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Anna surprised me with a short bark of laughter. “No, we sure don’t.”
We walked on. Then, “What are you guys going to do?”
Creed tensed next to me, but then so did Anna, so I stayed quiet.
“Whatever we can,” Creed said. “It’s our responsibility. They’re my responsibility. I’m going to make sure that they’ll never want for anything.”
We stopped in the furthest corner of the parking lot, away from the hospital and people, away from the cars and lights. The rain started beating steadily on my hoodie. I stepped out of their grasps and took two steps forward, raising my face toward the sky, the cold rain trickling down my cheek, my mouth. I stuck out my tongue and caught a drop and sucked it in.
It tasted like the ocean, salty and bitter. “Is that what you want?” I asked them, still watching the night.
“Yes,” Anna said. “It’s what we want.”
“I’m going to take the rest of the semester off,” Creed said, from somewhere to my right. “I’ll transfer to the U of O in Eugene. It’ll be closer, and I can commute, if necessary.”
“Have you told your parents?”
Hesitation. Then, “No,” Anna said. “We were going to wait to see… to see what happened here. It matters more. They matter more right now.”
Did they? I wanted to believe they did, that selfish part of me screaming of course they did, of course Otter and Mrs. Paquinn meant more. That dark voice went even deeper, whispering only Otter mattered. That if I had to choose, I would always pick him. He was the one that needed to wake up.
He was the one I wanted.
She’s old, it told me. She’s lived a good life. But what about Otter? He’s so young. He’s got so much more to give. You lose her, it’ll crush you and chafe like mad, but if you lose him? If you lose him, you’ll lose everything.
I pushed it away before I could study it further. I pushed it away because I knew it was right and that I was damned.
“No,” I said, feeling my gorge rise like liquid heat. “No. It all matters.
Every piece of it. Every part of it.”
Liar, it whispered.
I felt Creed’s hand drop on my shoulder. “You know we’ll get through this, right? You know that no matter what happens, we’ll still be here? This changes nothing.”
I couldn’t find it in my heart to correct him. “Sure,” I said. “And that kid of yours is going to have the best fucking family. We’ll make sure he knows every day for the rest of his life that he matters. He’ll never want for anything because we’ll give him everything. You’ll see. Otter will love him like he belongs to him, and Mrs. Paquinn will tell him things about UFOs and will teach him how to drive. Your parents will be the happiest fucking grandparents that ever lived. The Kid and Dominic will be his big brothers, and they’ll teach him everything you taught me. And you two….” I sighed.
“You two will love him like he was the most awesome thing in the world.
Because he will be.”
Anna cried quietly. “And what about you?” she asked. “What will you do?”
“Me?” That was easy. “I’ll make sure he knows that it doesn’t always matter where you come from. That even though we’re not blood, it doesn’t matter. He’ll belong to all of us, and we’ll belong to him.”
Anna launched herself at me and crashed into my arms. It was so familiar, her smell so much like home that I felt the ground roll gently beneath my feet. I put my forehead against hers and felt Creed press his head against ours, and we breathed each other in. “Him, huh?” Anna wept.
“Already know it’s a boy?”
I laughed, for the first time in days. “You’ll see.”
THAT night, the sixth night, I held Otter’s hand as the hospital grew quiet around us. I rubbed my thumb over his hand. I told him quietly how he was going to be an uncle, how I was surprised how quickly Creed had seemed to accept his place, how strong our Anna was. I told him that Mrs. Paquinn wasn’t doing so well, that I didn’t know how much longer she would last. I told him about his friends that’d come to see him, how Beer Me had stroked his face just once and had turned and walked out of the room. I told him how his parents looked so much older than they should. I told him how the Kid was putting on a brave face for me. I told him about my plans for our lives, how one day, we would look back on this moment with passing wonder, remembering how sad it all seemed to be, our memories unable to hold onto the sheer horror of it all.
I told him that we would grow old together, that I’d be there to make fun of him when he started to get fat and bald, when he’d get spots on his hands.
I told him we’d build a little house by the beach, and we’d sit on the porch wrapped up in a blanket and that the world would pass us by and that it was okay. It was okay because we’d have lived it all already. We’d have seen everything there was to see and that we’d be content to just sit and watch.
I’d feel his hand in mine just like it was now, and our rings would scrape together, faded and scratched from the toil of years. I’d look up into his eyes and while the rest might fade, the gold and green would be as bright as it’d always been, and it would be mine. It would be for me.
