Silas arrived home one day in July with the paperwork. Simon had taken Oliver to the park. They weren’t back yet. I was trying to get some fucking schoolwork done—yeah in July. I don’t know how Silas graduated high school early and raised a small child. I was not nearly so proficient.
Silas smiled. A real smile. Not the fake half-shit he usually did. “He’s mine, Darius. Officially mine.”
I looked over the papers. “He always was.”
“Yes. And I didn’t need this to know, but after what happened, I feel a lot safer. We’ll have no more problems with school or hospitals or anything. I’m going to sign him up for ballet classes again.”
Oliver’s ballet lessons had fallen to his three babysitters, and we were shit at ballet, so he taught us. We put a tutu on him and asked him what he remembered. We’d mimic him. We also invented a bunch of stretches we thought looked “ballet-like”. Thankfully, it didn’t affect his performance going forward.
“Are you going to tell him?”
Silas bit his lip. “No.”
“Then never fucking tell him. We keep this between us.”
He nodded. He showed me the pages for me.
“Oh, fuck that. You’re not my dad, Silas.”
He laughed. “No. But Uncle Pax thought it was a good idea and I agreed. No one can call you a runaway. You can go to real school again.”
We wouldn’t have to hide anymore.
“Why aren’t you going to tell him, Sye?”
Sighing, he folded the papers. “He’s been asking questions. He’s confused. This will confuse him more. Maybe if he shows interest … but I want that to be his choice.”
I crossed my arms. “And how do you feel about it?” I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it.
The harpy returned. “He’s mine and I am his father. End of story.”
Silas was also the most animated he’d been since finding out about Dad’s death, so I let it go. Until he brought home those papers, he’d been a robotic zombie, often staring off into the distance or at a wall or into the damn cactus Oliver insisted on buying the last time we went for groceries. We had to snap to get his attention and even when we did, he was dazed, there but not.
He needed a fucking break from whatever emotional hell he was going through. He wouldn’t talk about it with me. Was probably for the better. I had nothing good to say about Aleksander Randall and therefore nothing productive would come from a conversation with me. Silas needed to miss him—as fucked up as that may sound—and in doing so maybe untangle the chains encasing his heart once and for all.
I hated it. As far as I was concerned, Dad had manipulated Silas into loving him and now he would suffer for it long after Dad was gone.
* * *
Darius – June 1990
We’d been in Winchester River the longest we’d been anywhere. Things were hard, but they’d been harder. It took at least the year since the time Oliver had almost got pneumonia, for any of us to settle into that we weren’t on the run from anyone.
Silas never shook it.
I think—but I’ve never asked him—that he was grieving our father. It was hard to tell. He seemed the same as he always was, but I caught him staring into nothing a few times.
The only thing I did say was this. “We should go to the funeral, Sye.”
“I can’t, Darius. I can’t be there. I can never go back there.”
He shook. He clutched his chest. The haunted expression that had taken up permanent residence in the background of his icy blue irises came to the forefront.
I left it. I drank to Dad’s demise.
The first Father’s Day since Silas officially became Oliver’s dad approached and what I couldn’t shake was the beaming smile he had that day he arrived with the paperwork.
Oliver had just turned six. I picked him up from his last day of kindergarten, which was full days back then—none of this half-day stuff they do now.
