Page 48 of The Ones We Fight For

“I’m… different,” Carter continued.

“Different?” Walker furrowed his brow, trying to understand. “You mean you’re adopted? You look different?”

“I think people look at me and notice I don’t exactly fit in at first glance, and then they settle into the fact that I’m there. If I’m having a bad day or something, it just draws more attention to me.”

“You are allowed to have bad days, Carter. No one should expect you to—”

“I know that,” his nephew interrupted, voice feeble and far away. “I’m the funny guy. If I’m anything other than that, people will notice that I’m different. There are only like five other Black kids in my grade, and I don’t fit in with them either ‘cause they aren’t adopted. I’m just… in the middle. Don’t get me wrong, I have friends. People tend to like me, but it’s…” The end of the sentence trailed off, Carter looking out the window with a distant, sad look in his eyes.

“They aren’t the kind of people you feel you can share personal stuff with,” Walker finished for him.

“I already don’t belong,” Carter agreed, glossed-over irises returning to the present. “I can’t add to that. Every guy I know thinks going to therapy means you’re weak or crazy. I don’t want to be either of those things, so I thought I should be predisposed to hate it. But,” he shook his head, “I don’t. Dr. Feeny wasn’t fazed by anything I said, but I still know that everyone else who isn’t getting paid to talk to me would be.”

The piece on therapy felt disingenuous for Walker to comment on. Part of the reason he felt so reluctant to go himself was because it made him feel worthless and weak. Frailty wasn’t something he could afford to project when the kids were all relying on his strength to pull through. He never once thought his nieces and nephews were weak for getting help and would happily get into a brawl if anyone said otherwise, but the way he thought about himself was an entirely different story. He was the leader of the family now. It would look like he resented the kids or couldn’t handle everything if he went to therapy.

Walker tapped his finger against the wheel, mentally calculating different responses, but came up empty-handed. Carter was adopted, and as much as he wanted to relate to him in that way, Walker would never fully get it. He already knew that whatever he said wouldn’t be the right thing to get through to his nephew. There would be no use in explaining all the reasons everyone should want to know even the darkest parts of Carter. Carter would never believe it coming from his uncle.

“What about Roscoe?” Walker perked up, a half-formulated idea springing to the surface.

“What about him?”

“He’s adopted.”

“I didn’t know that.” Carter tipped his head to the side in slight interest.

"I'm sure he'd be open to talking to you about it if you wanted to.”

“Trying to get rid of me?” Carter’s eyebrows rose playfully, but the joke was a sucker punch to Walker’s gut.

“No,” Walker replied firmly. “I want you to continue talking to me about this, but… I’m not adopted or Black. I wish I could relate to you on that level because you and I typically see eye to eye on most things, but if I’m being honest, it feels like anything I could say on that would be absolute bullshit. Me spouting about how we all love you and don’t want you to feel disconnected from us or other people at school is true, but I think you already know that. I can reaffirm that as many times as necessary, but I’ve realized that maybe I can’t be the end-all-be-all of knowledge. If I was, you and the rest of your brothers and sisters would be absolutely screwed. The only reason I’m even remotely organized right now is because Talia stepped up to help me.”

“There it is again,” Carter laughed.

“What?”

“Talia. Just date her already and stop torturing yourself.”

“That’s what you got out of that?” Walker huffed in frustration. “Roscoe and Amala also help out with you guys.”

“And yet, you forgot to mention them.” The smirk Carter gave him was so infuriating, Walker wanted to wipe the smug look right off his nephew’s face. Instead, he reverted back to the original conversation, determined to keep on topic.

“Let’s just go to Roscoe’s right now,” Walker decided, pulling onto a side street, flicking his blinker on at the last second.

“No!”

Walker flinched at the panic lacing Carter’s voice, expecting to see a deer or something in the road, and slammed on the brakes. When there wasn’t anything, he pulled his eyebrows together and jerked his head toward Carter.

“Sorry!” Carter cringed. “I just… shouldn’t we notify him that we’re coming at least?”

“He said to come by whenever I felt like it. Now seems as good a time as any.”

“Yeah, but I have a lot of homework.”

“Homework that you were actually planning on doing?” Suspicious, Walker continued on in the direction of the Winstons’ home, putting on the pressure.

Unless Carter flipped the script and became studious in the last hour of therapy, he was lying. If he wasn’t, then Dr. Feeny should’ve been paid more for his magical capability to make kids suddenly care about school. Carter was smart, but not in a stereotypical bury-your-head-in-books way. It was the kind of intelligence that caught people off guard mid-conversation when they realized that the discussion had suddenly taken a deep dive into philosophy. Carter was a critical thinker, but he also deserved an award for procrastination—a medal of honor he would continually put off picking up.

Carter recognized what he was good at and what he would be required to be good at just to survive as an adult. He paid attention to those areas only and deemed anything else a waste of time. Although there were a few things from home economics that Walker wished he paid attention to back when he was in school, he’d had the same study habits as his nephew and couldn’t really fault him for his practices. For the most part, Walker’s lack of attention in certain departments and extreme focus in others (i.e., English and writing classes), had worked in his favor.

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