Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (23 page)

Every day, when Gus drove past on his scrap-collecting round, he would stop with his arm thrown out the truck window, and Susan would emerge from the office with a candy bar or a bag of chips for him.

She would stand by the truck for a few minutes, and they would talk about how their days were going.

Gus was a strange bird. Too strange for most people to know how to talk to him.

But Susan Bowman had always had ten minutes for him, and he’d loved her.

It all kept coming back to love.

If Ashley had been on a quest, this was how it ended, here on this beach. In defeat, she supposed, or at least in concession. But the endpoint was never what mattered on a quest—it was the journey. What you learned along the way.

Ashley had been learning about her grandmother. She’d been learning about love.

For a woman who was so far from perfect, Susan had sure had a lot of love in her life. Love that was imperfect, maybe—but what did that matter?

Weird love was still love.

Imperfect friends were still friends.

Ashley had been so focused on whether or not her grandmother loved her
enough
—whether she’d ever been loved the right way, as if there
were
a right way—that she’d lost sight of what she did have.

She’d had Sunnyvale and canasta and happy hour.

She’d had a grandmother who loved her enough to leave her a trailer full of memories.

And she’d had friends.

She
still
had friends. Imperfect friends. Weird friends. Really excellent friends.

She had Roman.

It was a lot.

“You should see the place,” Ashley said to Gus. “While it’s still here to see. Do you mind, Noah?”

“Not at all. You’ll need flashlights.” He reached behind him into a backpack on the sand and pulled out two Maglites. “I’ve been using these since we cut off the power.”

He handed one to the senator first. Ashley watched her father take it, her gaze lingering on the grim set of his mouth and the unfamiliar vulnerability in his eyes.

She felt understanding settle over her, soft and comfortable.

This would be the funeral they’d never had.

It would be goodbye.

The flashlight Noah handed her was heavy, its textured metal rough against her palm. She held it loosely in her grip as she began to walk, taking the pavers one at a time until she reached the palm tree.

She ran her hand over the bark and dug in with one fingernail, taking a small, fierce bite out of this place she loved so much.

Tomorrow, Sunnyvale would be gone—but the tree wasn’t going anywhere.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

In a few days, Roman would be back, and she wanted him to know where to find her.

When she came to the door, she held a bundled infant in the crook of her elbow, and Roman had to make a concerted effort to tear his attention away from the baby’s brown skin and dark eyes to look at the woman’s face.

She’d aged.

Of course she’d aged. He hadn’t seen her in fourteen years. But God, how bizarre that she could look so changed—her hair a different color than the last time he’d seen it, her face older, her body broad where she’d been slim and youthful, this baby, she had a baby—and yet she was still so utterly Samantha.

Not in the way she looked, or in who she was, because that was obvious, right? Just because you didn’t see someone didn’t mean they ceased to exist, or to be themselves.

No, what shocked him was that she still felt like Samantha to him.

What left him speechless was the discovery that he retained an entire Sam-shaped chamber in his heart, a lobe in his brain, a painful feeling in his chest that came from her, that
was
her, her presence and absence—

He hadn’t understood.

He hadn’t allowed himself to understand.

Sam was gaping at him, the baby staring with huge eyes, its tiny mouth puckered and smacking. Roman’s stomach did a sick flip.

“Long time no see,” he said.

And just like that, his sister started to cry.

It looked so painful—her lips mashed together, turning white, her cheeks going a blotchy red as her eyes narrowed and filled with tears—that he wanted to stop it, so he did what he’d always done.

“Knock knock,” he said.

“Who’s there?” Her voice cracked, a watery waver.

“Interrupting cow.”

“Interrupting cow wh—”

“Moooo.”

Then she really did cry—harsh sobs that fell on him and broke whatever taboo kept him hovering in the doorway of this house he’d never entered. He wrapped his arms around her as she said his name, “Roman, oh my God, Roman,” and he didn’t know what he said back.

It didn’t matter.

He felt the same way he’d felt, so many years ago, when he looked up from the spot on the forest floor where he’d given up hope, only to see a park ranger walk into the clearing.

The same way he’d felt when he woke up in the hospital and Sam was there, and she squeezed him too tight and embarrassed him with her tears, with the way she said,
We thought you were dead, we thought you were dead
, over and over like a jubilant prayer.

As though he’d come through fire, his skin cracked and weeping, too tender to touch. But it wasn’t his skin. It was his heart.

It was him, alive. Painfully, actually, completely alive.

A little blond girl clad all over in shocking pink came thundering into the foyer. “Mommy!” she shouted, and she wrapped her arms around Samantha’s legs.

Roman’s sister cried like he’d come here to break her heart.

He cried, too. Because it hurt to touch her. She smelled like his sister, she sounded like his sister, and he’d been dead for so long. It hurt.

But even as he swiped at his cheeks, embarrassed by his own tears, and Sam leaned down and picked up the girl—her daughter, that had to be her daughter—Roman was grinning at her. Grinning at all three of them.

It felt good to be alive.

Somehow, he ended up in her kitchen, holding the baby.

Sam was in the living room explaining to the girl, Ava, that she could watch one more Barbie movie because Uncle Roman was here, but not
more
than one, and no, Ava had never met Uncle Roman before, because he’d never visited, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a
real
uncle, it only meant she’d never met him—and no, she didn’t have any more uncles she didn’t know about, she’d met all of Daddy’s brothers and his sister, but maybe there would be another aunt if
Uncle Roman was married. Or got married.

Now be quiet and watch Barbie, and no, you can’t have a juice box, you already had one today
.

Roman listened, staring at the baby.

Judging by the blue onesie, the baby was a boy. His head fit into the palm of one of Roman’s hands, and his legs dangled on either side of Roman’s forearm. He waved his fists in the air, making soft smacking sounds with his lips.

For such a small thing, the baby had a satisfying density.

Roman moved him back and forth through the air in long, slow sweeps. It seemed to keep him calm.

More important, it kept Roman calm. There was something very anchoring about the soft weight of this baby, the fuzz of his hair tickling Roman’s palm, and his eyes—his eyes were dark and wise, as though he had all the answers and needed nothing from Roman but his complete attention.

So little to ask.

Pay attention to me
, the baby demanded.

Roman did.

In the foyer, there were framed family photos. He’d seen them on the way in: His sister in a wedding dress beside a man a few inches shorter than her. Baby photos of two blond children, family photos, Sam getting broader, her husband growing a gut that got bigger as the years went by.

Patrick was in the photos, too. Completely gray now. A grandfather. In several, a woman stood with him.

He smiled. They all smiled.

The smiles had made Roman wonder, briefly, if he shouldn’t have come. They were doing well without him, clearly. They were happy.

But then he thought about what had happened at the door.

Roman watched the baby.

This baby wasn’t in any of the photos, but there were infant things scattered around the living room, and Sam had dark circles under her eyes. She wore sweatpants and a T-shirt that looked like it had been slept in and spit up on.

Her baby. His sister had three children.

She came into the kitchen and pressed a button on the microwave. It lit up, and inside a glass measuring cup began to revolve.

“You okay there with Miles for another minute?” she asked. “I was just about to feed him when you rang the doorbell.”

“Sure. How old is he?”

“Six weeks.”

“Is he …?”

“Adopted. Or he will be, eventually, as long as his mother doesn’t change her mind. It takes a long time to finalize.”

Roman glanced away from the baby’s eyes—Miles’s eyes—and the boy squawked.

He looked back again.

He couldn’t untangle how he felt. This baby, this tiny adopted black boy, belonging to his sister, resting in the palm of his hand.

Something like anger.

But something else. Like satisfaction.

Like craving.

The microwave beeped three times. Sam pulled out the measuring cup, then took a big plastic jug with a lid from the fridge, shook it briefly, and poured a few inches into a waiting baby bottle. When she screwed on a nipple and put the bottle into the hot water, Roman had to look back at Miles, who’d started fussing again.

“Give him your pinky to suck,” Sam said.

“I haven’t washed my hands.”

“Dad used to say we all eat a peck of dirt before we die.”

Dad
. The word alone was all it took to turn the mood.

Fourteen years. And Roman had just waltzed in.

He offered Miles his pinky. The baby pulled it into his mouth with astonishing force, his tongue curled, pressing Roman’s finger against his palate with each mighty suck.

Samantha turned to face him. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned him.”

“No, it’s …”

He didn’t know what it was.

Patrick had never adopted him. After Roman got lost in the woods, they’d become virtual strangers, occupying the same house but rarely intersecting.

They’d argued every time they intersected.

When Roman turned eighteen, he’d been emancipated from the foster care system. He’d finished out the school year in Patrick’s house. He’d driven to Princeton from Wisconsin, unsure whether he would be welcomed back.

Some people don’t have a place—that’s what he’d told Ashley. It had been his obsession during those first months in college: figuring out where his place was. Whether he fit anywhere.

Over winter break his freshman year, he drove back to Wisconsin, and he stopped on the way at the prison, where he’d arranged to see his father. Roman had prepared himself for an onslaught of feeling, but he felt nothing stronger than mild anxiety. Right up until his father professed his innocence.

Roman hadn’t believed him. Not exactly. He’d only
considered
it. He’d considered the possibility of it—what it would mean. Having wrapped up his first semester in the Ivy League, he was enamored of his ability to consider things. Analyze them. Take them apart.

And he’d been afraid. Afraid to contradict his father, and afraid he’d done something just by visiting him that he couldn’t undo. So he’d taken the problem home and presented it to Patrick.

Patrick had lost his fucking mind.

Without Samantha there to get between them, the argument had gone on for hours. Everything came out—things they’d always felt but never said. Should never have said.

You didn’t love me
.

You made it impossible
.

I tried to be a good son to you. I’ve always tried
.

There’s something wrong with you. You’re a sociopath, just like your father. Selfish all the way through
.

But what if he didn’t do it?

Roman hadn’t been able to stop himself from asking—not once, but again and again, in a refrain. What if the entire shape of his life had been a mistake? What if he wasn’t the son of a killer, but a victim of injustice?

What if?

He hadn’t been defending his father. He’d been defending himself.

He’d had to defend himself, because Patrick never saw him clearly. Maybe Patrick had
wanted
to practice forgiveness, once, but he’d never forgiven Roman for his father’s sins. He’d magnified every flaw into something bigger, twisted every childhood error into evidence of Roman’s unfitness for humanity.

Patrick had never been able to look at Roman without seeing something wrong with him.

He’d taken Roman’s visit to his father at the prison as both betrayal and confirmation: Patrick had tried to do the right thing by Roman, but the attempt had failed. Roman was unfixable, and Patrick washed his hands of him.

None of it had been Roman’s fault.

Get out of here
, Patrick had said at the end, when both of them were hoarse and exhausted, worn out from the clash of wills.
I’ve given you everything I can. Just get out and leave us alone. We never want to see you again
.