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Lowell felt pressed back into his chair, unable to move. He had never really been on the receiving end of his father’s attention, and he had been a fool to seek it out now, he realized. For there was a reason all of his older brothers were so tense.
“Jackson thinks he has something to prove, thinks he needs to rewrite history because he’s been breathing his own oxygen for too damn long. Grayson thinks he’s the smartest person in existence, and while he’s busy congratulating himself on being so brilliant, he lets himself be manipulated. By you. By Trapp. By his girlfriend. Take your pick. Trapp can’t abide any storyline where he is not the hero. He dropped out of medical school, wasted a fantastic amount of my money and broke your mother’s heart. So what did he do? He comes back here and becomes a fireman. Because who the fuck can get mad at someone who’s saving kittens and running into burning buildings?Youthink you’re the only Hemming in existence who’s wanted out, who wants to see the world, who can’t be happy with just this name. And your brother thinks if he’s quiet enough he can skate through life without ever having to make a hard decision on his own. Do you know he’s been carrying around an engagement ring for almost a year? He can’t pop the question becausehewould have to do it, and it’s so much easier to just let Gray and Jackson bicker over bullshit and let you throw your tantrums and he can just exist in the background. He’s probably hoping one of you steals it from his pocket and does it for him. You’re all equal amounts of predictable. And you, my dear boy, are just as annoying to me as all of your brothers. No more, and no less. So if you have something else to say, Lowell, let’s get the fuck on with it, so we can get breakfast ordered.”
“My office called. They’re reopening flights for nonhumans. I can go back to work. I have paperwork to process and a new visa to get but, yeah. I can be back to work by next month.”
Jack steepled his fingers, and Lowell swallowed hard.
“That’s all you’ve been champing at the bit for, and yet you sound so conflicted.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he choked out. “I hated being home, and I think I probably still hate it. I don’t like the person I am here. But — I’m going to miss everyone. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, and it’s been nice just . . .”
He sucked in a shuddering breath, suddenly feeling as though he were about to cry, proving his father right. He was still a child that threw temper tantrums.
“I think I love this girl, but I don’t want her to do this. I’m not ready to be a father, I’m not. I’m a fucking idiot, I can barely function like an adult. I can’t afford to live here even if I wanted to, I’m burning through my savings right now. She wants this, but I don’t want to know that I have a kid out there somewhere and I’m not part of . . . I just don’t think I can do it, but I don’t want to leave her, and I don’t know what todo.”
His father said nothing for a long moment. Lowell was used to that. Grayson was the same way. They let silences stretch, and waited for the other person to get uncomfortable and fill them, giving them more time to gather information and plan their attack.
“Do you know why I have this piece of yours?”
His eyes raised to the photograph on the wall, one of his, professionally framed and matted. It was a group of Komodo dragon children, with wide, toothy grins, holding pieces of melon that only grew on the island where they lived. They had spent the last two hours teaching him how to shimmy up the trees to pick them without slicing his legs on the treacherous trunks, the particular way they had to be cut, to get through their tough outer shell without damaging sweet juicy flesh inside. Behind them, in the middle distance, was the crater of a recent volcanic eruption, still belching black smoke. He had been there to cover the volcano, and had played Ketterling with the kids while he waited for the boat that would bring him closer to the caldera.
There had been several dozen other photographers there, all jockeying for tenders to get closer to the crater, documenting what was left of another cluster of islands in the archipelago, decimated by the resulting tsunami. He had been the only fool on the island snapping pictures of children, but this one had won an award. Civilian life continuing against tragedy, which had become his signature, the bulk of his body of work, at least what he’d been acknowledged for.
He donated the piece and several others to an auction, a fundraiser gala for the Werewolf Defense League, the organization Grayson now worked for. It had been a moment of hubris and pride, quickly extinguished the next time he came home, several months later to surprise his mother for Christmas. Two of the pieces he had donated had been hanging in Grayson’s home, an indication to him that they’d either not sold or had been bid on for so little that his brother had felt sorry for him.
“Because it was what was left at the end of the auction, with the other raffle baskets no one wanted?” He asked tonelessly, not really wanting to hear the answer.
His father scowled at him, a familiar look that he himself made often.
“Did I mention that you are also disgustingly self-pitying? Please add that to the list, I apologize for the exclusion. I have this piece, because your brother outbid me and everyone else on the other two. At first, I thought he was just driving up the price. I was a little annoyed, because he knew I wanted them. Then I realized he was bidding to win. He wound up being outbid on the piece from the orphanage, one of the foundation executives got that one, I believe, and he was so mad, I thought he was going to flip his table. I used his distraction to get this one. And I think he was shitty with me about that too.”
Lowell felt as if his lungs had been injected with the paralyzing agent, leaving him unable to draw breath, huffing through his nose as much as he was able.
“I didn’t raise fools, Lowell. I didn’t raise any of you to be less than your worth. Everyone misses you, and everyone wishes you lived a little closer to home, and it would be nice if you picked up the phone for someone other than Grayson once in a while, but you’re very, very good at what you do, and we're all so proud of you. You are living completely on your own, on the other side of the world from your family, in, according to Gray, occasionally terrible, dangerous circumstances and situations. The last explorer I can think of off the top of my head was Balthazar Hemming, he was the third younger brother of Jackson the . . . third or fourth, I can’t think of which. His brother Grayson is the one who died in the fire. The blue apatite monument in Hostun Park is his, the inscription is on the back side, on a bronze plaque, facing southeast.”
Lowell blinked. Hostun Park was the one behind the cafe, where he’d sat with Moriah, that first afternoon.
“So, who knows, Lowell. You may get your monument and plaque after all. On the day you decide you want to come home, there will be a place for you. No one is pushing you out, no one forgets you exist, or all the other nonsense you moan on and on about. Your brothers have lives, just like you do, and you’re all completely self-absorbed.”
“I can’t imagine where we got that from.”
His father smiled, spreading his hands in an expansive gesture.
“At least you come by it honestly. That does not mean I’m willing to let you come home to live, because I would sooner burn down the house with myself in it. This is one instance when I don’t care what your mother wants. You’re a monster, and if this human girl, whoever she is, can put up with your insatiable need to be the center of attention and moping and resulting tantrums, I wouldn’t be so quick to let her get away. I do agree that you’re not ready to be a father, but I can speak from experience and say, that you never really are. Not until it happens.”
He was finally able to breathe again, and he sucked in a huge, shuddering breath. His brothers would be there soon, he realized, as his father hit the intercom on his phone.
“Rhonda, let’s get breakfast ordered if we haven’t already, please make sure you get yourself something. And if we could cut my son a check from his account, please. One hundred thousand. Thank you.”
Lowell gaped. He was a pauper compared to his brothers, and he had accepted that he traded a lucrative career for his freedom, and he prided himself on the fact that he lived completely on his own money. He forgot, sometimes, that he had a trust fund and money in the bank. It was Grayson who had dragged him by the scruff of the neck to their father when he turned 18, demanding that he turn over trust he’d been left by their grandfather.
“You’re irresponsible and you’re going to piss it away on something stupid.”
“I have equipment to buy!” he’d argued vehemently, earning Grayson’s eye roll.
“Like I said. Something stupid. Let dad invest part of it. Let the rest collect interest. Then it won’t matter if you get a degree in fingerpainting, you’ll at least have money to live and retire on.”
Lowell knew he was kissed with the golden seal of privilege, for he had grown up in affluent, comfortable surroundings, told he could be whatever he wanted to be, and given the education and opportunity to do so. He had been told his entire life what life was like on the fringes, but he never experienced it. He'd seen it, and documented it, had been personally touched by it, thinking of his own mother and the other young she wolves out there like her, but when he packed his camera gear up, he got to go away from it, leave it behind and go back to a world where he had nothing more pressing to worry over than what movie he would stream and what he would order for dinner. Not living off his trust fund was a point of pride. He had called it his something stupid money ever since, and most of the time, he forgot it existed.
