Page 157 of Never Let You Go

“They’re getting older,” my mother sighs.

Trevor and Ryan have huge grins. “We joined a gym.”

I’m reminded of what Alexandra had suggested, that they should work at the bakery during the summers, and the idea is appealing to me more and more.

“I could use some muscle here at the bakery, if you’re looking for summer jobs,” I say. My mother glances away from the screen—at her husband no doubt.

“Dope!” Ryan says, high-fiving his brother. Both have full-on smiles, and I get that feeling again—we’re a band of brothers.

Dean, their father, grumbles something I can’t make out. He might be off camera, but he’s not letting this conversation take place outside his control. Trevor’s eyes cut to the side, and Ryan does a don’t worry about it eye roll and shoulder shake for my benefit.

As far back as I can remember, Dean has been shoving me to the sidelines of the family, doing everything he could to keep me away from “his sons.”

The first time I vividly remember feeling like a second-tier member of the family—the proverbial stepchild—I must have been nine years old. The twins were toddlers. I’d come home from school with a good grade, and my mother was busy getting dinner ready.

Maybe if I got some of her chores out of the way, I thought, she’d have time for a game of cards with me before Dean got home. Like before. When it was just the two of us.

I run the bath and measure the temperature with my elbow, making sure it feels lukewarm. I prepare matching pajamas and clean towels. When the bath is half full, I slowly lower Ryan, who is more outgoing, followed by Trevor, who will do anything his twin does, and I start running the plastic ducks around them. They splash water playfully. I use a washcloth and the baby liquid soap to wash them. Their soft skin and laughs are endearing, and so is the way their big eyes look at me with wonder and happiness.

“Be good boys, or I won’t give you your bath anymore,” I say as I rinse their baby hair down with the handheld shower, a clean washcloth covering their eyes to prevent the sting from the running water.

I pull the plug from the drain and take Ryan out the tub first. I dry him, put him in his pajamas and set him down. He starts bobbing around, opening the drawers and throwing stuff out. This isn’t going to do. The bath is completely empty of water, now, so it’s safe for me to dash out of the bathroom and plop him in the playpen without anything happening to Trevor. Ryan is wiggling in my arms, and the playpen is high. My grip on him falters, and he drops onto the plastic surface, wailing more out of frustration than anything else. Echoing him immediately, Trevor shrieks in the bathroom, where I rush back.

I find Dean leaning into the bathtub. “Shannon!” he yells.

I grab Trevor’s clean towel and say, “He’s just unhappy that Ryan is in the—”

“He could have drowned!” Dean shouts as my mother comes running in.

I feel tears coming up. “But I emptied the—”

“Christopher, what did you do?” my mother asks.

“I was trying to h—”

Dean wags a finger at me. “Stay away from my sons.”

I saw it clearly then. My only crime was that I was who I was.

Not his son.

This understanding that I was a second-class person in this household that was no longer a family to me only got deeper from then on.

Ryan and Trevor adored me, but there was this unspoken rule between us that we shouldn’t get caught playing together. We broke it, time and time again. When Trevor followed Ryan up a tree, fell and broke his arm, or when Ryan tried a chemical experiment and burned Trevor’s eyebrows, Dean and my mother sighed, “Boys will be boys.”

But when Trevor got his nose broken playing hockey with me and my friends, no amount of lying on our part could conceal my role in it. He wore his slightly crooked nose like a medal of honor, convinced it gave him the bad boy look that would polish his persona. His father saw things differently, and there were words that were spoken that day that were too hard for me to forgive. I spent the next few months here in Emerald Creek, with my Aunt Shannon and Uncle Dennis. A few months later, I left for a baking apprenticeship in France that lasted two years.

I don’t remember whose idea it was that I leave and do something with my hands, but even if it wasn’t mine, I was on board with it. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and go somewhere I didn’t have a past, a history. Somewhere people would welcome me with open arms, even if just to work or learn a trade. I’d made sure of that—that the people I was apprenticing with actually wanted me.

I’d been the baggage my mother came with, and I was going to make sure that never happened to me again.

And, later, I made damn sure that never happened to Skye.

In the afternoon, we all meet up at the farm. Lynn, Craig, and the usual suspects are sitting in the sun, sipping wine on the terrace overlooking the apple orchard.

After hugging everyone hello and wishing Lynn a happy Mother’s Day, Alexandra takes Skye to the kitchen and reappears on the terrace with the cake displayed on a dish. Skye proudly presents it around, handing half a slice to everyone.

“Today is Kids’ Day in…” she starts, beaming, then stops in her tracks. “In our family?” She frowns. “Daddy, are we a family?” she shrieks to cover the sound of the multiple conversations going on at once, and manages to make the din die down. “You know, since Alek-zandra and you are not married? But we still love her, and she loves us? And she lives with us? Does that mean we are a family?”

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