Page 74 of Legally Mine

"Yes, dear?"

"Why...why didn't you and Ray formally adopt Brandon? After his mom passed, that is?"

She opened and closed her mouth and reached back to adjust the barrette holding her hair back. "I, well, I..." She sighed and gave me a look that screamed guilt. "I wanted to. But by that point, Ray said it would have been a waste of time and money to petition the court. And Brandon, well, he still had a father out there, Skylar."

"You mean the father who used to beat him with household tools?" I asked.

Susan had the decency to look ashamed, and I immediately felt bad. I took a seat on the twin mattress, and she sat down beside me.

"It was different in those days," she said. "If I could go back and change things, I would. But Skylar, dear, Brandon was a very different person at sixteen than he is now. Very angry. Very aloof. Most of the time we barely saw him. There was a time when I was legitimately afraid that he was going to follow both of his family's footsteps."

I looked at the photo of Brandon and Kieran. It was hard to imagine the smiling young man in the picture being angry.

Susan followed my gaze and smiled. "It was Kieran, you know, who put the bug in him to play baseball and keep going to school. He was so very smart, but he used to hang around with the worst kids, always getting into trouble. Luckily, he'd see Kieran there too. And you know Kieran. She won't put up with anyone's nonsense, much less Brandon's." Susan smiled fondly. "A lot like you, actually."

Then she turned serious. "Skylar, Brandon isn't someone who's had a lot of love in his life, even from that godforsaken wife of his." Her petite feature wrinkled momentarily with distaste, but then her eyes twinkled back at me. "I'm so glad to see that he's found someone else who can see just how special he is, and not just for his money or his brains."

She reached out to clasp my hand with her small one, and I squeezed it back.

"You could still do it," I said. "Adopt him, I mean."

Susan chuckled. "Adopt a thirty-seven-year-old man? Can you imagine Ray's response for that?"

I tipped my head from side to side, as if weighing the possibilities. "It's not like you'd have to pay for it. You know enough lawyers now, after all. If you want, I'd take care of all the paperwork for you. I actually specialized in family law, and I work on a bunch of CPS and child custody stuff last quarter with Kieran. This would actually be really easy because Brandon can give his own consent." I paused. "I think it would mean a lot to him."

Susan sat there for a moment, her small hands on mine with a tightened grip. She was quiet, but the spark in her eyes told me she liked the idea. She liked it very much. But instead of agreeing to do it, she just sighed and stood up.

"We'll see," was all she said.

I stood up and followed her out of the room, pausing again to take in some of the more recent photos in the upstairs halls. One in particular caught my eyes: a candid photo of Brandon and Ray at his college graduation. He was maybe twenty, still so young, dressed in a cap and gown, towering over Ray. The photo was taken next to the Charles River, and Ray was looking up at Brandon with something that actually resembled love. Brandon's face, however, was pensive as he looked out over the river toward the Boston skyline beyond him. He was on the precipice, you could tell, of great things, but still kept his arm securely around the aging man at his side. He never stopped caring about the people around him, no matter how they treated him.

"My favorite thing about Brandon isn't his successes. It's his heart," I murmured to Susan. "Once you see that about him, he's just so easy to love."

Beside me, Susan smiled. "That he is, my dear. That he is."

~

"Susan seems a lot younger than Ray," I remarked later, once we had been picked up by another Uber driver to take us back to my apartment in the North End.

It was an easy way to play a shell game with potential spies, we'd decided, so Brandon had sent David driving his fancy Mercedes all over the city so that we wouldn't have to take separate cars home. I had sent a quick text to Eric letting him know we were coming over. In response, I'd received a gif of Roadrunner hightailing away.

Brandon smiled at me, eager to converse. He was obviously conscious of the fact that I was still processing the evening. This was the first thing I'd said since we'd left the Petersens.

"Yeah, she's almost twenty years younger," he replied.

"So that stuff about falling in love and control?"

Brandon snorted. "Oh, it's just a petty jab. Ray has always thought I was too impulsive, that I wear my heart on my sleeve. But Susan was his student. It nearly cost him his career, and he ended up transferring schools just to get away from the department gossip." Brandon chuckled. "And it's not like he was a young, impulsive man. He was two years older than I am now when they met. And married."

I gawked with wide eyes. "And she was..."

"Nineteen," Brandon said. "Sort of makes our age difference seem like nothing, huh?"

"Not to mention makes him a bit of a hypocrite about the whole divorce thing."

I thought bitterly of the multiple times now when Ray had characterized my presence in Brandon's life as little more than a dalliance, someone who would only complicate things even more for him.

Brandon shrugged. "Honestly, I think that's why he's so hard on me. Because he knows what it's like to be stuck between two relationships."