22. Imry
22
IMRY
Haze’s hands grip the handlebar in front as I speed down the pasture. He’s got a huge smile on his face as the cab rocks. I run into the big balls with the front of the buggy and slow down.
Coodles, one of our big Highland cows, comes trotting by, waving his head around excitedly as he chases his big ball. He catches it, drops his face on it, and momentum nearly has him rolling with it, but he manages to keep himself upright.
Then he drops his head and shoves the ball away with his snout. I step on the gas and chase after it, hitting it again and sending it flying through the pasture.
“He’s like a giant dog,” Haze says, laughing.
I nod, grinning. Two of our livestock dogs, the border collies, come racing out into the field and circle Coodles. Checking in to make sure he’s okay.
“That’s Tasker and Fitch,” I tell him. “They’re very attentive of the animals’ emotional needs, so they’re checking on Coodles to make sure he’s not stressed.”
“If Coodles was stressed?” Haze asks.
“Dogs can serve as therapy for animals too, not just humans. There are a lot of social media pages that are dedicated to ‘ odd ’ relationships, and a lot of the time, it’s dogs with other animals, especially big cats. It’s because dogs are a good indicator for the cat that the world around them is okay. If the dog is comfortable, the cats can take social cues from their canine companion and relax in their environment. It’s the same thing in this situation. Coodles will take social cues from the dogs, being reassured that everything is fine. If that doesn’t work, one of the dogs will usually find a farm hand and bring them to the stressed animal.”
“It’s kind of impressive how intuitive the dogs are,” Haze says.
“Border collies are known for their intelligence. That’s why they make such great guardian dogs. In a way, they’re the bridge between their human handlers and the animals, relaying the message and assuring safety and success.”
We watch Coodles and the dogs for a minute. Apparently, that’s as much rowdy fun as Coodles is allowed, since Tasker and Fitch encourage him to calm down. I’m not at all surprised when the dogs trot back to whence they came that Tasker gives me a warning look on his way by.
“Sometimes, I think the dogs keep us in check too,” I muse.
Haze laughs.
I put the buggy in Park and cut the engine. “Time to give Coodles some cuddles,” I say. “That’s a guardian dog-approved activity.” He chuckles again and follows me toward Coodles. “Watch his horns. He can throw his head around in excitement and impale you without realizing. You need to be the one watching his horns.”
“Got it,” Haze says.
Coodles does a little skip when he sees we’re coming toward him and meets us partway. I take his big face in my hands and rub his snout. “You’re such a good cow, aren’t you?”
A Highland cow’s fur is long and often gets in their eyes. They’re fucking adorable, which is why we have three. I brush Coodles’ fur from his eyes and kiss his big nose. When I look at Haze, he’s watching me with his arms crossed over his chest and a big smile.
I might just flush a little. “Stop looking at me like that and pet him. He’s sweet. He’s also the best cuddler.”
“Oh yeah? How do you cuddle with a cow?” Haze asks as he joins me.
Coodles nudges him with his big nose. I take Haze’s hand and place it on Coodles’ face. “He’ll stop moving those horns around like weapons if you just pet him,” I say. It’s true. Coodles stands still now as we scratch his face and ears and down his neck.
“I’m sure I’ll show you how we cuddle with a cow. He loves cuddling.”
It doesn’t take long before Coodles backs a few steps away and works his way down to the grass. I grin, pulling Haze along to lean against Coodles’ side. The cow brings his big head around, making me lean away from him to avoid being stabbed in the head by a horn, and lays his face across my lap.
We continue to scratch his head.
“See? Cuddling a cow.”
Haze grins.
“We used to do this a lot,” I say as I lean back and look at the sky. “Especially when we first moved out here, but I remember when we used to visit with Dad sometimes. Before he took us from Mom. Avory, Ellory, and I would cuddle with Coodles for hours. The pony is Ellory’s. He wanted a pony when we were kids, so Dad bought him one to keep on the farm.”
“Where did you live before here?” Haze asks.
“Just outside of Phoenix.”
“So you’ve always lived in Arizona.”
I nod. “Yep. Once we moved up here, I realized Mom never stepped foot on the Estate. Part of me wondered if Dad did that on purpose. Like he kept this part of our lives hidden from her. I do know that Mom didn’t get a penny of the Van Doren Estate.”
“I’m curious how he managed to take you all away. You’ve never seen her since, have you?”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “I don’t know the details; I never asked. I know Myro was already nineteen, so there was nothing she could do about it. Voss was sixteen and while I’m not fluent in family court, I think that’s the age where you can decide where you want to live. Since she had an issue with Avory, Ellory, and Loren as they existed, I’m not sure that she’d even try to get in contact with them. Which leaves me and no, I haven’t heard from her, nor have I reached out.”
“This might not be farfetched, but I doubt there was any way she could touch any of you. You own half the world, and money can do a lot of things,” Haze says.
“Like make my mother disappear.”
“I wasn’t going to say that, but sure.”
“That’s probably what happened though, right? My mother was super proud of Myro and Voss, and I was the ‘good triplet.’ She hated that three of her six kids weren’t perfect. I just don’t see her as someone who would walk away quietly.”
“What do you think happened?”
I won’t be saying what I actually think. Honestly, I have no idea and every idea I do have feels a little more far-fetched than the previous. Dad is very mild-mannered. He doesn’t have a temper. He doesn’t act rashly. He wouldn’t do something that would bring negative attention to our family or Van Doren Technologies.
Which means Mom vanishing seems an unlikely answer. I’m not sure she could be bought off. Did he ship her off somewhere? Ohhh, maybe she’s part of the megachurch cult and now lives on the island!
“I don’t know,” I say. “I have wild, unrealistic ideas, but they may be more wishful thinking than not, you know? She wasn’t good to three of my brothers and I saw that a lot . Daily, once we hit double digits in age. As far as I’m concerned, she stopped being my mother ages ago. I don’t care what happened to her.”
Haze nods. He links his fingers with mine, and for a minute, we lean back on Coodles’ side without speaking. Coodles has already moved his head, so he’s lying on the ground. He just loves having his people close. He’ll stay like this all day.
“I’m really glad you decided to give me a chance,” I say. Maybe I’m feeling a little sentimental right now. If anyone is going to understand the emotional damage that comes with having a bad parent, it’s Haze.
He sighs. “Come here.” Haze pulls me to him, bringing me onto his lap so I’m straddling him. He takes my face between his hands and stares into my eyes.
My heart races. Maybe I shouldn’t have said something. I don’t want this to end, and I might have just called attention to something that may trigger that happening.
“You said you saw the news revolving around my family in Anaheim, right?”
I nod. “It was very soap opera dramatics.”
He snorts. “Tell me about it,” he mutters, shaking his head. “So… my mother died when I was five days old. I’m sure that’s easy enough to research online.”
“Yes. It was included in a couple articles.”
Haze scowls. “Great. Anyway. There was one picture hanging in our house of our family of six, taken a couple of days after I was born. It’s the only picture of our family when it was whole. A picture where my father is holding Oren and Oren is smiling. Our other brothers are smiling. Mom and Dad are happy and proud. That family only existed for five days. Obviously, I don’t remember those days or the days and weeks following Mom’s death, but all my memories are of one thing: Oren being the receiver of a lot of familial abuse.”
I nod. That was alluded to, though Oren himself never conducted any interviews. I saw his copied and pasted comments that said as much, but he was very hush-hush about the whole thing.
“My father, to my knowledge, never hit Oren, but our older brothers did. Right until they were in high school, when those bruises would definitely be questioned. That’s when their verbal and mental abuse got heavier. More belligerent. It was never-ending and encompassed everything. How he talked or how he didn’t talk. The way he dressed, though Dad refused to let him choose his clothing, so they were all clothes Dad bought him. His physical appearance, his hair, his voice, the way he walked, where he worked. I could waste your time and list all the hypocrisy in the household, but I’m not going to.”
I rest my hand over his heart, staring into troubled eyes.
“One day, Oren met Adak. Adak saw him in a crowd and just… fell in love with him. It was Adak’s support and love for my brother that finally gave him the strength to find his voice and push back. Something that made my father snap. He did physically hurt Oren then when he forcefully shoved Oren into his bedroom, locking him inside. Oren managed to fit through the tiny fucking window in his room and ran. What did Dad do? He tried to call the cops to make them drag my twenty-four-year-old brother home against his will.”
“That’s not even legal,” I say.
“You’d think that would be the end of that. However, Dad worked for the prison for thirty years. He made some shady friends on the police force.”
“I read that some were fired from the department when this whole thing went public for corrupt behavior. There were fines involved, and I think one was facing prison time.”
“I didn’t know some of that, but yeah. Oren tried to escape when he was nineteen, and Dad’s cop friends dragged him home, which I think was kind of the defeating blow for Oren. If he couldn’t turn to the cops, who was going to help him?”
I shook my head.
“That’s when the lock on the outside of the door appeared. I don’t think it was ever used until the day Dad dragged him into his bedroom. The sick shit continued in the days after. Dad was convinced he’d be forced home at some point. He put bars over Oren’s window and tore the wall surrounding his bedroom door out to replace the wood beams with steel ones so he could reinforce the door with some disgusting locks.”
“Wow.”
“Yep. The reason I’m telling you this is, while I didn’t suffer through any of the shit that Oren did, I had to watch it. I spent every day for twenty years afraid that if I did something my father didn’t like, his ire would be turned on me. I made sure to get good grades, but not top grades. There was a goldilocks zone in almost everything. Since my brothers—Frankie especially—were always commenting on how ugly and skinny and weak Oren was, I made a dedicated effort to not be seen as those things.”
“Your body image comment makes more sense now,” I say.
Haze nods. “I didn’t realize it until I was on my way out, which, by the way, I was on the phone with Oren when the car bombs went off. I heard him screaming, and then the line went dead.”
My breath catches. “Oh my god.” He must have thought he’d listened to his brother die!
He nods again. “Yep. That’s given me nightmares. But anyway, it wasn’t until we left and we’re in this new place and I’m finally free of the horrors that surrounded my life that I realized I don’t have any identity at all. I’m the absent child. The one who kept his head down so the abuse his brother suffered through wouldn’t turn on him. I spent so long not having likes or hobbies or opinions on anything that I had a mini breakdown when we got to Arizona and there were fucking choices for me to choose from.”
I slip out of his hands and lay along his body so I can hug him.
“This is a really long explanation just to tell you that the reason I decided not to pursue you when your brothers stopped by to talk to me has absolutely nothing to do with you at all. It never did. You needed something I knew I couldn’t give you. You deserve something I didn’t feel I was capable of. I’m still trying to figure out who I am. Not some self-discovery journey or coming-of-age thing, but finding out something as simple as what my favorite color is. What foods I don’t like. Fuck, even what I want to wear when I get up in the morning. I only need to think about myself and not take into consideration the abusive household around me. I just wasn’t sure I was ready to give someone else a part of me when I hadn’t had a chance to have all of myself yet.”
I hug him tightly and close my eyes. “I’m sorry, Haze. I didn’t mean to force you to?—”
“Don’t,” he says, cutting my words off. “I’ve been talking to Oren and my friends, and I think I’ve finally figured out that I can still figure me out and give some of me to you.”
“But you shouldn’t have?—”
Haze pushes me up so he can look into my face. “I promise, it was never about not wanting you. Believe it or not, you’ve helped me a lot.”
“I have?” Because I feel like a fucking asshole.
“We have some strange parallels in common. Some past trauma. Even if it was very different, there are things we connect over and I’ve needed that common ground with someone. I obviously share a lot with my brother, but no matter how much he tells me it’s not my fault, or how often everyone else tells me it’s not my fault, I still feel guilty about not doing something about Oren’s situation. Even if it was taking some of the attention from him, so he wasn’t their sole target. I don’t feel guilty in the same way when I talk to you. I’m always going to feel guilty. But I get to just…”
Haze trails off, and when he doesn’t find the words he’s looking for, he shakes his head. “I appreciate you, Imry. I love spending time with you. I love this right here. Maybe I needed a bit of a nudge to realize it.”
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” I say, sliding up his body so I can press a soft kiss to his lips.
“Believe it or not, it felt good to get that off my chest to someone who hasn’t watched it happen or was part of it.”
“I understand that. You’re the first person I’ve told about some of the things that went down with Mom, outside of our family, who went through it. I once tried to share it with Darren, but he said he didn’t want to carry my burden with me. In hindsight, I guess that was a red flag.”
Haze frowns. “I think so.”
“It’s not about carrying someone’s burden. It’s about caring enough to listen to something difficult they went through and maybe comforting them.”
“Yes.”
“I guess I was too young and na?ve to see that. Sometimes I think if I’d told one of my brothers about it, someone might have figured out the relationship wasn’t as rosy as we all thought it was.”
“I know. Sometimes I thought if I’d told my teachers or the principal, if I kept telling people, eventually someone would do something about it.”
I tuck my face into Haze’s neck, and we don’t talk for a while as we lie against Coodles. Haze is right. Talking about it with someone new, someone you trust, is definitely healing. It doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t change the past. But that wasn’t the point.
Sometimes, all you need is someone to listen.