Wren

My parents come to Bean There on a Tuesday, eleven days later.

I've been staying at the Harrows'. "Just for a few nights," I told Isolde. That was eleven nights ago. She's put my name on a bedroom door. In calligraphy... I've stopped arguing with her... it's like arguing with the weather.

The bell over the door jingles and there they are. Mom in her good coat. Dad... sober. I can tell from across the room by the way he holds the door for an old lady instead of letting it swing. Theo's behind them, giving me two thumbs up like this is a school play.

Kevin looks at me. I look at Kevin.

"Take your break, buddy," he says, very gently, which somehow makes me feel even worse...

We sit at the wobbly table....how appropriate.

Nobody talks for a while. Mom keeps turning her cup in circles. Dad's hands are shaking a little, and I can't tell if it's the not-drinking or the being-here.

"That man," Mom starts. Stops, then tries again. "I believed him...over you. I didn't even have to think about it, for whatever reason, and that's... Wren, that's the part I can't stop thinking about. How easy it was."

I don't say anything. I've spent my whole life making moments like this easier for them. Not this time.

"You know we wanted a son," she says. "And then we had you, and I think I spent twenty years being disappointed about something that was never your fault. And when Theo came, I..." She presses her lips together. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I've been a horrible mother to you without even realizing it."

Sweetheart. Thats rich coming from her. I hear it and have no idea where to put it.

Then Dad makes a sound.

I've seen my father angry, drunk, asleep on the couch at four in the afternoon. I've never once seen him cry...honestly, I didn't think he knew how.

He's crying now. Its quiet and ugly, one hand over his eyes, right in the middle of Bean There, while the guy at the window table pretends very hard to read his phone.

"You paid the electric," he says through it. "You were paying the electric, and I was..." He can't finish.

Theo slides a napkin across the table to him.

I want to tell them it's okay. That's the old reflex, the one that's always ready. Say it's fine, carry it, don't drop anyone.

But it's not okay...I cant fake it, not again, it won't take us anywhere.

"I can't forgive you today," I say. My voice wobbles, but it holds. "I want to... someday. I think, just not today."

Mom nods like she expected that, she looks almost relieved. "Someday is more than we deserve."

"We just..." Dad wipes his face with Theo's napkin. "We hope you're happy. Wherever you are... We hope you're warm."

They leave before my break ends. Theo hugs me at the door, way too hard, and whispers, "Can I come to Sunday dinner? Isolde said I could."

So the Harrows have adopted my brother too, apparently...and nobody told me.

✦

Silas picks me up after my shift....on the bus. He has his own card now, and he's unbearable about it.

"Well?" he asks.

"Dad cried."

He's quiet for a second. "Did you?"

"Little bit, but not in front of them."

"Good," he says. Then, uncertain: "Is that the wrong thing to say?"

"It's the right thing, actually." I lean my head on his shoulder. He goes completely still, like a scared cat needed to be warned in advance. Then, slowly, he relaxes. "Look at you. Learning."

"I've been studying."

✦

Sunday.

Viktor is burning the roast. Isolde insists she's helping, which mostly means holding a glass of something red and saying "Viktor" in a warning voice. Theo is explaining photosynthesis to a four-hundred-year-old man who keeps saying "fascinating" and seems to actually mean it.

Silas's room is a mess now. My sketchbooks all over his desk. A bus pass on the nightstand. A napkin drawing in a frame by the window. Sometimes he moves things around just to look at them in a new spot. But I decided not to tell him how weird that is...

After dinner, Isolde drags me into the east gallery. Four hundred years of Harrows stare down at us, pale and serious and very, very bloodline.

"There's an empty frame at the end," she says. "We need a new family portrait. I want you to paint it."

"Me? I'm a business major."

"Then send us an invoice," Viktor calls from the doorway. "That's business."

I laugh. And then I say yes, no point in arguing.

(I'm still sending the invoice. Obviously...)

It takes me three weekends. Viktor in the middle, scar and all, trying not to smile. Isolde with her hand on his arm. Theo in the corner, because he asked. Silas beside them, looking down at something just out of frame.

That something is me. I painted myself in. Paint on my sleeve, granola bar in my pocket, standing right there with them like I belong.

Isolde had some tears in her eyes while looking at it, and Viktor pretends he didn't. Silas just looks at it for a very long time with warmth filling up his cold face.

Not a single drop of Harrow blood in that whole corner of the canvas, for a change nobody here  seems to care.

"You know," Silas says later, with just us two left in the room, "I still can't read you."

"Good." I take his hand. "Keep trying."

He squeezes back. "I'm ready to spend the rest of my eternity trying." 

And my stomach does something completely ridiculous... a full flip, like the 42 taking a corner too fast. I open my mouth to say something...anything at all, but he leans down and his soft cold lips press mine before I can find a single word. It was soft and a little clumsy, hard to believe this perfect man had something he's not used to and tactless about, and for once neither of us is waiting for anything or planning something. 

The whole world goes quiet for the first time ever, all I could hear was his heart beating...or maybe it was mine...maybe both but it felt like one. For the first time ever I thought, if that cold hell I lived through day by day was all for this, I'd do it again. 

I'll never tell him this though, it will go to his head, we don't need any more of that.