Page 67 of My Fiancé's Brother
“We lived in a small town. Ted was the town drunk. Harry was called to deal with Ted on a regular basis for various reasons, most of them not good. Typically they just stuck Ted in a drunk tank. But that left them with a small child on their hands.”
“Jackson.”
She nodded. “Night after night, this little kid would sleep in the police waiting room. In the morning, my husband would drive Jackson to school. Harry couldn’t take it. One night, he showed up at our house, with Jackson in tow.”
“Oh wow.”
“Jackson was trembling and dirty. I have never seen a more malnourished looking child in my life. You would think he'd have been grateful. We offered him food and a warm bed and yet he just fought us. You would think that our home and our generosity would have been preferable to a police station waiting room, but he didn’t want to be with us.”
“He wanted to be with Ted.”
She raised one eyebrow. “That he did.”
I stole a glance at the patio. As if he could sense me Jackson turned his head and looked at me. I dropped my glance.
“What happened?”
“Ted kept getting drunk. My husband kept bringing Jackson home. And it was like that every single time. The only thing Jackson asked for was to be brought back to Ted. He never cried. He fought. He fought that separation tooth and nail. At age seven, he had more fight in him than two grown men. Harry and I were just trying to be charitable. Then one night, it was like he realized that even if he stayed over, he'd still return to Ted. Harry dropped him off. He walked past me, climbed into his bunk bed and was asleep within two minutes.”
I swallowed my pain. My heart ached for that little boy. The little boy that knew only violence and suffering at the hands of the oneperson he should've been able to trust. And even when they removed him from all that heartache, he just wanted to go back to it.
“What happened to Jackson’s real father?”
She shrugged. “Who knows. His mother was quite trashy, and when she died, Ted was the only one left. Ted was his legal guardian.”
I tried to phrase my question with tact. “Did anyone think about calling social services?”
“We lived in a small town. Our options were to report Ted and have Jackson shipped off to some foster home in the city. Harry was scared Jackson would get lost in the system.” She lifted her shoulder. “We had unofficial custody of Jackson more than half the time. My husband checked up on them frequently.”
I could not wrap my mind around the idea that letting a young child face physical abuse had been an option at all.
She saw the look in my eyes. “We did what we could. You should know that. Every time Jackson landed in the hospital, we took him to our house. We tried to adopt Jackson unofficially. He had his own dresser, his own toys, his own clothes. He even had a placemat at our table with his name on it. But once his wounds healed, he started asking to go back to Ted. No amount of convincing could get him to relent. Harry would haul Ted into the station and read him the riot act, and Ted would promise to behave, and the entire cycle would start over. Jackson wanted to go back there. We didn’t make him. He asked.”
That sounded like a terrible reason to let him go back. I didn’t want to say anything, but I questioned their judgment on that one.
Her eyes blinked without emotion. “You don’t know Jackson as I do. He has this fierce loyalty. We tried to get Jackson to talk about Ted and some of the accidents that seemed to happen, but Jackson only protected him. Ted was completely off topic. He has been for all these years. He’s never once let us talk about Ted. Not once.”
“He didn’t want Ted to be alone.” I murmured to myself. Myeyes strayed to Jackson, who laughed at something Matt had just said. He looked relaxed as he leaned back against the railing with a beer casually slung in his hand. His plain navy t-shirt stretched over his hard chest.
“So that’s why I find it hard to believe that Jackson would talk about Ted with you,” Irene watched my face.
Had Jackson openly talked about Ted with me? Perhaps I had been overly nosy and disrespectful of his boundaries?
“Where is Ted now?”
“Ted fell in the drunk tank and hit his head. He died six days before Jackson’s 16th birthday.”
I watched as Matt talked grandly, gesturing big. He had Jackson’s full attention. Jackson rewarded him with another laugh, making me marvel at his beautiful smile. “When they hang out they seem to get along. As children did they get along?”
“They got along, but as I said before, I think the situation was very hard for Matt. My husband and I fought about that. I saw changes in Matt. I knew he felt threatened and that broke my heart. But Harry insisted that Matt needed to learn that love wasn’t exclusive. But growing up in this unconventional situation took its toll on Matt.”
My eyes widened in disbelief. Why was she worried about Matt? What about Jackson who was orphaned and frequently hospitalized by the violent drunk? What about the people whose job it was to protect children like Jackson? Why had they looked the other way? My stomach tightened in anger.
“Is that where this animosity started?”
She shook her head. “It started at Harry’s funeral. The casket lowered into the ground, and we stood there in prayer. Suddenly, Matt was on top of Jackson. They were rolling around and throwing punches.”
My lips parted in shock.
