Page 16 of The Dearly Departed

We could wander the streets. We could rob store after store. We could duck into alcoves and alleys to find a few miserable hours of sleep. But to what end? We would be caught eventually. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know how, but that much was true. Sooner or later, we would be found, and we would be thrown back into what we’d escaped from. Maybe not the same house and the same sick people, but there would be others. Eventually, sooner rather than later, I’d age out of the system, and Shawn and Ike would be alone—without me—and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all. They’d never make it. They would break.

Like Anna.

Her screams filled my head from somewhere long, long ago and far away, and I shook it off. I had failed her, I had broken my promise to her, and one promise broken was one promise too many.

I had to keep Shawn and Ike safe too. I had to keep us together, no matter what that meant.

"What would I have to do?" I finally asked, lifting my eyes to hold Leonard's stare.

The corners of his lips lifted into a reluctant smile. "Well … to start, I thought the three of you could keep the place clean and organized. Maybe help a bit with the funerals—"

"You want me to touch dead bodies?" I nearly shuddered at the idea, envisioning my mother's unblinking eyes, staring off toward something I couldn't see.

Maybe it'd be different if I didn't know them, I thought.

She was my mom. Anybody who came in here would be nobody to me. Strangers.

But Leonard started to shake his head, then stopped himself. "Well, not right away. Someday maybe, if you were interested. But you're a strong young man. You'd be perfectly capable to help lift the caskets, prepare for the viewings … things like that."

"Would I have to deal with people?"

I didn't like people, and I found they didn't particularly like me either.

"A bit maybe," Leonard replied, then laughed at the look of disgust on my face. I liked his laugh. It was warm and friendly, a sound I wanted to hear again and again. "You don't need to talk with them much. Most of the time, they just want someone to listen to them."

I grumbled, looking away. Listening wasn't a strength of mine, nor did I care for it to be.

One of the few memories I still had of my mother was her yelling, “For once in your fucking life, why can't you just listen to me?”

Listening meant compliance. Listening often meant doing things that were wrong. Doing bad things for bad, bad men and women.

Sick. They were all sick.

Again, I remembered Anna and that day at the library, when we had learned about the plague doctor and she told me what Jim—our foster father at the time—had done to her.

Leonard was quiet for a moment before saying, "How about this, Abraham? You and I will figure out what you're comfortable with. If dealing with the clientele isn't something you can manage, then you won't deal with them, period. How does that sound?"

He was compromising with me, willing to work with my strengths and weaknesses. There was that feeling again. The one that sat heavily against my chest and clogged my throat, making me feel like a sad, scared little boy who only wanted to hug this man I'd only just met.

"Sure," I grumbled with a curt nod.

"Yeah?"

I swung my gaze toward Leonard's and nodded. "Yeah," I said. "Sounds good."

"Well then, Abraham," he said, extending a hand toward me, "I'd like to welcome you—and your brothers—to the Llewellyn family."

I stared at that hand for a moment.

I'd never been welcomed before. Never been wanted, never been needed. I wasn't sure I had ever, in sixteen years, felt like I was a part of something, a family, and I couldn't say for certain I felt that way now.

But this gesture, this open door, seemed like more of a promise than anything I'd been given before, and the feeling in my chest crashed against my heart and lungs until I could barely gasp for another breath.

"Bram," I said, slowly laying my palm against his and grasping his hand.

"Bram?"

"Abraham is what people call me when they wanna piss me off," I replied. Or Anna. Anna called me Abraham. "You can call me Bram."