The Lucky Ones(31)
Was that why she’d been up here that day? Had she been sick? It was summer, so there would have been no school to miss. Maybe she snuck up here? Did someone lure her upstairs for the sole purpose of pushing her down? Or had she fallen completely by accident and the phone call to her aunt was something entirely unrelated? If it weren’t for that call, Allison would be sure the fall was an accident. But she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. She’d been betrayed twice in this house—first by whoever had hurt her, and then by Dr. Capello when he let her go without a fight. Allison stared down the steps, trying to trigger a memory—anything about that moment, that day, that week.
Nothing. If she had any memories of that time, they were locked up in a vault in her brain, and she’d long ago lost the combination.
Allison gave up trying to remember. She turned from the stairs and wandered down the hallway, opening the door to Dr. Capello’s office.
She smiled as she stepped inside. Dr. Capello had truly snagged the best room in the house. It was spacious and airy, with bright white walls and windows looking out on the ocean. Her favorite was the massive bay window with the padded window bench perfect for a child to lie on for reading or napping or watching the waves. Dr. Capello had a beautiful old boat of a desk, weathered gray wood with a three-masted ship carved onto the back and sides.
A map hung behind the desk, over a decorative fireplace. At least in Allison’s memory it had been a map, the old-fashioned ink and parchment sort with dragons lurking along the far edges. But her grown-up eyes now saw it for what it was—a skull. A map of the skull with parts of the brain labeled like countries. At the very core of the skull, there she saw the pen-and-ink dragons. How strange. Why would there be dragons inside the human brain? She’d heard of the “lizard brain” but never the dragon brain. She’d have to ask Dr. Capello about it.
Allison walked around the desk and that’s when she found what she’d come for. Photographs, a dozen of them in plain black frames, sat on Dr. Capello’s desk in an array that spanned twenty years or more.
On the far right corner of the desk was a picture of the five of them—Dr. Capello, Thora, Deacon, Roland and her. It had been taken on the back deck with the sun and the ocean behind them. A summer picture, they were all in shorts and Tshirts. Allison grinned at the sight of her tiny self in Roland’s arms. She was the shortest one, which meant Roland had to hold her up so that more than just the top of her head would be in the picture. She couldn’t quite remember when that picture had been taken. She slipped the photograph out of the frame and read the back.
July 30, 1997—the kids and me with our new addition, Allison.
The picture had been taken one month after she’d come to The Dragon, and she looked happy and healthy and at home. One of the family already.
Next to that picture Allison found a photograph of orange-haired Thora and black-haired Deacon playing tag on the wet sand. Thora and Deacon—otherwise known as “the Twins.” They weren’t related, Deacon and Thora, but they were the same age, had the same birthday by coincidence and were inseparable. For a long time, Allison had simply assumed they were twins despite looking nothing alike.
As the photos progressed from right to left, the children in the pictures aged from kids to preteens to teenagers to adults. Somewhere around the middle section, the teenage years, she and Kendra and Oliver disappeared from the pictures. Only Roland, Deacon and Thora were in the photos on the left of the desk. Allison knew where she’d gone—home to live with her aunt. But what about the other two? Where were they now? In the three farthest pictures she saw Thora, as a beautiful young woman, in a pretty strapless prom dress with Deacon and Roland standing next her and beaming like proud papas. Another photograph showcased Deacon and Thora in their graduation robes and caps, grinning awkwardly at the camera. The picture next to that one was of Deacon on a Kawasaki motorcycle, looking terribly dashing in a leather jacket, his black hair wild from wind.
One picture held her eye longer than the others—Roland, about age twenty-four or twenty-five, stood in front of a chapel wearing the black robes of a Benedictine monk. He wasn’t smiling in the photograph, but he didn’t look sad, either. Pensive? A little. Maybe lonely, too? Or not. Maybe that’s what she wanted to believe. It wasn’t as jarring as she thought it would be to see him as a monk. He looked like himself, only younger, his hair an even lighter blond, still parted down the center and tucked behind the ears like she remembered so well. In the photograph she spied an eyebrow piercing—an endearing mix of medieval and modern, just like Roland himself. Curious to see when this picture had been taken, she slipped the photo out of the frame and read the back—Brother Paul, it said, 2009. But that wasn’t all she found. Hidden behind the picture of Roland in his black robes, Allison found another photograph.
The second photograph was of four very young children. She recognized three of the four—Roland, Deacon and Thora—but the last boy she’d never seen before. He had olive skin and dark eyes. She imagined his hair was dark, too, but she couldn’t see it since he wore a bucket hat with Clark Beach emblazoned on the front. On the back of the photograph it read:
The kids meet their new brother, Antonio Russo, age eight. February 1995.
New brother? She didn’t remember any of them mentioning a boy named Antonio. He must have been another foster child Dr. Capello had taken in who’d come and gone before Allison had arrived. It appeared the picture had been taken in the sunroom. She recognized the big white couch and the windows behind them. All of the kids wore big cheesy grins in the photograph, all of them but Antonio, who stared blankly at the camera.