The Rattled Bones(52)

“How long did you stay yesterday?”

“A couple of hours.” He looks to the sun spraying over the waves. “Just until your friend Hattie came over.”

“Yeah, she called me this morning. I don’t even remember her being there.”

“You were pretty out of it.”

“It was a shock to the system.” The near drowning, the rescue. But more, too. The words scratched in wood, the undersea voice I heard as clearly as I hear Sam now. And Reed and his anger. Gram and her unending selflessness.

“Yesterday was crammed with its share of surprises.”

“How do you mean?” I watch Sam, how he’s intent on a gull diving for fish. “Sam?”

“Nothing. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Technically you haven’t brought anything up yet.”

He turns to me then. “Your grandmother told me about your father.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure if this feels like relief or betrayal.

“She was really upset last night. Told me how you were all she had left. How your mom went away when you were really young. I had no idea, Rilla.” He kicks at the broken shells. “I mean, I knew something was going on. . . .”

“What happened to my dad . . . it was recent. I haven’t been okay to talk about it with anyone.”

“I get that.”

“And my mom isn’t around because she needed some help from psychiatrists.” I wait on his response. I wait for the taunts I heard as a kid, the way Reed called her crazy. But there is only Sam, listening. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. It was more that I liked that you didn’t know.”

“Believe me, I’m a big fan of escapism.” He picks up a razor shell, the kind Hattie and I would pretend to shave our legs with in the mudflats long before we had leg hair to shave. “But I talked about your dad like he was here, alive. God”—he taps the razor shell to his palm—“I must have sounded so disrespectful.”

“You didn’t. Not once.”

“You have to know I never would’ve said anything about him if I’d known.”

“I know, but I liked you talking about my dad like he was still here. You kept him alive in a way that was . . . unexpected.”

“Yeah?”

“Totally. I guess I didn’t want you to know about my parents because I didn’t want you to treat me differently. My family’s complicated.”

“Whose isn’t?”

No one’s. Hattie’s always had it harder with her mom. Reed lives with his grandfather because neither of his parents can stay sober even when they want to. It’s kind of always been an epidemic among fisherman that no one talks about.

“I’m in Maine because my family got complicated.”

“Not a dusty book?”

He gives a small laugh, and I’m grateful for its sound. “Complications and a dusty book.”

“Tell me.”

“You don’t want to hear my story.”

“I do.” I move to a large rock, my legs needing rest. Sam sits next to me.

Against the harsh crash of the waves, Sam tells me his story. How it took nine years for him to be legally cleared for adoption. How the waiting on Child and Family Services nearly broke him, his family.

“I have a biological aunt who wanted custody. My parents had no rights when they were foster parents so they had to let my brother and me go.”

I know too much about foster care. So many kids I grew up with were raised by their aunts, grandmothers—or strangers who opened their homes to kids needing safe harbor. All because their parents struggled with demons and bad decisions. I haven’t seen a lot of happy endings. “How old were you?”

“Eight. My brother and I had just been cleared for adoption, and that triggered the state to go out and look for any blood relatives one last time.” He stands, clasps his hands around the back of his neck, the V of his arms sticking out behind each ear. “I’d never been so scared. All of a sudden I was in this new home, in a new state with a woman I didn’t even know. And my mom and dad were so far away.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“It’s the sadness I always remember. How being away from my parents made a hole in me.”

“But she didn’t adopt you?”

“No. Turned out, two young boys were too much for her to handle. So the state gave us back to our mom and dad a year later.”

“A whole year?”

“The longest year of my life.” He plucks a flat rock from the beach, skips the stone into the waves. It pops off the water twice before sinking into a swell.

“And then you were adopted?”

“Not for another four years. Bureaucracy at its finest.” He stares out at the ocean like he’s seeing something so much bigger than the sea. “My whole family lived those years in fear, petrified that another blood relative would come forward to claim me and my brother.”

“But they didn’t?”

“No.” He shakes his head like he’s shaking off the memory. “I only had one family. My mom and dad, my brother. But Child and Family Services couldn’t see that. They have to follow rules, protocols. It’s a broken system. There’s not a lot of room in the laws to accommodate what kids want. Or need.” He lets out a deep breath. “I spent most of my childhood living between two worlds, never knowing where I really belonged.”