Safe in His Arms (27 page)

T
HEY
CUDDLED
up on the recliner, and Lon pulled out a book. It was a photo album with a collection of mismatched pictures inside. They were all different shapes and colors. Some were so faded you could barely make out the people, others gone yellow from age.

“These are photos people gave me from their own albums after the fire. The fire burned all of Mum’s albums, so these are what I could find to remember them by.”

He flicked through the pages until he found the one he wanted.

“There. That’s us.”

Casey looked down at the picture, taken at some park with a lake in the background—probably in the ’80s, going by the haircuts. There were four kids standing in a row, all eating ice cream, the white stuff dripping from their fingers. They looked like they were having marvelous fun.

“That’s me,” Lon said, pointing to the bigger boy with the dark hair. Casey looked closer and could see the resemblance to the man he’d become. “And those are my sisters and my brother.”

Casey’s attention went to the other kids. The other boy in the photo was definitely Aboriginal. He could see it now in his long, skinny limbs, dark skin, and curly hair. It was the same person from Lon’s other photo in the van. The two girls, however, were a total surprise—one a blonde-haired little minx with a dark tan, and the younger with bright red curly hair and so many freckles it would take a month to count them all. Casey laughed, “What the hell did your mother do? Fuck a leprechaun? You kids are the colors of a fucking rainbow.”

The minute the words were out of his mouth he could’ve died.
Way to go. Just insult the man’s dead mother.

Thankfully Lon laughed like mad. “Ha-ha. Shit, I’m going to have to tell my mother that one next time I visit her. She’ll love it.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t stress it, love. We were all adopted.” Casey sighed in relief. Lon flicked over a page and pointed at an old wedding photo. “These are my parents, who you met the other day. They married young. My mother was born without a uterus, so she always knew that she would have to adopt. I guess it was lucky for them, because they didn’t have to try to get pregnant for years before realizing there was a problem. They married and immediately registered for adoption, and four years later I was given to them.” Lon flicked a couple of pages until he found himself as a chubby toddler, sitting on some old woman’s lap. “Mum told me she was ecstatic. She didn’t care if I was a boy or a girl, she just wanted a baby. They immediately registered again for a second child, and when I was two, Olivia came along.”

He went back to the page with the four kids and pointed out Olivia. “This photo was taken when I was eight, so Livvy would’ve been six and Marlee four.”

“How old was your brother?”

Lon’s finger traced his brother’s form. “Ronnie was eight too. He’s two months younger than me.”

Casey paused. “What? Wait a minute. Your mother named you Lonnie and Ronnie?”

That received another laugh. “No. Shut up and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.” Casey smiled and snuggled back down, staring at the photo. It was a beautifully moving photo. Lon went on. “After Livvy came, Mum said that she didn’t want to be too greedy and ask to adopt more kids. She always wanted a big family, but she felt blessed to be given a boy and a girl. There were so many other deserving people out there, so she was content with just two. But the Holy Mother had other plans for her. That’s what Mum always said—the Holy Mother. It wasn’t God who gave us Marlee, it was the Virgin Mary. Marlee was named for her.”

Once again Lon flicked pages until he found the one he wanted. A teeny, tiny baby being bathed in a white bucket. “Cute,” was all Casey could say.

Lon smiled sadly. “Cute, yes. But not perfect. She was rejected because she wasn’t perfect. Marlee had Down syndrome, so her biological mother put her up for adoption. No one wanted to adopt a baby who wasn’t perfect, so the adoption people rang my parents and offered the baby to them, even though they weren’t on the register. They knew my parents wanted more kids and they knew my mother’s heart was big enough.”

Casey looked with new respect at the woman bathing her newborn daughter.

“But that meant there were two girls and only one of me. Olivia took to being a big sister straightaway, but my dad wanted me to have a brother. It was too hard to adopt another newborn, so they chose to foster an older child. They took Ronnie in just before I turned five, and immediately he and I hit it off. We were invincible together. The government departments in those days would allow you to foster the kids for a while, make sure they were a good fit, then adopt them. So Ronnie became ours. And yes, we were Lonnie and Ronnie. We were brothers. There were a lot of times we got crap for Ronnie not being white, and Marlee not being perfect, but we were a family and, fuck, we were a good one.”

He turned another page and Casey was looking at two awkward teenagers dressed up in rented tuxes, obviously going to a school ball. Casey sniggered and received a stinging slap on his arm. “Oi! No laughing.”

“Oh man,” Casey snorted, “you both wore a blue tux? Check out the hair.”

Lon laughed too. “At least it wasn’t a mullet. But that was Ronnie and me. We did everything together. The same class, the same friends. We even bought a car together. He’d had some problems when he was about thirteen with his behavior and schoolwork. The teachers said he was acting up and everything. Mum was a tiger—up the school and causing a ruckus. She took him to a couple of doctors, until one diagnosed him when he was fourteen with what they now call fetal alcohol syndrome. He was originally removed from his family because his mother had seven kids in eight years and was an alcoholic who wasn’t caring for him. The doctors said that his biological mother probably drank heavily while she was pregnant. As a result Ronnie had trouble concentrating and sometimes made rash decisions. They gave him some pills, which helped the concentration and mood swings, but I was given the task of making sure he took them, and to make him think through his choices.”

Casey drew back in surprise. “That’s a pretty big responsibility for a fourteen-year-old.”

“Nah, it was easy. Ronnie and I shared everything, anyway. It was more like, ‘Hey, Lon. Let’s skateboard down this hill and off the jetty at the end.’ And I’d say, ‘Don’t be an arse, Ronnie. You’ll break your neck. Let’s skate from halfway down.’”

Casey rolled his eyes. “I can see you two were a pair.”

That sobered Lon. “Yeah. No secrets. He was the first person I ever told I was gay. We were fifteen, and all he did was sigh at me and say, ‘Thank fucking goodness, because the way you were checkin’ out Ryan Jackson the other day was beginning to freak me.’ He never had a problem with it. And when we were nineteen, I was the person he confided in that he was in love with our sister Olivia.”

Whoa.
That was a twist Casey wasn’t expecting. “Your sister?”

Lon was quiet for a moment. Then he exhaled noisily and tried to explain. “I don’t know how I can make you see what it was like. The four of us always knew we were adopted. We were family, and I would’ve died for my siblings, but we didn’t share blood in our veins. You grow up knowing that it’s wrong to have sex with your sister or your mother or your cousin. You’re told at school that it’s wrong and then you hear horror stories about babies born disabled because their parents were related. When you’re adopted you know it’s wrong, but you also know that you’re not related. Not really. In the back of your mind, you always know you’re not biologically related.”

“But your sister?” Casey questioned. It was hard to reconcile.

“Yeah. I know. That was the first thing I thought too. But we were brothers who shared. He told me he loved her like a man loves a woman, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He knew that it was morally and legally wrong. So we tried to ignore it.”

“But?” Casey knew there was a ‘but’ in there, somewhere.

“But Livvy fell for him too. I was caught in the middle. She told me when she was eighteen. She told me she couldn’t ever fall in love because she was already in love with a man she could never have. And then she stared at Ronnie, and he just stared back. Man, it was hard. I pushed them apart, told them to stay away from each other, warned them and warned them, but shit. Love happened anyway. For over a year, I kept them apart. But it was inevitable. We were twenty-one by then and all it took was a pretty boy to divert my attention. I was gone for one night, and they came together. It was written all over their faces the next morning, and I swear, I hustled Ronnie out of that house so fuckin’ fast that he was seeing stars. He was so remorseful, but so happy.”

“Did your parents know?”

“Shit, no. Two days later Ronnie and I found a house to rent and told Mum that we needed some space. They knew I was gay by that time, and I told Mum I needed somewhere to be comfortable with a boyfriend. And as you can see, where I went, Ronnie followed. So Ronnie and Olivia were separated, and I thought all was good. But it didn’t work. Ten months later he started staying out at night and not telling me where he was. I could see the happiness in his face and knew what they were doing. So I let them be, figuring that maybe whatever
thing
they had was just a matter of forbidden love. Once the naughtiness of it was extinguished, then they would stop.”

“They didn’t?”

“No. By the time Ronnie turned twenty-three, Olivia was living under our roof. We had a three-bedroom house and they set up Olivia in the third bedroom, but she never slept there. Olivia told our parents that she wanted to move out of the family home for some independence, but felt safer staying with her brothers. I knew I was going to hell for keeping the secret, but I didn’t know what else to do. She lived with us for over a year before Mum dropped by one day and caught them.”

Casey winced. “Shit hit the fan?”

Lon nodded. “Big time. Dad was furious. Mum was hurt. Marlee was confused. Out of all of it, I was the one who was in the deepest shit for keeping their secret. But Olivia and Ronnie were strong. They never wavered in their love. They had a united front and they told our parents that they didn’t care about legalities. They were in love and they were staying together.” He sighed. “It took our parents a long while to come around, but they finally did. Mum was first. Dad was still hesitant. For months the two of them were exiled. Then it was ‘Come for dinner as long as you don’t mention it.’ Then finally it was ‘As long as no one finds out we’ll allow it.’

“Then Olivia dropped her bombshell. She wanted to marry Ronnie, but since it was illegal for adopted siblings to marry, she was going to petition the courts to have her adoption reversed.”

Casey blinked. “Can you do that?”

Lon shrugged. “It had been done in America, but not in Australia. But Olivia wanted it, even though the laws were pretty set about children raised together still being considered siblings. Mum was upset and Dad was angry, thinking that Olivia was trying to disown them. But she was really just trying to get around the law. Once Mum understood this, she was a bit more amiable toward the suggestion. Olivia dropped a couple of hints about kids, and Mum was taken in. I know that Mum was only trying to help, but she didn’t know what chain of events she was setting off. Dad was carving the meat for Sunday roast when Mum told Olivia that if she was serious about marriage, it would actually be quite easy. You see, Mum and Dad had never legally adopted Ronnie, so in the eyes of the law, them being together was not illegal.”

“What?”

Lon nodded, this time with a sorrowful smile. “I got the whole story the following day, but by that time it was way too late. It turned out that Ronnie’s biological mother would never sign the adoption papers. The government could block her from ever having custody of Ronnie, but couldn’t force her to sign adoption papers. So Dad had Ronnie’s name legally changed to Taylor, and they just said he was adopted. But in reality, in the government’s books, he was fostered. Full custody, but not legally adopted.”

“But that was good news, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. If Ronnie hadn’t overreacted. He grabbed the wrong end of the stick and ran with it. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that Mum and Dad hadn’t adopted him because he was black and not good enough for nice white folk to accept. He took off. He shouted and yelled, then ran out of the house before any of us could stop him. We tried to find him, but he hid to lick his wounds. By the next morning, he was still hiding and coming off his meds. I knew I had to find him fast, before he did anything crazy. He’d done it before—forgotten a pill and got in a fight, or decided he didn’t need them and ended up scrawling graffiti all over a public building. He’d been so good with his pills since Olivia, but I knew he was majorly upset this time.”

With dread, Casey remembered Lon’s comment about what happened to his brother. He didn’t know if he wanted to hear the rest of the story, but it was something Lon needed to tell him.

“So in the space of three—no, five days—life, as I knew it, went completely down the toilet. We never found Ronnie, even though the four of us scoured the city for him. On the third night, off his pills and with an alcohol level of point two, my brother set fire to our dad’s garage. Later he told me that he knew that’s where they kept the legal papers—in a filing cabinet in the garage. He just wanted to burn the papers and burn away all the records of adoption and fostering and everything. So he started a fire. He then walked two blocks away and passed out cold.” Lon swallowed loudly. “The fire jumped to the house.”

Casey knew what was coming. It couldn’t be anything else. He wanted to cover his ears and not listen to the truth. That square headstone in the Fremantle Cemetery had already told him.

“They didn’t wake in time,” Lon said, his voice wobbling. “Mum went to wake Marlee and was caught in the flames, so Dad dragged her outside and went back in for my sister. Later they found them together in the hallway. Dad had at least made it to her side. I take comfort in the fact that my baby sister didn’t die alone. Mum had inhaled flames, and it was just a matter of time before she died. She never awoke and died two days later in hospital. By that time they had arrested my brother, who confessed to everything. Olivia was horrified and blamed herself. She went to visit Ronnie once in jail—the day after the fire, but before Mum died—and he was out of his mind. She walked in, visited him for sixteen minutes, then walked out. And disappeared.”