I missed that chance. To be honest about it, I didn’t want to tell him. I couldn’t stand to screw up a good thing.”

“You wouldn’t have ruined how he feels about you. I’ve only been around him a few hours, but I already see the tremendous love and respect he has for you. Tell him the truth now—and tell him why you waited so long, the way you just explained it to me—and he’ll understand.”

“He’ll pity me,” Roan said stonily.

“No, he’ll be sympathetic. There’s a difference.”

“Maybe he doesn’t think of me as a father, but he does look up to me. I’ve been as good to him as I know how to
be. I don’t ever want him to feel sorry for me. Or embarrassed to be a Sullivan. Not for any reason.”

“Embarrassment. That’s what you hate the most. Come on, Roan, he’ll never reject you.”

Roan turned toward me angrily. “After all these years of me saying nothing about myself, now I’m supposed to tell him: Oh, by the way, I blew my old man’s brains out with a pistol after I caught him slapping Claire around the floor with her clothes half pulled off.”

“If you need to be that blunt about it, yes.”

“And tell him how your family—his family, the family that you want him to love—shipped me off because they couldn’t stand the sight of a Sullivan in their house anymore?”

“Yes.” I was trembling. “Tell him exactly how it was and we’ll deal with it.”

“You take family loyalty for granted. That’s a luxury you can afford. I can’t.”

“You owe him the truth. Anything less is nothing but a self-serving excuse.”

“You think I’m selfish?” Roan countered tightly. “You think I’m only worried about protecting my own goddamned pride?”

“You want us all to prove how much we love you, but you can’t even comprehend why we love you.”

“I don’t want him to see the Hollow. I don’t want people to tell him about me—about white-trash Roanie Sullivan who had bad teeth and smelled like garbage. His idea of how I grew up poor is the way he and I were poor when he was little. He thinks it means my old man bought me secondhand bikes for Christmas instead of brand new. He thinks it means shopping on a budget and wearing jeans with patches in the knees.
He doesn’t know what my kind of poor was like. He doesn’t know what I was.
”

“You were special. You were strong and decent and gentle. Anything ugly that he’ll learn will only help him
know how special you are because you overcame so much.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it if he doesn’t want to go back. I keep telling you it’s his decision.”

“Roan. That’s not true.” I took his face between my hands and repeated everything Tweet had told me about Matthew’s attitude and motivation. “He wants to go,” I finished. “He’s always wanted to see who he came from—good, bad, or indifferent. But he’s loyal to you, and you have to let him know you agree.”

Sorrow, shock, and finally resignation sank into Roan. “Oh, God,” he murmured, bending his forehead to mine. “He’s never even
hinted
. I didn’t have a clue.”

“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. You’re not the only one who can keep a poker face about your real feelings. He learned it from you.” I put my arms around him and we said nothing for a while. “He won’t go unless you tell him you want him to go,” I repeated. “I know you’ll do it.”

“I told you I wouldn’t interfere when you tried to persuade him,” Roan said. “But I never promised I’d help.”

Amazed, I drew back and looked at him. “That’s not fair. What kind of life can we have together if you won’t make peace with the past? You can’t keep the truth from Matthew. You can’t hide Matthew from my family. It’ll all come out eventually, no matter what you do.” I paused. “Unless you and I go our separate ways and don’t see each other again.”

He pulled me back on the bed and bent over me. “You know that’s not an option.”

“Then trust me.”

“We could be happy out here. Washington State. California. Alaska. Anywhere you like. You went for years without visiting home. It’s a habit you could cultivate again.”

“I don’t want to cultivate loneliness and estrangement again. Anyway, this dilemma isn’t about where we should live our lives. It’s about where we
belong
and
how
we should
live. It’s about being honest, Roan. You’ve always been honest with me, and you’ve got to be honest with Matthew.”

“He doesn’t belong in Dunderry,” Roan said flatly. “He won’t be accepted there. Ever. No matter how bad you want it. And neither will I. Stop counting on fairy tales.”

“Badly,” I corrected sarcastically. “How badly I want it.”

He got up and jerked the comforter over me, then walked out of the room and shut the door.

He came back an hour later and I pretended to be asleep, and he pretended to let me sleep until he brushed against me in bed and then we both sighed in defeat and made love to each other with tenderness and anger.

But we didn’t talk.

M
atthew and Tweet drove us to the ferry docks on the Juneau waterfront the next day, and the four of us boarded a sixty-five-foot double-decker named the Ice Dancer. It was a small tourist ferry that offered an observation deck scattered with lounge chairs on top, behind its pilothouse, and a cozy, gingham-curtained dining room below. The
Ice Dancer
took a payload of two dozen tourists out every afternoon in the spring and summer months, and its five-member crew served gourmet meals on jaunts to the glacier fjords.

Matthew and Tweet had hired the ferry for a private excursion. “It’ll take all afternoon, round trip,” Matthew explained politely. “You can sit, Claire. Take it easy, watch the world go by.”