Page 37 of Private Exhibit
“I do?”
“Yeah. You turn your shoulders so your body angles slightly away when someone walks by. You avoid eye-contact, your gaze almost in constant motion. Your hands kind of…flutter and dance while you're talking.”
Devon blushed.
“You rock a little while you're waiting for the light to change.”
Devon ducked his head.
“Hey.” Andy reached out, meaning to tilt the boy's chin up, but stopped himself, knowing that touching him would be devastating. “There's nothing wrong with any of that.”
Devon shyly glanced up. “Really?”
“Really.”
Devon was silent as they crossed the street again. “Did you help him?”
“Who?”
“The boy.”
“Oh.” Andy winced when he realized exactly which case that had been. “Yeah,” he answered slowly. “Yeah, I did.” That had been his last case before Junior died. Andy had even gotten a thank-you card from the boy, praising Andy for saving his life.
Except the card had arrived the day of Junior's funeral. A stark, contrast reminder of the one life he'd failed to save. The only life that had truly mattered.
“Andy?” Devon whispered.
Andy quickly shook his head, trying to cast away his dismal thoughts, and forced on a smile. “Tell me about your evening,” he blurted out, desperate to change the subject.
Devon grimaced. “You don't have to–”
“Tell me,” Andy insisted, wanting to think about anything but his own failures. He barely managed to stop himself from blurting out,Tell Daddy what's wrong.
Gods. Andy coughed and shook his head. He needed to shut down those kinds of thoughts right now.
“Well,” Devon began, saving Andy before temptation could spiral any further, “I got a letter. It was from the people who were supposed to have adopted me as a baby.”
“You were adopted?”
“No. I was supposed to be, but it never happened.” Devon paused. “My mom put me up for adoption before I was born. It was all pre-arranged. This couple—the Rosses—flew down to Lonville to pick me up, but then the doctors told them about my condition.” Devon paused again, reaching out to touch a leaf on a clinging vine right beside him. “They went to the hospital nursery, and when nobody was looking, they switched me with another random baby, so they took him home instead while I wound up in an orphanage.”
“Gods,” Andy whispered.
“But the Rosses tracked me down here recently,” Devon went on. “I thought I was finally going to get to know them. To finally have…well…not a family, exactly. It's not like I have enough time to develop any kind of relationship like that. But I thought there would at least besomething, you know?” He shook his head. “They came here, and we met. But then they just up and went back home. They left me a letter, saying it was nice to meet me. A letter and a check.”
“A check?”
“Yeah. They wrote that they hoped it would make up for not adopting me.”
“Fucking hells,” Andy quietly swore. How could anybody think that money would make up for denying a child a home? Then again, having gone through raising a child with Ashworth-Grahams, he could almost understand wanting to avoid that kind of pain. “Was that why your mom gave you up? Because of the disease?”
“Oh. No. She just wasn't ready to be a single mother. She didn't even know she was a carrier for A-G. Didn't find out until two days before I was born.” He blushed. “I sort of hacked into hospital records to find all this out, by the way.”
Andy chuckled. “Alright. Go on.”
“Um.” Devon smiled shyly, but it quickly faded. “Apparently, I had an attack while in the womb, and when they did a scan, they found me completely paralyzed. Everyone assumed I was going to be born dead. But they ran a bunch of tests and found the genetic markers for A-G in my mom's blood and in mine. Of course, they couldn't explain how I apparently had the disease since I was born female–”
Andy stopped in his tracks. “What?” he gasped.
