Gallavich Week Part 3

Potential

When Ian was two years old, Fiona had taken him to the clinic because he'd had a fever of 104 degrees. DCFS had quickly been called and had looked into the case because the kids had been alone, parent-less... Frank hadn't shown up for another four days after Ian had been admitted.

Instead of letting Ian be sent to live with a foster family like Fiona and Lip had been, Monica had told he family court judge that Ian wasn't really Frank's son. His brother Clayton was Ian's biological father, so Ian had been sent to live with him and his wife, Lucy.

Clayton and Lucy already had a son named Jacob, who was barely one year younger than Ian. In fact, their birthdays were less than two weeks apart. Clayton was eager to have his "newly discovered son" come live with their little family, but Lucy always treated Ian differently—she was polite, caring and never touched a hair on his head, but there was a clear difference between how she raised her own son compared how she raised Ian. Ian knew it was because he was a constant reminder of his dad's infidelity, but nobody ever spoke about it.

Ian had a good life. They lived in a quiet suburb about a half hour drive away from Chicago. The neighborhood was very family-centric. All of the houses had basketball hoops set up in their driveways and the kids would usually play hockey in the street without any worries of being run over by cars. It was a safe town. A typical, middle-class neighborhood.

Ian did well in school. His parents got him a tutor to help him with his trickier subjects like Math and Science, and he had excelled in History and English, particularly creative writing. Ian had been a natural when it came to sports of all kinds. He and Jacob had been on the little league team together back in elementary school, but despite the fact that Jacob had quickly lost interest (preferring to play with his telescope and read books in his room), Ian continued to play. He was now on his school's varsity baseball team. The coach had real hopes for him, calling the redhead his "star player" and constantly raving to anyone who would listen about the potential in Ian.

Each summer, when his parents would send Jacob away to camp, Ian would go visit his half-siblings in Chicago. He'd stay with them all summer, and even though it looked like a punishment from anyone else's point of view, Ian cherished those couple of months every year.

It had taken Frank and Monica five months to get Fiona and Lip out of foster care and back into their home. They'd had to sober up and pass several home inspections and drug tests. Ian had never asked why they hadn't tried getting him back from Clayton. Maybe they had wanted him to have a better life than what they could offer? He hoped that had been the reason, and not the other possibility, which was that they just didn't want him.

Monica had had three more kids in the fourteen years since then: Debbie, who was now 9, Carl, who was 8, and Liam, who was still just a toddler. She had left them in Frank's care years ago, but everyone knew that Fiona was the one who really raised the kids and managed the home. Frank had been to drunk to do anything.

Ian and Lip were pretty close, considering the fact that they only saw each other for a quarter of the year. They kept in touch through phone calls the rest of the time. (It had initially been through actual letters, but when Ian found out that his step-mom read all of his mail, he'd started carefully calling his half-brother when she wasn't home.)

Ian sat in his room, putting the last of his clothes into his duffel bag.

"Ian! Are you almost ready?!" Lucy shouted from downstairs.

"Yeah...!" Ian yelled back.

He stuffed his glove into his bag, zipped it up and threw it over his shoulder. When he got downstairs, he saw that Jacob's suitcases (yes, he had three bags of luggage to take with him) had all been neatly loaded into the van. Their dad would be driving Jacob to camp first, and then dropping off Ian in South Side Chicago afterwards. Then, Clayton and Lucy would be heading to the airport for their own vacation, just like they did every summer. Ian thought they were going to Bermuda this time, but he couldn't be sure. He hadn't really been paying attention when his parents had been happily telling Jacob about their plans.

Ian sat in the back seat of the van with his head resting against the window. They listened to a terrible rap station during the entire ride because it was Jacob's favorite. Ian hated rap. When they got to the camp, his parents spent over an hour getting Jacob situated in his cabin. Ian sat on some other kid's trunk and watched as Lucy fussed over her "little baby". She even made Jacob's bunk bed for him, tucking the sheets in the corners like he was some kind of royalty.

They finally left the camp after over ten minutes of hugging and tears being shed (mostly on Lucy's part), and headed to the other Gallagher house. Ian didn't bother asking them to put on a rock station; he already knew the answer would be no. He was so relieved when they pulled up to the front of Frank's house. Of course, Frank was nowhere to be seen, but his parents had stopped checking years ago. They saw Fiona sitting on the porch, watching Liam play in the yard, and she was enough of a "guardian" to leave Ian with for their standards.

"Okay, see you at the end of August..." Ian said, wondering if he would get any response from his parents besides a quick "goodbye". He didn't. They didn't even get out of the van to give him a hug. Ian grabbed his duffel bag from the trunk and slammed the door shut.

Fiona was already running to give her baby brother a hug. Even though he wasn't a baby anymore—he had turned 16 two months ago—he was still a baby to her. At least someone was happy to see him... Was this what it felt like to be part of a real family?