asks me.
“Nope. Definitely not. I do not blush. I do, however, grovel and apologize and even beg if necessary.”
When we get in the house, Aceto rushes over and rubs up against my ankles without a single angry hiss, and damn if I don’t get a little teary-eyed.
“Wow, wow, wow,” he yodels.
“I know! It has been much too long.” I bend down and pet him, and he sniffs curiously at the cat carrier.
“First things first,” Sienna says. “Let’s get your cat settled in. We’ll let them get used to each other gradually, in case Aceto decides to go psycho on her. Or vice versa.”
She scoops up Aceto and puts him on the back porch with Ducktape, and shuts the screen door that separates the porch from the house. I release Cleocatra, who leaps from the cat carrier as if it were on fire. She shoots me a deeply mournful look of betrayal, and scurries over to the screen door and sniffs at Aceto. They make questioning little meow sounds. So they don’t want to kill each other. That seems like a promising start.
“So. You’re here,” Sienna says.
I clear my throat. “I have something for you. I hope you like it.”
Suddenly I’m fourth-grade me again, all full of false bravado and hope. I hand her the package. It’s wrapped in brittle yellowing wrapping paper and tied in yarn string. She opens it, and the paper falls apart, drifting in little pieces.
Under the wrapping paper is a small spiral notebook with a hand-drawn picture of Christina Aguilera taped to the front.
“My mother had me get thank-you gifts for everyone who came to my tenth birthday party. I got everyone else the same thing, a bag of mini chocolate bars, but this was your present.”
“You cared enough to find out what I really liked, and you saved it all this time,” she marvels. She looks up at me with shining eyes. “So what happened back then? I mean, what the hell, Donovan? You went out of your way to befriend me, and then you were an absolute bastard to me when I showed up. You humiliated me in front of everybody. Why?”
Horrible memories swirl up and wash over me, making me feel filthy and unwanted. I wouldn’t relive this for anyone but Sienna. She needs to know, though.
“The morning of my party, my mother sent me to look for place cards for the birthday table. I was rooting around through all of the stationary and I found some old baby announcements that she’d never gotten around to throwing away. Apparently, when she got pregnant with Toni, the sonogram wasn’t that clear and she thought Toni would be a boy. The invitations said ‘Montgomery Witlocke the Third’.“
I glance at her sharply. Her eyes sparkle with sympathy. She gets it.
“And then Toni was a girl. And then she had to have a hysterectomy, so there was no chance of her giving birth to a son, so they adopted me. But I wasn’t a real Witlocke. I wasn’t my father’s real son. They didn’t love me enough to name me after him.”
“Oh, Donovan. I’m so sorry.” She takes my hand in hers, a small gesture that means the world.
“I mean, I’m over it by now, but I was devastated then. I’d already seen the signs. The way they hovered over Toni and Jamie and were all overprotective and never even let them play soccer because they were afraid they’d get hurt. Me, I could play football, lacrosse, I could run around downtown all by myself. They didn’t worry, because they didn’t care about me like they did their actual children. They tried to, but they just didn’t.” I smile wryly. “It’s okay.” It isn’t, but what can you do? “So that’s why I freaked out at my tenth birthday party. Every time I tried to let myself like you, I’d get scared that my family would just send me back to the orphanage or whatever. It was stupid.”
“No, it wasn’t. I don’t know why they didn’t name you Montgomery, but they love you, Donovan, I know they do. Are you aware that Jamie and Toni both think that your parents love you more because you’re a boy? They’ve always thought that. Jamie told me. And as for them letting you play sports and walk around by yo urself, it’s because they’ve got extremely anachronistic ideas about child-rearing. They just treat boys differently than girls. As proof, I offer you Jamie, working for me and still wearing those