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over at his sleeping son and smiled. He looked at Teresa. “I wanted to be a man you would want.”

“The first things Dr. Clarke asked me was when were my earliest memories? And I said 10, when I was adopted.”

He pulled off his T-shirt, took Teresa’s hand and guided it to the scars on his belly.

“You said a car accident when you were a child,” she said as she touched them.

“They’re cigarette burns,” he said bluntly.

She looked at him, horrified.

He took her hand again, traced the scars hidden by his tattoo. “Knife,” he said.

She looked ready to cry.

“There are more,” he said. “Sometime in those 10 years I don’t remember I was abused.”

Now she was crying, and she pulled him down, so that his head was on her shoulder. He sighed. It was peaceful just to rest here, but he needed to get the story told. So, he started by telling her about Dr. Clarke, and her no-nonsense, in-your-face approach to counselling. And about the fact that the older couple who had adopted him were his real grandparents, but they never told him, and that his parents were serving time for the death of his younger brother, and his own near-death beating.

“They killed my baby brother, and I can’t remember it,” Ryan said. It still filled him with horror to have lost that memory. “He was three.”

They both looked at the 3-year-old sleeping peacefully. Ryan had this urge to grab him, and hold him, and never let anyone or anything harm him ever.

“How old were you?”

“Six?” he guessed. He told her what Dr. Clarke had told him. And then he told her about his mother being out early for good behavior and that his grandparents had abandoned him — with a very generous financial safety net to be sure — to take in their daughter.

“I was 18,” he told her before she could ask. “And there’s still a lot I don’t know. About what happened. About my grandparents. About myself.

“But the last? I’m working on that with Dr. Clarke. And when we get this all done, I want to go back and work with her some more.”

He held on to her tightly. “I’m so broken, Teresa,” he said. “But I will never betray the vows we make to each other, I promise. Will you marry me? Broken pieces and all?”

“I love you, Ryan Matthews,” she whispered back. “Broken pieces and all. And I will marry you just as soon as your San Francisco attorney can make it happen. Because, make no mistake, you are mine. If you feel needy? You will come to me, and I will help you heal those broken places. Do you hear me? I love you.”

And Ryan cried. He held his woman, and, for the first time, he knew: he was not alone.

Chapter 28

11 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, Eyewitness News newsroom — Cage didn’t think he had ever been so tired. The elections had added yet another layer of demands upon the news staff. And the BLM protests were grim. There had been hope for a change in city leadership. It hadn’t happened. Even the national election had not gone quite as well as people had hoped. It was still not formally called in favor of Biden, although those who knew more about politics than he did assured him that Biden would be the next president. That was good.

How had Ryan withstood the stress of being EIC? No wonder he had bad migraines. No one had heard from him. He’d finally broken down and called McShane. McShane had called him back. Everyone was safe; it might be a while before Ryan could bring Teresa and Rafael back to Portland. But everything was fine.

So that was a relief. He had convinced Sarah to stay with him and Corey until things settled down at the newsroom. She’d agreed. She was out at her desk right now. Emily sat across from her. She had insisted that she stay where she was in the center of things. So, he had been banished to the EIC office. He tried not to feel like it was banishment. But he was in here, and they were out there. Together. And he wasn’t with them.

“Cage, get out here!” Emily said. She was waving something around.

Cage came out and took it from her. She was laughing.

It was a postcard with a Morelia, Mexico postmark. He turned it over. It was a photograph of Ryan with his arm around Teresa in a pretty white dress and flowers in her hair. He held Rafael in his other arm.

“Married! They’re married,” Emily crowed.

He grinned. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so tired.

“That’s good,” he said. He looked at the back of the card, which just had their names, and a date. They must have gotten married within days of Ryan leaving here, he thought. He felt a pang of envy.

“I wonder when they’re coming home,” Sarah said.

“Ryan said it would probably be months,” Cage replied. “In time for graduation, he said.”

“Lots to this story we don’t know,” Sarah mused.

“Always true.”

__________

“Look what we got,” Martha Washington told her husband when he came in late on Thursday. She handed him a postcard with Ryan and Rafael on it, and she assumed the woman was Teresa. It would do him good to see it. They’d both been worried. Still were, truth to be known. Ryan had a long road ahead of him before he was whole, she thought. She warmed dinner for husband. He’d been out to see the mother of a young man who was killed by Vancouver police. And he was heartbroken, she knew, about another death. Another Black man. She said a prayer for her own sons.

He took the card, and he smiled. On the back, it simply said thank you. He hugged his wife. “Maybe I’m not as hungry as you thought,” he said, pulling her close.

“Or maybe I misjudged what you would be hungry for,” she agreed, a bit breathless.

__________

Friday morning, Dr. Clarke’s nurse handed her a