A buzzing enveloped my ears. “What?”
“She came to the hospital. When you were in school.”
Anger, sleek and oily. “What did she want?”
Bear looked older than I’d ever seen him. More tired. “She came to bring the adoption papers. Renouncing her custody of you.”
“You said she sent those in the mail. That they just showed up one day.”
“I know. But she came. And I asked her. For the both of us. I asked her why.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “Said she wasn’t meant to be a mother. That we were better off without her.”
“What about when she came back? That day to the apartment. She wanted me then! She told me!” It didn’t matter that I never wanted to leave with her. It didn’t matter that it did nothing to offer her redemption in my eyes. But it had mattered, at least a little bit, to my nine-year-old heart, that my mother wanted me. That she wanted me enough to try and fight my brother for custody. That she cared about me enough to make petty demands.
That she loved me.
“It was for money,” Bear said. “Otter dated a man before he came back to Seafare. They broke up. He knew Otter had feelings for me. He wanted us to break up. He tracked her down. Offered her money. She took it. And did what she did.”
“Money,” I said stupidly. “It was about money.”
“Yeah, Kid. Money.”
“Did she get it? Did she get her money?”
Bear looked stricken. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“You lied to me.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Why tell me the truth now?”
“Because,” he said, “you’re old enough now to understand such things. And there might come a day when you feel the need to track her down yourself. I hope that never happens, but that’s me being selfish and I can’t do that to you. If it does happen, I wanted you to know everything about her. It’s only fair.”
“Fair,” I spat at him. “How is any of this fair? What the fuck do you know about fair?”
“It’s not,” he said, his voice growing hard. “It never was and it never will be. But I have done my damnedest to make sure you’ve had a home, that you’ve known every single day that you were loved like no one else on this earth. Yes, I’ve made mistakes. Yes, I’ve fucked up and made decisions based upon what I thought was right, but if it meant keeping you healthy and sane and alive, then I’d do the same thing. Again. And again. And again.”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Sane? Think we kind of lapsed on that one, Papa Bear.”
“Don’t you dare talk like that,” he growled at me. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I think the medical community would disagree with you.”
“Fuck them!” he cried at me, slamming his hands on the steering wheel. “Fuck them! Fuck a goddamn diagnosis! Fuck her! And fuck you too, if you think I’m going to stand aside and let you think that about yourself. You are going to make this world a better place, and you are going to prove everyone wrong who thinks you needed a mother and father to grow up good. There’s never been a moment when I haven’t looked at you and thought, This is why I’m doing this. He’s the reason I’m doing all that I do.”
“Earthquake,” I whispered at him, barely able to breathe. The slamming of his hands was like shutting the door on my lungs. “B-breathe. H-hard t-t-to—”
He was out the door and around the car before I could even blink. In the panic that was my mind, the red waves and shifting ground, I felt anger at myself for being so weak. I have to fix this, I thought. I have to find a way to fix this somehow.
But then the ground broke up beneath my feet and I started falling, falling, falling and I couldn’t breathe and—
My brother was there. As he always was. And as always, he talked me through it. It took a while, but eventually, the earthquakes stopped. My throat and lungs opened up.
We sat there, for a time. Bear and me.