Page 101 of String Boys

“Name?”

“Yarrow.”

“Pretty name. I like it. We should name a baby that.”

Seth chuckled. “Sure. Chloe is looking good. She still remembers my voice—that’s sort of cool.”

“Yeah, but she’s still behind in a bunch of milestones, Mom calls ’em. Like she’s sixteen months old, and she should be walking already, and her speech is way delayed, and she doesn’t… doesn’t change from thing to thing, you know? Like we used to be able to distract Agnes from someone leaving by giving her a toy. Chloe doesn’t do that. It’s frustrating. She cries a lot. But Mom thinks it’s because Isela did drugs when she was still pregnant and then ignored her after she was born. It’s like we used to get so tired because she was over at our house half the time. We didn’t realize we were her parents, you know?”

“Yeah. That’s not your fault. Your brother….” Seth sighed. He’d heard Matty’s voice on Christmas day. “I… I don’t understand what broke him so badly. He’s not… I mean, the hatingusis one thing. But all the other shit—that’s not your family. How does he not know better?”

“I got nothing.” Kelly sighed. “Or maybe a little. I think….” He gave Seth a sideways glance. “Never mind.”

“No.” Seth felt suddenly older. “Don’t do that. Tell me.”

“I think Castor Durant was at Isela’s church a lot when we were all in high school. So Castor, he gets Isela started, and Isela, she hooks Matty. And Matty, he’s been getting high with the guys who attacked me. And I think that… that fucked him up. Like… like once upon a time he loved his brother. And then he said stupid hateful shit, and his brother got hurt. And now he does drugs to forget what he did to his brother. And then Dad happened, and now he does them to forget what happened to Dad. And it’s just making his life worse. You know?”

Oh, it made so much sense.

“I think you’re really smart,” Seth said helplessly. “Turn left here.” He hated to go left—the waves were crashing just yards away, giant and wild and fierce. But they only had to go a block, up a hill, and the house loomed, a modern structure with a wraparound porch and two stories. If Seth was not mistaken, you could stand out on the second story porch from the bedroom he’d told his dad he and Kelly would be sleeping in. You could look out over the hill and to the sea.

The minivan was already there, and Kelly whistled lowly.

“This… this looks like something special,” he said. “You doing that band at night—that was to pay for this?”

“Yeah.” Seth couldn’t stop smiling at it. It was beautiful and romantic and… andbig.Like what squeezed out from his chest every night. “It’s….” He bit his lip, embarrassed. “I could never have afforded it in the summer. It’s… you know. Off-season. It’s gonna be cold, but at least there’s no snow. Kids can’t swim—”

“You don’t know these kids.” Kelly laughed. “And they can play in the sand and go to the aquarium—”

“And go shopping and go to the pier and see the seals.” Seth had done all these things with Amara’s family. “It’s… I mean, it’s only a little colder here in the winter. I….” He knew his entire heart was in his face, radiating from his eyes right now, but he couldn’t help it. “I wanted to make your life beautiful,” he said simply.

Kelly’s eyes darkened. “You always have.” He pulled Seth into a kiss that was… warmer and less horny than their last one. Seth responded, letting it fill him, and they pulled away from this one with some control.

“Want to go see how they like it?”

Kelly nodded and rubbed his thumb on Seth’s bruised lip. “What’ll we tell them about this?” he asked.

Seth shrugged. He really hadn’t thought that far. “How about I ran into a pole?”

“How about you got jumped by two rednecks because you were playing at a dive bar,” Kelly said, brooking no bullshit. “Please,mijo.My family has been hurt by so many lies right now. The truth is a much better story.”

Seth nodded soberly. “I understand. I just didn’t want anyone to worry, you know?”

“Yeah, well, the one thing I’ve learned this past year? It’s that worry means love.”

SETH SPENTthe entire rest of the day surrounded by women. There was Linda, who was still as much a mom as ever, and Lily and Lulu—who still insisted on wearing the same clothes, even though it got easier to tell them apart every day—but they were partway to grown, because they were in junior high. Agnes, in the sixth grade, was just as sassy as her older sisters, and tiny Chloe seemed to light up when Seth was close enough to actually touch.

It was nice, having girls around. He’d forgotten how much he’d loved to play with them. Lily and Lulu seemed to be having a competition, telling him about school and how they were both in science and math classes, and everybody expected them to like poetry, but Agnes liked poetry so they didn’t see why they had to. Agnes kept trying to hang on his arm—the one not carrying the baby—because she was impressed by how strong he looked.

Linda kept throwing him frustrated looks that spoke dire things about the conversation that would happen after dinner was ready while Chloe just clung, whimpering, because her favorite human was finally under her hands.

For about an hour, the happy chaos was enough to keep the questions at bay.

Then they all sat down to spaghetti and meat sauce and salad—something Linda could make special that Seth and his father had managed to screw up on a regular basis—and Linda surprised him by reaching out to either side of her and making the kids take hands. Seth grabbed Kelly’s, but he had Chloe on his knee, so Lily took her hand on one side and Seth’s dad’s on the other.

“Are wepraying?” Kelly asked.

“I’m giving thanks,” she said simply. “The last two years—they’ve been rough.” Her voice grew thick. “Really rough. And sometimes in the rough times, you think you’re all alone.”