Rare (13 page)

“Oh yeah? So how did it get to scribbling names down on a piece of paper? I’ve got to say it, dude. You didn’t seem all that shocked.”

This time, I couldn’t stop the exasperated whoosh of air as it left my lungs. “Are you serious? Do you really think I knew all along? Trust me, Joe. I didn’t.”

I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Joe followed me, accepting the beer I pushed his way. It might have been nine o’clock in the morning, but we both needed a drink. “Then what is it, huh?” he said. “I know I’m missing something. What’s this about Ash having a sister? I didn’t know anything about that.”

“Neither did he until last year, and he’s never known her name. You know what he can be like. He never read the file.”

Joe hummed thoughtfully. He
did
know Ash; he knew him well. “I get that. But I don’t understand why you didn’t laugh in Danni’s face when she barged in here and yelled that crap at you. It’s bullshit, Pete. It has to be. I know Ash can be weird, but I can’t believe you’re taking this seriously.”

“So it’s my fault?”

Joe and I both swiveled. Ash stood in the doorway. He leaned casually against the wooden frame, but he had his arms folded across his chest, and his hair looked windswept, as if he’d been running.

“That’s not what I said.”

Joe’s tone was testy. The loaded silence sat heavily in the air. I could see the signs of stress beginning to show on Ash. Joe was the closest male friend he had. It hurt to see them at odds like this, especially over something neither of them could control.

“Ash?” His gaze flickered to me. “Can I show Joe the sketch you drew? It might help.”

I thought for a moment he would refuse. His personal sketchbooks were just that—personal. They were like journals, and he didn’t often share them, even with me.

Ash sighed and pushed himself off the doorframe. Joe and I drifted after him as he walked into the living room, reached under the couch, and retrieved his latest sketchbook.

“Knock yourself out.”

I took the book and sat on the couch, ignoring his uncharacteristic sarcasm. Joe sat on the opposite end while I found the right page. It didn’t take long. Ash hadn’t added much to the book after he’d drawn the girl from Philadelphia—he’d been too busy with work and the move. I marked the page with my finger and glanced at Ash. In order for this to make any sense to Joe, we were going to have to start at the beginning. I needed Ash’s permission to do that.

He wasn’t where I expected him to be. While Joe and I had sunk down onto the couch, he had retreated back to the doorway. He looked wary, nervous, even, darting his gaze from side to side. Joe spoke before I could. He patted the coffee table. “Dude, I’m not mad, okay? I’m confused. Come sit and help a guy out.”

As ever, even when things descended into the surreal, Joe was always practical.
This is how I feel, and this is what you can do about it.
Ash hesitated for only a moment before he shuffled into the room and folded his long body to sit on the coffee table.

He took the sketchbook from me, his gaze on Joe. “Where did Danni
go?”

“Home to call her dad. She told me to come back and apologize for running out on you.”

Ash nodded slowly. “I thought your girlfriend was from Seattle.”

“Nope. Danni went to UDub and lived down the street from my folks for five years, but she’s Philly born and bred. Now, are you going to show me what’s got Pete all riled up and believing this crazy shit?”

For a brief moment I was pissed, but it didn’t last because I knew the moment Ash opened that book, Joe’s absolute certainty would fade. I wasn’t disappointed. Joe stared hard at the drawing, trying to make sense of the tale that went with it. I almost laughed as his eyes bugged out in much the same way they had so long ago when I’d watched him figure out that Ash was my lover.

“Fuck me. I can’t believe it.” Joe reached out for Ash and put a hand on his arm. “Dude, this is definitely her. I promise. I can’t explain how or why any better than anyone else, but it
is
her.”

Ash tore his eyes away from the floor. “Do you think so? I’m not that good at faces.”

Joe swore. “Not that good, huh?”

There was silence while Ash chewed on his lip and Joe went back to staring at the pencil image of his lover. I felt almost detached from the scene. I was startled when Ash got up to leave. “Where are you going?”

“Work. I’m late already.”

“It’s your day off.”

“No, it’s not. I took Tuesday off, remember?”

No. I could hardly remember my own shift pattern. “You okay?”

“I guess.”

He turned to leave without another word, but Joe stopped him, stood, and pulled him into a tight hug. I watched with a heavy heart. The two of them were really close. Hell, Joe had even been known to crawl into bed with Ash just to get him to stay there and sleep. I couldn’t help wondering how this was going to affect them, even if it turned out to be nothing.

Ash left. My perspective began to return as the front door slammed for what felt like the hundredth time.
What. The. Fuck?
“How does shit like this even happen?”

“Don’t ask me,” Joe said. “I didn’t know anything about it until five o’clock this morning.”

His tone was bitter, suggesting a major bone of contention. “Don’t be too hard on her. This is freaky for all of us.”

Joe snorted. “Yeah, and if it’s true? What then? What the fuck are they gonna do? Play happy families and pretend their momma wasn’t a crack whore?”

I bit down on a sharp retort, knowing his cruel choice of words wasn’t malicious, and the truth was, I had no real answer for him. For all my speculating, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I looked down at my hands and fingered the slip of paper that held Danni’s elegant handwriting. It had always struck me as ironic that Ash shared a name with the fictional vagrant from
Oliver Twist
, but I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. He wasn’t the same kid who’d shuffled into my place three years ago.

Joe plucked the paper from my hand. “Huh. I always figured his name was just Ash. He never said it was short for anything.”

“Neither did you,” I retorted. “Are you telling me your name’s not Joseph?”

“Touché.” His grin was faint, marred by his grave eyes. “What happens next? Like a DNA test or something?”

I shrugged. How the hell was I supposed to know? “Maybe we should let the dust settle. Ash needs to deal with this in his own time. I know he seems okay with it, but I don’t think he’s considered what it really means.”

Joe was the only person on earth I was ever so candid with about Ash, but he seemed to get it. Get
Ash
. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Danni can be… man, she’s a fucking hurricane when she wants something.”

Again, his choice of words wasn’t lost on me. I’d seen the way she’d looked at Ash in the seconds before she bolted. It had been a look of longing, of yearning, almost. She wanted this, she wanted
Ash
, and that was dangerous. At least until we knew for sure. The thought of Ash bonding with someone, only to have them snatched away….

No. I couldn’t let that happen.

Joe sighed. “I love her. For a long time, I didn’t think it was enough, but it is. You and Ash taught me that. I love her to death.”

I slung an arm around his shoulders. “I know, man, I know.”

Joe leaned into me. “I love Ash too. Not like
that
, but I love him like a brother. I can’t let this hurt him.”

He softly knocked his head on my shoulder and got up. I watched him leave with a heavy heart, knowing that whatever happened, it would be a while before I saw him again. We had to put some distance between the two people we loved so much, and after that, the future was uncertain. The idea of Ash having a real living and breathing family was… man, I couldn’t name the emotion; I just knew it was warm and felt fucking amazing. But heartache had made me cynical, and it hurt to see Ash so upset. I’d spent a long time trying to convince him he deserved to be loved, and it about killed me to watch him rebuild the walls around his heart. Perhaps he thought it wasn’t meant to be, that he was always meant to be alone, but I wasn’t having that. Something in this crazy situation had to give, and I could do nothing but hope it wasn’t Ash’s tenuous grip on his mental health.

A
WEEK
passed in a hazy flash of work and pensive pondering. Joe called to say Danni had gone to visit her father in Philly for a while, but other than that, we didn’t hear from him at all. We’d agreed to some distance, but I knew Ash was hurt by his absence, especially with Ellie gone too. I did my best to be there for him, but the balance between home life and work remained as elusive as ever. More often than not, I ended up falling asleep on him, all the while clinging to some part of his body to reassure myself that he was still there.

Ash remained his usual reticent self, but when I was awake enough to be observant, he seemed surprisingly content. I observed no brooding or sullen silence, no protracted staring. No more than usual, anyway.

The strange limbo began to stretch, and the longer it went on, the more convinced I became that the morning Danni had burst into the apartment, sleep deprivation had sent me temporarily insane. I replayed the madness over and over in my head. Ash was right: it was a coincidence, a mistake… it had to be. Yeah, if I looked at Danni, I could see the similarities—pale skin, fair hair, stormy eyes, but would I have seen them if I hadn’t convinced myself they were there? Probably not.

It didn’t explain Danni’s behavior, the sketch, or the paper trail that had led Ellie to her in the first place, but with Danni back in Philadelphia for the foreseeable future, it was all too easy to pretend she didn’t exist. The whole thing was bullshit. It had to be, right?

I wrote it down to be sure.

Daniela Bordeen (Danni):

Born 1985. Philadelphia.

Adopted. Philadelphia. 1985

Childhood. Philadelphia. 1985–2003.

College. Seattle (with Joe) 2004.

(Joe comes to Chicago. 2007.)

Danni comes to Chicago. 2010
–

Ashley Fagin (Ash):

Born 1986. Texas.

Taken into care. Texas. 1989

Fostercare. Texas 1989
–
2001

Street life. Rehab. Recovery. Philadelphia 2001
–
2006

Chicago. 2007–

I sat back and stared, horrified, as always, by how much Ash had been through before I ever knew him. I couldn’t bring myself to fill in the sordid gaps of Ash’s childhood, but there was no doubt his timeline overlapped with Danni’s. Ash had told me Ellie thought he’d ended up in Philly because he subconsciously knew there was something there for him. Perhaps she was right, or maybe she was seeing what she wanted to see. At least, that’s what I told myself when I reached Ellie’s full voice mail for the eleventieth time. Honestly, my life would’ve been so much easier if people picked up their damned phones.

I could picture the conversation in my head….

“Hey, Ellie. You know that girl you found in Philly? Did you look in Seattle first? Did you double-check her name? Did you
know
she was Joe’s girl? Can you believe this motherfucking bullshit?”

Yeah. Shame Ellie never called me back.

A few days later, I was on shift when I took Danni’s call, but the ambulance was parked up at the lake. I shot a glance at Tim to check he was covering the radio, slid out of the ambulance, and took a walk down to the water. “Hey, Danni. What’s up?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to pick up.”

Her voice was warm. I smiled, despite my apprehension. “That would make me a hypocrite, sugar. You weren’t the only one to get a little crazy that day, you know.”

Danni sighed. “I know, but I started it. I had no right to barge into your home and yell at you like that. I’m sorry, Pete. It was rude and inconsiderate.”

“Apology accepted,” I said with a grin she couldn’t see. “But you should know it wasn’t the first time Ash and I had discussed you in that context.”

“Yeah, Joe told me about Ash’s sketch. I’m trying not to read too much into that.”

I cast my eyes over the water. It was a cold, crisp afternoon, the kind that felt refreshing. “And you were
definitely
in Philly when he drew it?”

“Yes.”

Danni let her answer hang. I absorbed it, feeling the wall I liked to imagine around Ash crumble a little to let her in. “But we don’t know anything for sure,” I said. “Not yet. Even with everything we
think
we know.”

Danni was silent a moment before she said, “That’s what my dad thinks. He said even if Ash is the boy we found in Texas, it doesn’t mean he’s my brother. I mean, just because it’s written on a piece of paper doesn’t make it true, does it?”

“I guess not,” I said. “Did you really go to Texas to look for your brother?”

“Sure did. The year my mom died, my dad and I didn’t feel like spending the summer at home without her, so we took a road trip to do some digging. We tracked my birth mother all the way to San Antonio, and Ash… I mean, whoever it was we were tracking…. We got all the way to Houston before the trail went cold. By then, summer was over, and there was nothing I could do but leave my name and hope that my brother came looking for me one day.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d probably only missed Ash by a few months, though she had cleared up a missing link in my head. I’d noticed when I’d first read the file that certain pages had been altered long after social services lost track of Ash.

“Does Ash have any pictures of his mother?”

“No.” Ash didn’t have much of anything from Texas. “He doesn’t really talk about his mom. I don’t even know her name.”

“Leila,” Danni said. “If it’s the same person, I mean. My birth mom was Leila Fagin. I have a few old photographs. If you saw them, you’d know why I….”
She sighed again.
“I guess none of that matters until we know for sure, does it?”