Flare (33 page)

On several evenings over the next two weeks, Hugo drove from property to property with Summer. Some were condos in buildings that had small grocery stores and anything you could want just downstairs, and others were lofts, expansive and huge. The houses were smaller, much like the one Gilbert lived in, with neighbors close by on quaint, picturesque roads with on-street parking.

Hugo couldn’t help but feel a smoldering jealousy as she looked and found place after place where he felt more at home than Kevin’s house back in Edina. The people he’d see on the streets weren’t all the same, they didn’t all drive black or white SUVs, and they just felt different.

Diverse.

He saw men kissing in doorways and women holding hands on top of tables in restaurants. He saw gay couples with kids strapped to their fronts or hiked up on their hips, supported by a sling. He saw mothers breastfeeding their babies as they sipped tea and talked to their husbands over a relaxed lunch.

Maybe he was noticing more diversity than was really there, but it stuck with him. Crazy hairstyles, eclectic clothes, funky facial hair. People who weren’t just rich and white. There was brown and bronze and russet-colored skin. Eyes in colors Hugo couldn’t even name.

That’s how he ended up in the basement of Kevin’s house, Kevin discovering him looking at his old, chipped, robin’s egg-blue kitchen table stored in the furnace room. He had a boa around his neck that he’d found in his drag closet.

“What’s going on?” Kevin asked, concern in his voice after he’d stood there watching Hugo not move for a few minutes. Hugo had seen him arrive out of the corner of his eye, but had been too lost in thought to say anything.

Hugo tried to blow it off, wiping at his eyes just in case there were tears there. His fingers came away damp. “Just looking at my stuff.” There were boxes of things neatly packed away. It hadn’t bothered him at all that most of his apartment had ended up in the basement, expertly stacked when he’d moved in. He’d pulled out the few items that were important to him, art for the wall or to set on a surface somewhere. A lamp. Photos. All his drag was hung up and arranged next door so he could easily get to what he needed when he became Miss Cherrie Pop!, but much of his stuff, the big stuff that had seen far better days, had ended up being thrown away or dropped off at a donation center for someone else to use until it fell apart.

The kitchen table had survived. He hadn’t been able to part with it, but it was nasty compared to the beautiful maple formal set Kevin had in his dining room, so the Formica table had been relegated to the basement. He didn’t even use it as his makeup table anymore because Kevin had paid for a beautiful lighted dressing table to be installed in Hugo’s drag closet.

“Hugo.” Kevin put his hand on top of Hugo’s where his finger was pressing into a triangular-shaped chip right on the corner of the table. Summer had dropped a heavy platter there years ago. She’d been so drunk she could barely stand, let alone pass a heavy dish. It shattered, knocking a piece of Formica away and bending the metal trim beside it.

Hugo shook his head, not having a clue what to say.

“Was it going back home? To Uptown? Is that why you’re so upset?”

Tears filled Hugo’s eyes, and he finally looked up and saw understanding on Kevin’s face. He nodded and chewed at his bottom lip to help himself regain control.

“You miss it, don’t you?”

“More than I thought I did.”

Kevin wrapped his arms around Hugo’s waist, drawing him into a tight embrace. “We can go there more. Go to the yoga place or ice-skate at Lake of the Isles. Shop. Walk around Lake Calhoun.”

“Yeah. That would be good,” Hugo said with a small smile, shaking off his melancholy and turning to walk back upstairs.

“Did Summer find a place she liked?”

“Yeah. She found several.”

So did I
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Out of the Mouths of Babes

“W
HAT
DOES
controversy mean?” Brooke asked one March evening over dinner.

“It’s a dispute, when people disagree on something, some issue, and they often talk about it in public places, like on television. You know those shows on Sunday mornings when people start off talking about something and end up getting angry?” Kevin tried to explain.

“Yeah, they get angry and won’t even listen to the way the other person thinks?” she asked, trying to understand.

“Exactly. They try to convince people to see things how they do. To change people’s minds. The topic is a controversy.”

“Oh,” Brooke said, looking as if she were concentrating.

“Why?” Hugo wondered.

“Just something that the guy on the kids’ news at school talked about when we watched it today. There was a protest he was talking about, with people holding signs and standing around doing cheers. And then I saw something at the library when we went after school. I didn’t know what it meant, but that makes sense.”

“When is the lady coming?” Finn asked, effectively ending the discussion.

“Tomorrow, Pickle.” Kevin smiled. “Don’t be nervous.”

Hugo sure was. Kevin had called Mark weeks ago to start
real
discussions about Hugo adopting the kids. This was no longer a hypothetical. “Best interest of the child” was the hallmark of Minnesota adoption law, just as Mark had told them months ago during the custody case. Mark had talked to them about their options. No matter how they started the process, Hugo had to go through a background check. He could’ve gotten a waiver for the home study, but considering what the Clarkes had pulled in the fall, he decided he was more than willing to go through an extensive home study, just in case Tasha got a wild hair up her butt again.

The legalities of the situation were hard for Hugo to understand. As he tried to read document after document, he found he just started getting dizzy on words, mixing up simple definitions and easily getting frustrated. He joked to Kevin that he needed to make himself flashcards just to keep things straight. Hugo was glad for Mark’s expertise, even if it meant digging into his life with such intense scrutiny that he felt raw and exposed.

The background check was easy. He knew there would be no issues there. He had never been arrested or even gotten a parking ticket except on the U of M parking lots, all paid and taken care of ages ago. There was nothing in his past that would show up, yet as he’d stood there allowing an unsmiling man to roll his fingers across Plexiglas over and over, taking Hugo’s inkless fingerprints to be sent somewhere to be analyzed, he did have a moment of panic, partly because of the seriousness in the room. Yet, after he handed over his money to pay for the perusal into his nonexistent criminal background and left the building, he knew he’d pass with flying colors.

Hugo had filled out pages and pages of information for the adoption home study on his family history, how he was raised, any parenting experience, work experience, financial history. You name it, they wanted to know it, asking any and all things aside from what shape mole he had behind his left knee. Much more information than any man or woman who fucked and birthed a baby in a hospital ever had to answer, even if they were serial killers, drug addicts, or abusers. Not that Hugo was bitter. He was more than willing to be scrutinized in this way if he was given the opportunity to be called Papa by the two most wonderful kids in the world and for it to be legally recognized.

Luckily, the lady doing the home study was kind. He invited her into their home and offered her something to drink. “Coffee would be nice, if you already have some made, but if you don’t, please don’t go to the trouble on my account,” she said. Kevin went to the trouble, and Hugo was happy he did.

She was a pleasantly plump woman in her late forties to early fifties who was constantly taking her reading glasses on and off to read questions and then focus on Hugo again. Kevin sat beside him, his warm palm pressed into Hugo’s lower back as Hugo answered her questions as honestly and comprehensively as he could. When Brooke and Finn came downstairs for a snack, she talked to them for a few minutes, asking them how they felt about Hugo adopting them.

Earlier, Kevin and Hugo had talked to both kids, gathering as much information as they could to see how they felt about making Hugo their official dad. As expected, Finn was all for it, ready for Hugo to be his dad right then. Brooke wanted it to happen as well, but she had more concerns.

“Dad will still be our dad too, you said, but will that mean Mom wasn’t ever my mom?” she’d asked. “Because if that’s what happens, then no, I don’t want to be adopted.”

“No. Mom will always be your mom. Nothing can ever take that away,” Kevin had told her with a warm smile on his face.

“So, when I have to write my parents’ names on papers at school or like I had to when I renewed my library card, I’d write Kevin Magnus and Hugo Thorson rather than just Kevin Magnus? Is that right?”

“Actually,” Hugo had said, “I’m going to be Hugo Magnus when we get married, so I’ll have the same last name as you guys.”

“What? What about your acting? Everyone knows you as Hugo Thorson.” It had made Hugo happy to see the concern she had for him, but there was no need for it.

“I’ll still be Hugo Thorson for my job. That’s how I’m best known by a lot of people. See, I belong to this acting guild… group, and my screen name is registered there. Nothing changes there, but your dad and I talked a lot about this. I feel like things would just go smoother if we all had the same last name.”

“That’s weird.” Brooke had wrinkled her nose and Kevin and Hugo laughed.

“It is,” Kevin had agreed, “but the other thing we talked about was me being Kevin Magnus-Thorson or Kevin Thorson-Magnus.”

“That’s a long name.”

“It sure is, Olive.”

“I honestly want to be a Magnus,” Hugo had reassured her. “I’m not losing anything because I’m still Hugo Thorson where I need to be, but I’m gaining a lot by becoming a Magnus too.”

Brooke had smiled then and said she had one more question. Hugo braced himself, fearful of what her introspection would bring.

“Sometimes on those forms they ask my dad’s name and then there’s a line for my mom. What do I do then?” She was so serious. Hugo’s heart unclenched, and he was so happy.

“You can write my name under the mom section. Cross off the word mom and write in dad if you want. Either way, that’s an easy fix,” Hugo said. “And then tell the person you turn the form in to that they need to update their forms.” He smirked while he gave her a wink.

After Brooke’s questions were answered, she was positive she wanted to be adopted. She hugged them both. “Dad and Papa,” she said as if testing out the feel of the words in her mouth before she kissed them each on the cheek.

When the caseworker left the house that March day, Hugo breathed another sigh of relief. Not pure relief, but at that point, there was little he could do. Now the decision whether or not he could be Finn and Brooke’s Papa was up to the court. All he could do was wait.

“Y
OU
GUYS
should probably know something,” Brooke said. She apparently had difficulty sleeping and was standing at the foot of Kevin and Hugo’s bed with a look of worry on her face one night.

“Come up here,” Kevin said, patting the space between them, and she crawled with long limbs and rested on her back. “Something bothering you?”

“Yeah.”

Minutes of silence stretched out, so Hugo pushed back her dark hair from her face. She’d begged and begged to get bangs and they were already too long now, easily drifting into her eyes. “What is it?” he asked. “You don’t have to be afraid. We’re both pretty used to dealing with all sorts of news.”

Brooke looked up at him and seemed to steel herself. “I wrote something.”

“Okay,” Kevin said, obviously hoping for more information.

“I got a letter today in the mail saying it was going to be published in a newspaper. What I wrote about was our family.”

“All right.” Hugo waited.

“Remember when I asked you what a controversy was?” Both men nodded but remained silent. “I was at the library and saw this poster on the bulletin board about a writing contest for kids my age. That’s why I asked about that. I wrote about us. And I won the contest for my age group.”

“Congratulations,” Hugo and Kevin said on top of each other.

“But….” Brooke looked scared.

“What is it, Olive?” Kevin asked, reaching for her hand and squeezing. Hugo watched her squeeze back and grimace more than smile.

“It’s going to be in the newspaper. People are going to be able to read it, and I’m worried about Felicity and what other kids will say if they read it.”

“Which paper is it going to be in?” Hugo asked.

“It was one of the colleges. I don’t remember. It was a big long name. I feel stupid for sending it to them now.”

“Hey.” Kevin put a finger under her chin and gently lifted so she’d look at him. “Don’t. Don’t feel stupid for taking a chance, for being honest, and for doing something you believe in.”

“Let me get the letter,” Brooke said, quickly disappearing into her room for a second. “Here. I think it’s like a permission slip,” she said, her voice drifting away before it got stronger again and she rejoined them on the bed, “like when we go on field trips and stuff.”

Kevin looked it over and nodded, passing it to Hugo, who read it. It was a congratulatory letter and parental consent form to publish a minor’s work. “Are you having second thoughts? They can’t print it until your dad signs this,” Hugo shared. “Maybe you don’t want to have it printed in the paper.”

“No. I mean, I think it’s pretty cool I got picked. I wrote it so people might see families like mine in a different way.”

“From a kid’s point of view?” Hugo asked.

“Yeah.”

“The paper has a small circulation. It probably only goes to students and professors on campus and maybe alumni, if it’s anything like the paper on my campus was,” Kevin said.

“So Felicity probably wouldn’t see it then?” Brooke beamed.