Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

I shake my head slowly. “That doesn’t even begin to cover it. He’s…

different. But in the greatest way possible.”

“I see,” she says, trailing her hand trailing over a copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World on his desk. “I got to Mercy Hospital and was met by the SPD outside the room I’d been directed toward. At that moment, I didn’t have a whole lot of information, just that it was bad. I could hear screaming coming from inside the room behind the cops, could hear the doctor and nurses inside trying to get the kid to calm down. I asked the police what had happened. The officer I spoke to had apparently been one of the first to respond. He had blood on his uniform, so much blood. He was young, barely out of his teens, and I found out later he’d been on the job a week, still shadowing a more experienced officer.”

“His last name is Miller, isn’t it?” Otter asks quietly. “Dominic Miller?”

Georgia smiles sadly. “Yes.”

“How’d you know that?” I ask Otter, even though the name sounds familiar to me too.

“Because it was all over the news,” Otter says. “It was everywhere for a long time.”

“Wait,” I croak out. “That’s the woman who….” I can’t finish.

Georgia looks out the window and does it for me. “His mother was the woman. His father was that man. The officer told me that Dominic’s father had come home one night after a long night of drinking. He found his wife in the kitchen. He said that she dropped a plate and that the noise caused him to snap. There’d been a few calls out to the house before, neighbors hearing screaming coming from next door, but you know how that goes. The cops would show, the woman would say nothing was wrong, that she didn’t want to press charges, that she’d gotten that bruise on her face by accident.

She was just clumsy. There was never any evidence of abuse to Dominic, at least not physical. But emotional and verbal abuse can be just as damaging, and to this day, I really can’t say all that went on while he was growing up.”

I don’t want her to go on, because all I want to do is run downstairs and grab the Kid and hide him behind me, hide him from Dominic. I’m ashamed at these thoughts, horrified that I could actually have them, but my priority is the Kid, and I don’t know Dominic. I don’t know all he’s seen. I don’t know the state of his mind. He could just be a big kid that speaks quietly. Or he could be just like his dad.

But I can’t look away as Georgia continues, her voice going flat. “So his mother dropped the plate, and Jacob Miller snapped. He would say later that he didn’t know why the sound of the plate shattering on the floor caused him to lose it, or even if he was the one that caused her to drop it, only that he just couldn’t take it anymore. He dragged Crystal Miller by her hair and punched her in the face a few times, causing her to black out. And from there he said he just couldn’t stop. He said he hit her again and again and again. He didn’t know that Crystal’s… screams had caused Dominic to wake up. He didn’t know that Dominic had come into the room. He didn’t know that his son was watching him beat her to death. Dominic apparently started screaming and slapping on his back, but he still didn’t stop. He only stopped when Dominic had gotten a pair of scissors from the drawer and had stabbed his father in the side seven times.”

“Jesus Christ,” Otter mutters.

“The police arrived ten minutes later to find him sitting between his two parents, his mother dead and his father dying, covered in blood, holding the pair of scissors. They asked him what happened. He told them that his dad made his mom go away and he tried to help. And then he dropped the scissors and started screaming and didn’t stop. He was still screaming when I got to the hospital an hour later, although his voice had gone hoarse by then.” Georgia stops, her jaw set, her mouth a thin line. I wonder what I should say, but she beats me to it. “His father eventually confessed, and Dominic was hailed as a hero, but when I first saw him, he was covered in blood, his mouth stretched open, and that noise coming out from him is something that I will never forget. And he only stopped after having been given a sedative. When he woke up, he didn’t speak again for another six months. What happened after that is something you should hear from him, if he ever wants to tell it.

“But I do remember one other thing the most, something that sticks out in my head and probably always will. I’d worked with him and a psychologist for months, and even though he never spoke, I still hoped we were getting to him, somehow. It was little things, really. I’d ask him how he was day after day, and sometimes he would nod. He’d bring me a book he wanted me to read to him. And then one day, I took him out to eat to this little diner near the beach and passed him something, napkin, ketchup, I don’t know. He didn’t ask me for whatever it was, but he needed it just the same. But… he watched me for a moment and then said, ‘Thank you.’ Two words. But those two words meant more to me than anything else I’d ever heard. And that’s when I knew that he’d be okay. Maybe not all the way okay, but okay, nonetheless.”

She turns back to look at me and Otter. “I’ve heard him speak more today than I’ve heard in any one day in the last six years. I don’t know what has happened to him, or what Tyson did that no one else has been able to do, but it can’t go away. His foster parents are nice people, but they don’t completely understand him, and they’ve got two other foster kids, as well, with varying degrees of emotional issues. He’s been described as ‘cold’ and

‘removed’. ‘Emotionless’.” She laughs bitterly. “And those are words I’ve used myself. But that was not who I saw today. You can’t know how big of a step it is, to know that Tyson texted him and Dominic came running.

That’s not something I ever thought I’d see, that he cared that much about another person to do that. And that smile? I don’t think he’s smiled in the time that I’ve known him. Not like that. That’s the smile that a kid his age should have. Not one who has seen what he has.”

“He was doing that when I met him too,” I tell her, my mind reeling.

“But only at the Kid. I just thought he was shy.”

“Your brother is an amazing person, Derrick,” she says, looking amused. “I can see that already. You’ve got a good home here, a start to something, and I am pulling for you guys. My reports are going to be honest, and I won’t pull any punches because my concern is for Tyson, as it should be, but you and Oliver keep doing what you’re doing, and I think everything will work out.”

“You don’t think it’s odd for a fifteen-year-old to be hanging out with a nine-year-old?”

Georgia laughs. “How old were you when you latched onto Oliver?”

Dammit. So not the same thing, even though it kinda sorta is. The Kid isn’t going to end up with Dominic when he gets older, like Otter and me.

There’s still that difference.

And you know this how? it asks.

I ignore it.

She begins to walk past us and stops when Otter reaches out and grabs her by the arm. “Is he dangerous?” he asks, his voice low and hard. “I understand what he means to you, and I can’t even begin to imagine what he’s been through. No one should have to go through what he did. But I won’t put my family in danger if he’s going to be like his father. I don’t care how beneficial you think his friendship with the Kid is. If there’s a chance he can harm Bear or Tyson, then you need to tell me now so I can end this before it gets too far. I won’t allow him or anyone else to take them from me. They’re mine.”

Georgia looks up at him, not intimidated in the slightest. “Only four months, huh?”

“I’m not fucking around,” he barks. “Answer the question.”