Page 18 of I Could Never
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry about that whole thing.”
Josh ran a hand through his hair. “Not like you could’ve anticipated he would do that, I guess.”
“How did Wayne handle showering? I hadn’t even thought about all of the trouble Scottie could get into while unattended.”
Josh knelt to rummage through his suitcase. “Wayne must have taken damn quick showers.”
“Yeah. Or wait…” I snapped my fingers. “I just thought of something.”
He looked up. “What?”
“Maybe he showeredwithScottie, so he didn’t have to worry about that. That’s why Scottie jumped in the shower with you. He thought he wassupposedto.”
Josh ran his teeth along his bottom lip. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense.”
“I know. So much we have to learn, huh?”
“Yeah.” He sighed as he stood and massaged his lower back. “One day at a time.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Eh, that couch isn’t the most comfortable. Fucked up my back a little.”
“Why don’t we switch off?” I suggested. “You sleep in the bed tonight.”
“No. I don’t want you having the same problem. No one should be sleeping on this couch. I’ll go to the store tomorrow and find one of those inflatable air mattresses. We don’t have room for much else around here.”
“That’ll be a pain in the ass having to blow it up every night, won’t it?”
“That’s the least of my worries these days, Pumpkin.”
I chuckled. “I guess.”
He looked down at a DVD I was holding. “What’s that?”
“I found a box of DVDs in Wayne’s room. Most of them aren’t labeled. Any idea what they are?”
“No.” He pointed over to the television. “But there’s a DVD player right there. Pop that one in.”
I slipped the DVD into the machine and pressed play before sitting on the sofa next to Josh. After some initial interference on the screen, a home movie of the boys when they were younger came on. Brad must have been about eight, and Scottie was a baby who’d just started to walk. Their mom, Yvonne, sat on the ground, playing with them. She was so beautiful, with short blonde hair and large eyes. She kind of reminded me of a younger version of Carol Brady fromThe Brady Bunch. You could hear Wayne in the background, complimenting her. Yvonne blushed at one point. I’d never actually seen footage of her before—never realized how much Brad and Scottie looked like her, either.
“This house looks the same now as it did then, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Yeah, you ain’t kidding.”
Josh and I continued to peer into this heartwarming family moment. Scottie looked like he’d made more eye contact as a baby. It made me wonder how his autism came about, and whether he was born with it or something changed inside of him one day.
The camera returned to Yvonne again. Her face reddened every time Wayne focused on her. She didn’t seem to love being the center of attention.
“I remember Yvonne like it was yesterday,” Josh said, mesmerized. “She was basically a mom to me.”
I turned my attention away from the screen for a moment. “Your mothers must have been friends?”
His expression was stone cold. “I didn’t have a mother.”
My stomach sank. “Your mother passed?”
“No. But I don’t really want to talk about it.” He turned to me with a look of warning. “Okay?”