One day, when Ryland’s older and understands everything for himself, he can make the decision as to whether or not to tell her, but for now, it’s better if she continues to believe that St Brigid’s is nothing more than a typical school – which honestly it is in most respects.”
I didn’t like it, but he might have had a point. All of this was going to be hard enough on Mom, without knowing her son may or may not be some sort of mind-reading carnival act. “And Ryland? Doesn’t he deserve to know what’s happening to him?”
“Of course. But trust me when I say that it will be better for him to find out slowly, with other kids who are in the same situation. He will handle it better if he knows he’s not alone.”
There was a sad note in his voice that made me think that he knew all too well how alone Ryland sometimes felt. I still wasn’t sure about all the secrecy, but I decided to give Alex the benefit of the doubt, for now.
“All right. Mum’s the word. But you have to tell me everything.”
“OK,” he laughed.
“All of it?”
“All of it. But maybe not all at once.”
“OK,” I said with a satisfied smile, and lowered my hand for him to shake. “When do we start?”
“Well, I think we’ve covered enough for today,” he said, taking my hand in his, “but it–”
He stopped suddenly and froze, staring over my shoulder.
“Alex?”
Coming back to himself he brought his eyes down to meet mine. “Sorry,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, still looking a bit uneasy. “It’s a… a seventeen hour trip to St Brigid’s… so…” he released my hand and smiled, though not as easily as he had done a moment ago. “So we’ll have plenty of time.”
3
“And Becca gets to come with me?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t have to stay if I don’t like it?”
“No, of course not, but you do have to at least try to like it.”
I was cross-legged on my floor listening to Mom’s futile attempts to put Ryland to bed. Ry’s questions were slower in coming now and were broken up by the occasional yawn, but he was still doing his best to throw a few more in – though it seemed that most of them were repeats – before he fell asleep.
After Alex and I had struck our bargain that afternoon, we went downstairs and told the plan to Mom and Grumpy – I mean, Taron. Mom was relieved that I was tentatively OK with all this, but more so that Ryland didn’t have to go all that way on his own. Taron however, was anything but thrilled. He wasn’t happy at all about the idea of me accompanying them back to Ireland, but Alex had gotten him out of the house before he could give me a reason to backhand him.
Once they were gone, Mom and I went to get Ryland out of the tree house, which was no easy feat. We had to assure him that the men were gone, assure him that no one was going to take him anywhere tonight, and assure him again that the scary guys were definitely gone. Finally, Mom started to threaten that if he didn’t come down he wouldn’t get any dinner. When that didn’t work, I told him that if he stayed up there much longer the raccoon would get him. That earned me a smack on the arm from Mom, but it did the job as Ry was down less than a minute later.
And then the questions began.
Who were those men? Why didn’t you send them away? Becca’s coming too? Where are we going? Where is Ireland? Are there other kids there? Will it be like school here? What if I don’t like it? What if they try to hurt me? Becca, are you really coming? How long will we stay there? And on and on. All through dinner and well into the evening, Mom and I sat, answering all his questions to the best of our knowledge and trying to reassure him that everything was going to be fine.
It wasn’t until he found out that his father would not only be there, but was actually the one who had sent the men to get him in the first place, that his face changed from squinty curiosity into doe-eyed wonder.
Ugh.
As furious as it made me I ignored it, as my brother’s misguided admiration for the father he’d never met wasn’t