Thin Love(146)

“I’m ready to talk to you about your father.”

He sits up straight and instantly that fear is gone, replaced by the stupid, wide smile that is so similar to Kona’s. “Really?” Keira nods. “Why?” Ransom asks, some of that happiness dimming.

“He… he was at the Market today.” The timer on the oven sounds and Keira moves toward it, pulls out the baked macaroni to set it on a hot plate. Ransom follows, turns her by the shoulders before she can take off her oven mitts. He doesn’t speak; they’ve always shared this silent little language, a nod of his head that says “continue” and her quiet exhale that tells him she’ll explain. “He saw you.”

“Okay?”

“Sweetie, one look at you and he knew. He just knew.” There are four perfectly round freckles, faint, but dark under Ransom’s left eye. When he was younger, every month, he’d insisted that she count them, see if more had joined the others; it was a game to him. It broke Keira’s heart to play it. She runs her fingers over those spots now, trying to ignore the memory of Kona’s freckles, how she’d kissed every one. “You look so much like him.” Ransom takes her fingers, holds them away from his face, a silent request that she stop procrastinating.

In those deep dark eyes Keira sees so much. They flash sweet memories of frustration, of laughter, of sick, consuming obsession. But on the surface, in the soft curve of his cheeks, Keira sees only her boy, that chubby little four year old too scared of the height and looming depths of the park slide to even attempt climbing the ladder.

She pushes his thick hair out of his eyes and another memory flashes forward, this one of a boy who wouldn’t let his brother walk into danger; one that asked for Keira’s help. “He had a twin. He died. I never told you that. Luka was his name and he was a good man. Sometimes you remind me of him, but really you’re… you so like… like Kona.” She waits for his reaction, for his surprise, but it doesn’t come.

“Finally,” Ransom says, his features, his body all lowering, relaxing as though all the weight of what he’d know has left him.

Keira, though is surprised, confused by his reaction. “What do you mean, ‘finally’?”

One quick laugh and Ransom rests next to her, shoulders on the wall. “Mom, I’m pretty smart. Hello, 4.23 GPA.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m still paying off the ‘Oh Look How Smart We Are’ camp.” She nudges him. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve known since I was thirteen.”

It takes her a moment, a few brief seconds as she watches him, the easy smile, the wave of his hand, before she believes him. “Excuse me?”

“Shit, Mom, you never wanted to talk about it. And then Hale got signed to the Broncos. I was thirteen and we flew up to Englewood for my Beta convention and the Broncos were doing spring training, open to the public.” Ransom flips his bangs out of his eyes and Keira notices that his dismissive tone is rehearsed; that he must have practiced this little speech for years. “I begged and begged you to take me but you freaked out. We had to miss the rest of the convention because you hustled us back to Tennessee.” He crosses to the island and grabs the rubber ball again, squeezes it in his hand. “But, Mom, that wasn’t the first time. I know how to Google. Why do you think I wanted to meet him so badly? You know how many times guys on my team called me Lil Kona? I’m not blind. I saw the similarities and a few online interviews told me you and Hale were at CPU together. It all added up.” Ransom shrugs, waving off Keira’s frown. “The year of the convention Leann came up to visit and I asked her about it. She only confirmed what I knew.” Ransom bounces the ball once on the floor, but then stops, folds his arms over his chest. When he speaks again, his mouth is straight, serious and there is no playful tone in his voice. “She made me promise not to mention him to you. She said he destroyed you. She said I was better off not knowing anything about him. So I let it go.”

All these years later and Leann still didn’t know how to stop meddling. She wanted to be angry at her cousin. It wasn’t her place to tell answer Keira’s son’s questions. But Leann has always been braver than Keira and she knows her intentions weren’t spiteful. She still wants to pop her in the head, though. “She shouldn’t have told you.”

“Does it really matter now? That was three years ago, Mom and I’ve dealt with it. Kona Hale is my father. I’m okay with it.” Again Ransom bounces his ball, and that somber tone is replaced again by his easy humor. “It sucks that he’s never been around, but I got you. That was always more than enough for me.”