Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (53 page)

Somehow, he ended up in her kitchen, holding the baby.

Sam was in the living room explaining to the girl, Ava, that she could watch one more Barbie movie because Uncle Roman was here, but not
more
than one, and no, Ava had never met Uncle Roman before, because he’d never visited, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a
real
uncle, it only meant she’d never met him—and no, she didn’t have any more uncles she didn’t know about, she’d met all of Daddy’s brothers and his sister, but maybe there would be another aunt if
Uncle Roman was married. Or got married.

Now be quiet and watch Barbie, and no, you can’t have a juice box, you already had one today
.

Roman listened, staring at the baby.

Judging by the blue onesie, the baby was a boy. His head fit into the palm of one of Roman’s hands, and his legs dangled on either side of Roman’s forearm. He waved his fists in the air, making soft smacking sounds with his lips.

For such a small thing, the baby had a satisfying density.

Roman moved him back and forth through the air in long, slow sweeps. It seemed to keep him calm.

More important, it kept Roman calm. There was something very anchoring about the soft weight of this baby, the fuzz of his hair tickling Roman’s palm, and his eyes—his eyes were dark and wise, as though he had all the answers and needed nothing from Roman but his complete attention.

So little to ask.

Pay attention to me
, the baby demanded.

Roman did.

In the foyer, there were framed family photos. He’d seen them on the way in: His sister in a wedding dress beside a man a few inches shorter than her. Baby photos of two blond children, family photos, Sam getting broader, her husband growing a gut that got bigger as the years went by.

Patrick was in the photos, too. Completely gray now. A grandfather. In several, a woman stood with him.

He smiled. They all smiled.

The smiles had made Roman wonder, briefly, if he shouldn’t have come. They were doing well without him, clearly. They were happy.

But then he thought about what had happened at the door.

Roman watched the baby.

This baby wasn’t in any of the photos, but there were infant things scattered around the living room, and Sam had dark circles under her eyes. She wore sweatpants and a T-shirt that looked like it had been slept in and spit up on.

Her baby. His sister had three children.

She came into the kitchen and pressed a button on the microwave. It lit up, and inside a glass measuring cup began to revolve.

“You okay there with Miles for another minute?” she asked. “I was just about to feed him when you rang the doorbell.”

“Sure. How old is he?”

“Six weeks.”

“Is he …?”

“Adopted. Or he will be, eventually, as long as his mother doesn’t change her mind. It takes a long time to finalize.”

Roman glanced away from the baby’s eyes—Miles’s eyes—and the boy squawked.

He looked back again.

He couldn’t untangle how he felt. This baby, this tiny adopted black boy, belonging to his sister, resting in the palm of his hand.

Something like anger.

But something else. Like satisfaction.

Like craving.

The microwave beeped three times. Sam pulled out the measuring cup, then took a big plastic jug with a lid from the fridge, shook it briefly, and poured a few inches into a waiting baby bottle. When she screwed on a nipple and put the bottle into the hot water, Roman had to look back at Miles, who’d started fussing again.

“Give him your pinky to suck,” Sam said.

“I haven’t washed my hands.”

“Dad used to say we all eat a peck of dirt before we die.”

Dad
. The word alone was all it took to turn the mood.

Fourteen years. And Roman had just waltzed in.

He offered Miles his pinky. The baby pulled it into his mouth with astonishing force, his tongue curled, pressing Roman’s finger against his palate with each mighty suck.

Samantha turned to face him. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned him.”

“No, it’s …”

He didn’t know what it was.

Patrick had never adopted him. After Roman got lost in the woods, they’d become virtual strangers, occupying the same house but rarely intersecting.

They’d argued every time they intersected.

When Roman turned eighteen, he’d been emancipated from the foster care system. He’d finished out the school year in Patrick’s house. He’d driven to Princeton from Wisconsin, unsure whether he would be welcomed back.

Some people don’t have a place—that’s what he’d told Ashley. It had been his obsession during those first months in college: figuring out where his place was. Whether he fit anywhere.

Over winter break his freshman year, he drove back to Wisconsin, and he stopped on the way at the prison, where he’d arranged to see his father. Roman had prepared himself for an onslaught of feeling, but he felt nothing stronger than mild anxiety. Right up until his father professed his innocence.

Roman hadn’t believed him. Not exactly. He’d only
considered
it. He’d considered the possibility of it—what it would mean. Having wrapped up his first semester in the Ivy League, he was enamored of his ability to consider things. Analyze them. Take them apart.

And he’d been afraid. Afraid to contradict his father, and afraid he’d done something just by visiting him that he couldn’t undo. So he’d taken the problem home and presented it to Patrick.

Patrick had lost his fucking mind.

Without Samantha there to get between them, the argument had gone on for hours. Everything came out—things they’d always felt but never said. Should never have said.

You didn’t love me
.

You made it impossible
.

I tried to be a good son to you. I’ve always tried
.

There’s something wrong with you. You’re a sociopath, just like your father. Selfish all the way through
.

But what if he didn’t do it?

Roman hadn’t been able to stop himself from asking—not once, but again and again, in a refrain. What if the entire shape of his life had been a mistake? What if he wasn’t the son of a killer, but a victim of injustice?

What if?

He hadn’t been defending his father. He’d been defending himself.

He’d had to defend himself, because Patrick never saw him clearly. Maybe Patrick had
wanted
to practice forgiveness, once, but he’d never forgiven Roman for his father’s sins. He’d magnified every flaw into something bigger, twisted every childhood error into evidence of Roman’s unfitness for humanity.

Patrick had never been able to look at Roman without seeing something wrong with him.

He’d taken Roman’s visit to his father at the prison as both betrayal and confirmation: Patrick had tried to do the right thing by Roman, but the attempt had failed. Roman was unfixable, and Patrick washed his hands of him.

None of it had been Roman’s fault.

Get out of here
, Patrick had said at the end, when both of them were hoarse and exhausted, worn out from the clash of wills.
I’ve given you everything I can. Just get out and leave us alone. We never want to see you again
.

So Roman had gone.

He’d gone, and he’d told himself it made sense.

He’d told himself it didn’t matter anyway. They’d never been his family. Patrick was no kind of father, and Samantha wasn’t really his sister. Foster families were for children—a temporary refuge. Roman had become an adult, and he had no family.

He hadn’t really been cut to the quick, cast out into the cold.

Not really.

All of which was bullshit.

Patrick’s rejection had destroyed him, and for fourteen years he’d simply limped along—an automaton cobbled together from coping devices, bottled theories, borrowed ideologies.

Until Ashley.

He was here because of Ashley, and he’d thought he was ready to do this, but he hadn’t spent a lot of time considering what
this
was.

Roman wished Ashley were with him. Every tug of the baby’s tongue against his finger seemed to pull at the knot in his chest, and Ashley would know how to make this easier. She could make it possible.

“You’ve gotten all stiff,” Sam said.

He had. Because he was terrified.

She sighed. “Look, just tell me whatever it is I’m not supposed to say, and I won’t say it. Or tell me why you’re here, what you want, and I’ll do it. I’m not—”

She tugged on her earlobe. Her eyes fell shut.

“Roman.” She sounded near tears again. “I’m so sleep deprived, I can’t think very clearly, or, obviously, stop myself from crying all the time. I mean, it’s not just you. I cried this morning when I spilled sugar on the counter, and when I had to bend over to put on Ava’s shoes and she kicked me in the nose. And I cried when Adam went to work this morning, which is just dumb, because he always comes back, but what if today is the day—” She made a helpless noise and covered her mouth. “God. Sorry. I just did it again.”

“Sam—”

“No.” She turned her back on him and took the bottle out of the water, shaking it vigorously. “It’s just … I can’t not say this. You left. You left, and you never came back. You never called. You didn’t write to me, you don’t get my letters and my Christmas cards or you don’t answer them, you dropped into this
void
, Roman, and then …”

She whirled around. “You know I’ve thought about flying down to Florida to find you? Only what if I found you, and you wouldn’t even know me? I’ve had nightmares about that. I’ve had dreams about you coming here. I have, like, six different speeches I’ve made up, and they’re all really careful and perfect, but I can’t—”

She cut herself off and tugged on her earlobe again. It hit him in the chest, that gesture. She’d always done it when she was nervous, unhappy, lost.

“Roman, I’m so
tired
, I can’t be diplomatic. I can’t. I mean, I recognize that’s what I’m supposed to do, but what I want is to tie you to that fucking chair so you
can’t leave
. I’m supposed to want to hug you and love you but I just kind of want to hit you, give you noogies and dead-leg you or, like,
sit
on you.”

“I’m bigger than you now.”

“You’re taller, but you’re still not bigger. And anyway, I’m too exhausted to do any of that, so right now my plan is to make you keep holding the baby. Then you’ll have to stay. Because who can walk away from a baby?”

He couldn’t look at her. He looked at Miles, who looked back at him, and then Sam socked him in the shoulder with the bottle and said, “Feed him.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You stick it in his mouth. He eats it. It’s not hard.”

“Sam—”

She hit him again.
“Feed him.”

Roman pulled back on his finger. Miles resisted. Roman tugged harder, wiggled to break the seal, and wiped his pinky on his pants before taking the bottle and nudging the nipple into the infant’s mouth.

Miles ate. It was an indecent display—he chugged the bottle, grunting and wiggling like a piglet. Roman watched, transfixed.

Sam shoved cereal boxes, junk mail, and magazines out of the way so she could drop her head onto her folded arms and rest on top of the kitchen table.

“I need a nap,” she said.

“I can’t stay long,” he replied. “I’ve got someone waiting on me in Florida.”

She didn’t lift her head. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“But the someone is a woman.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“Ashley.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you come here because of her?”

“Sort of. What are you, a mind-reader?”

She sighed. “I had a rough time after you left. I dropped out of school. I lived in Chicago for a few years, and I was kind of wild and stupid. I mean, I’m not saying it wouldn’t have happened anyway. But I was mad at Dad, and I was furious with you, and I felt like nobody knew me. Like you were the only one who I knew, who knew me, and if you were gone I hadn’t actually had a childhood, and I didn’t actually have a family.”

“You and Patrick were the family.”

“No, Roman,” she said to the table. “Dad was fucked up. You and I were the family.”

In the lull after she said it, Roman’s world tipped and reoriented itself.

He was starting to get so he could handle that. The adjustments and readjustments that
came with living in reality.

Dad was fucked up. You and I were the family
.

“I figured that out when I met Adam,” Sam said. “Adam, plus a lot of therapy. And Dad has this girlfriend, I guess she’s his fiancée now. He’s different since he met her. So I figured if you were here, it might be because … Tell me why you came.”

“I missed you.”

She didn’t respond. Maybe there was nothing to say.

“I’ve only got a few hours,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I’ll come back this time, if you want. You can call me in Florida. I’ll answer the phone.”

After a few seconds, she sniffled, and Roman thought she might be crying again.

“Do you need a tissue or something?”

“No, I’m using my sleeve.”

“Classy.”

“Shut up.”

He chuckled, and Samantha’s back shook. Laughter or tears. “You know I thought about calling him Roman?”

“Who?”

“The baby, dumbass.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I thought it might be too strange.”

“It’s probably going to be hard enough for him anyway. Without my name.”

That made her look up. “Why?”

“A black kid. In this town.”

“His mom lives in Milwaukee. She picked us. From a whole bunch of other options, she picked Adam and me.”

“You met her?”

“It’s an open adoption. She came to visit, and she likes it here. It’s not the same town anymore.”

He shrugged, uneasy with the subject.

“Miles won’t be the only one,” she said. “There’s a black family down the street. Ava’s preschool class has two Spanish-speaking kids in it—and another one, I think, is from Ethiopia.”