She’d practically sprinted back down the hall to their front door, leaving Seth holding Owen’s hand.
Ten minutes came and went, and Seth and Owen had only moved from their spot to sit down on the floor beside the dining-room table.
Which is when the man in the strange blue jumpsuit knocked on the kitchen window.
“I let him in,” Seth said now. “She specifically said not to open the door to anyone, and I did.”
“You were eight.”
“I knew better.”
“You were eight.”
Seth said nothing. There was more to the story than just the opening of the door, but he couldn’t tell even Gudmund that part. He could feel his throat straining, felt the pain rising up from his chest. He turned away and lay there on his side, shuddering a little at the effort of crying and trying not to.
Behind him, Gudmund didn’t move. “I gotta tell ya, Sethy,” he finally said. “You’re crying and I don’t really know how to handle that.” He stroked Seth’s arm a few times. “I really don’t know what to do here.”
“It’s okay,” Seth coughed. “It’s okay. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s just . . . I’m an idiot about these things. Wish I wasn’t.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Seth said. “Just the beer talking.”
“Yeah,” Gudmund said, agreeing even though they’d hardly had four bottles between them. “The beer.”
They were quiet for a second, before Gudmund said, “I can think of a few things that might make you feel better.” He pressed his body against Seth’s, his stomach against Seth’s back, reaching around to grab parts of Seth that responded with energy.
“That’ll do,” Gudmund said happily into Seth’s ear. “But seriously, though, why does there even have to be a problem? He survived and they caught the guy and Owen’s a nice kid.”
“He’s not the same, though,” Seth said. “There are neurological problems. He’s all1 . . . scattered now.”
“Can you really tell that about a four-year-old? That he was one way before and a different way after?”
“Yeah,” Seth said. “Yeah, you can.”
“Are you sure, because –?”
“It’s all right, Gudmund. You don’t have to fix it. I’m just telling you, okay? That’s all. I’m just saying it.”
There was a long silence as he felt Gudmund’s breath in his ear. He could tell Gudmund was thinking, working something out.
“You’ve never told anybody else, have you?” Gudmund asked.
“No,” Seth said. “Who could I tell?”
He felt Gudmund hold him tighter in acknowledgment of the importance of the moment.
“It’s nothing I can change, right?” Seth said. “But imagine there’s this thing that always sits there in the room with you. And everyone knows it’s there and no one will ever say a single goddamn word about it until it becomes like an extra person living in your house that you have to make room for. And if you bring it up, they pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My parents found the wrong gender of p**n on my touchpad last year,” Gudmund said. “Guess how many times they’ve talked about it with me since?”
Seth turned to look at him. “I never knew that. I’ll bet they went ballistic.”
“You’d have thought so, but it was just a phase, wasn’t it? Nothing that churchgoing and pretending it never happened wouldn’t make go away.”
“Aren’t they suspicious about me coming over all the time?”
“Nah,” Gudmund said, grinning. “They think you’re a good influence. I tend to play up your athletic abilities.”
Seth laughed.
“So we’ve both got messed-up parents who just don’t want to know,” Gudmund said. “Though, I admit, yours are a bit worse.”
“It’s not anything, really, good or bad. It just is.”
“It’s enough of an anything to make you cry, Sethy,” Gudmund said softly. “And that’s not something that can be any good.” He squeezed Seth again. “Not something I like to see anyway.”
Seth didn’t say anything, didn’t feel like he could without his voice cracking just that second.
Gudmund let the silence linger for a moment, then he said, brightly, “At the very least, it made you guys move out here from England. And if you hadn’t, I’d never have learned about this.”
“Quit tugging on it,” Seth said, laughing. “You know what a foreskin is.”
“In theory,” Gudmund said. “But to think that I used to have one of these and someone had the nerve to chop it off without even asking –”
“Stop that,” Seth said, smacking Gudmund’s hand away again, still laughing.
“You sure?” Gudmund moved an arm underneath Seth and pulled him back into a full embrace, nuzzling his neck.
“Hold on,” Seth whispered suddenly.
Gudmund froze. “What?”
“Just that.”
“Just what?” Gudmund asked, still frozen.
But how could Seth explain it? Just what?
Just Gudmund’s arms around him, holding him there, holding him tightly and not letting him go. Holding him like it was the only place that could ever have existed.
Just that. Yes, just that.
“You’re a mystery, you are,” Gudmund whispered.
Seth felt Gudmund reach for something off the bed and turned to find Gudmund holding his phone up above them.
“I told you,” Seth said, “I’m not taking any pictures of my –”
“Not what I want,” Gudmund said, and he snapped a picture of the two of them from the shoulders up, just together, there on the bed.
“For me,” Gudmund said. “Just for me.”
He brought his face around to Seth’s and kissed him on the mouth, taking another picture.
Then he put down the phone, pulled Seth even closer, and kissed him again.
19
Seth opens his eyes on the settee and can barely breathe from the weight on his chest.
Oh, Jesus, he thinks. Oh, no, please.
Once more, it was so much bigger than a dream that he puts his hands to his face to see if the scent of Gudmund’s body is still there. That it isn’t – but that he can remember the smell, of salt and wood and flesh and something intensely private – makes the weight feel so much heavier.