Page 73 of Legally Mine

Chapter 16

After we finished dinner, Ray and Brandon adjourned to Ray's office to go over the ins and outs of his potential campaign. Ray was clearly not a man who liked changes or surprises, so when he demanded some extra time with Brandon, I wasn't surprised when Brandon gave me an apologetic smile and agreed. Although I still had questions myself and would have loved to take part in the conversation, it was clear that Brandon needed some time alone with his foster father.

So instead, I allowed myself to be steered upstairs to tour the rest of the small house with Susan, who showed me the master bedroom, the bathroom, and the bedroom that had once been Brandon's.

"I'm surprised you kept so much of it intact," I said as I walked around the room curiously.

Half of the room had clearly been converted to a crafting space for Susan. A sewing table was set up next to several large shelving units filled with materials for assorted projects. I had glanced at them briefly, but that sort of thing was like a foreign language to me. Other than my musical abilities, I didn't really have a creative bone in my body.

The other half of the room, however, still looked like the bedroom of a broody teenage boy. The extra-long single bed still had the faded blue-and-white plaid bedding and Star Wars-themed sheets. There was a desk, which Brandon had told me before used to be Ray's in his grad school days, which was piled with the clutter of Brandon's youth: stacks of comic books, sci-fi novels, an old boom-box, and a shelf full of CDs and cassette tapes. Old Red Sox posters hung over the bed, as well as a few pictures of a teenage Brandon in various baseball uniforms.

I smiled as I drifted my fingers over the tapes, lingering on several different Springsteen albums. Brandon had told me the story about how Susan bought it for him when he'd come to live with them. If there was a soundtrack to Brandon's life, it was these tapes.

I turned to Susan. "I feel like I just dropped back in time. Like if I closed my eyes, little Brandon would be right here."

Susan chuckled and touched one of the pictures lovingly. "Well, he wasn't ever little. Already six feet tall when he came to live with us. This was taken that day."

She ran a finger over the edge of a brass-framed photo of the three of them in front of their house: a tall, gangly preteen standing between a much younger Ray and Susan. I leaned in to examine the picture. Brandon's hair was even longer then, reaching nearly to his collar. He looked overly thin, even for that age, all elbows and knees, newly grown shoulders hunched over. He didn't smile in the picture, instead looked at the photographer with a blank, almost desperate stare that was still, even with the lack of focus, penetratingly blue.

"He came after his mother was locked up for the last time," Susan said as she traced his face. "Poor dear. He was so hot and cold. One moment he'd be the angriest thing you ever saw, and the next the absolute sweetest." She sighed. "You should have seen him when I took him to the comic shop for the first time. You would have thought I'd given him a winning lottery ticket, when it was only a few tapes and posters."

"He told me about that trip to Newbury Comics," I said with a smile. "Obviously it meant a lot to him."

Susan nodded, still entranced with the picture. "Oh. Well. He deserved it, the poor boy." She shuddered and looked at me. "Has he told you much about before he came here?"

"A little. About his mom and dad some, and how she died."

Brandon had told me about his mother during one of our first dates. She was a drug addict while his father was an abusive criminal. On more than one stint during his childhood, he'd been removed from her custody when she was deemed unfit to watch him. Three years after he had come to live with the Petersens, she had tried to get back custody one last time. Since Brandon was fifteen and his foster parents were willing to let him stay, the judge had given Brandon his say. He had chosen the Petersens. Two days later, his mother had died of an overdose.

Susan whistled and looked at me with a new appreciation. "Goodness. I didn't think anyone else knew about that except for us and Kieran. I'm not even sure Miranda really knows. Do you know Kieran?"

"She was my mentor in law school. I'm actually starting at her firm after the bar."

"Well, if she vouched for you, that means more to Brandon than just about anything. She's been a really good friend to him over the years. One of his only real ones."

Susan pointed to another photo tacked onto the corkboard over the desk. I followed her finger to a picture of a teenage Brandon and Kieran that must have been taken close to twenty years ago.

In this photo, their skinny arms were around each other's shoulders. It was far sight from the polished, professional appearances both of them maintained in their jobs as two of Boston's best attorneys; Kieran was rocking a nearly shaved, Sinead O'Connor-looking haircut, and wearing a pair of stonewashed jeans and a loose men's shirt. Brandon had filled out quite a bit from the first photo, but still with the long, lithe muscles of a teenager evident even through his baseball uniform and backwards hat. Kieran was making a face at the camera while Brandon was flashing his trademark smile. Both of them, however, had eyes that were much older than your average seventeen-year-old's.

"Were they ever...involved?" I wondered. I had never noticed anything resembling romantic affection when they talked about each other, but Brandon and Kieran clearly cared about each other a great deal.

Susan shook her head. "Oh, no. Only ever friends. Brandon always said Kieran was basically his sister. She didn't have it easy either, poor thing. Single working mom, so she basically raised herself in that neighborhood, from what I understand."

Susan reached across the desk and picked up a picture of Brandon in a baseball uniform and smiled. "When he came to us, the social worker told us he had been abused. Not just by the people who ran the homes he stayed in, but sometimes by the other boys who lived there. He was just getting big enough that he could defend himself against...the worst of them."

I shuddered at the thought of what she was alluding to. "Did he...ever talk about it with anyone?"

Susan smiled sweetly, but there was sadness in her eyes. "Not to us, just a therapist. That was part of the requirements of allowing him to stay. He was very...difficult in the beginning. And it was clear to both Ray and me that he could never meet any of his potential with all that anger in the way."

"Potential like becoming the youngest graduate ever of MIT?"

I was exaggerating a bit, but not by much. It was no secret that despite being angry, Brandon was also a bit of a wunderkind, which was part of why he had attracted Ray's attention in the first place. He's graduated from high school at sixteen and gone straight to MIT, where Ray taught. Yet for all of the academic support his foster father had provided for him, Brandon had never gotten what he truly needed from a parent: love.

"Yes, well," Susan said, not without some bitterness. "I had my reasons for wanting to keep Brandon here, and my husband had his." It seemed that she was somewhat critical of Ray's motives as well.

"Susan?"

She looked up at me with a kind expression that would have put anyone at ease. It was sad that she'd never been able to have children of her own. Susan was the definition of maternal.