Train Tracks and Photographs
He had set out with all intention, of course. It'd been hard to face the twin's lack of interest in his departure. It would have been nice to see a good-bye smile, a hug, but he hadn't really expected more. It had been Adam's bewildered desperation and lost look that made it worse. Unwanted regret was starting to haze Lee's resolution. He squared his shoulders, shifting from foot to foot in the crowded train station. The twins would be fine so long as Adam remembered to feed them. The house would fall apart at first but he was sure that when Adam hired someone else...Lee mind went to a loose seam in one of Adam's shirts. He had forgotten to mend it, and it was sure to go unnoticed. A shrill whistle sounded as the steam-spewing train pulled in.
"Express to San Francisco leaving in ten minutes! Boarding now!"
Lee settled on a hard bench in third-class between an old man and pale girl with rough hands. A family had piled onto the bench across; tanned and calloused father, old-beyond-her-years mother, a handful of grubby children clinging to skirts and hands. Lee sighed; there was no denying that he would feel some nostalgia for his life here. He had grown too comfortable in it. He had memorized the marks on the counter tops in his kitchen, had oiled the doors that stuck, and identified the floorboards that creaked under tiptoes. He had seen the twins shaping into the men they would become; the joyous madness within Aron and the stormy passion in Cal. He had learned how to nurse a man back to health, how to mourn the death of a friend, how to hate a woman he only knew for a few brief months. Lee set his jaw and withdrew a book from his basket, fanning the pages as the train lurched into motion. A small photograph tumbled out of the pages into his lap. He knew the print well, a framed version hung in the sitting room back at the house.
The photograph was taken a few weeks after they moved into town. Adam was outside on the front steps of the house chatting with the photographer, and Lee was attempting to get the twins into semi-decent condition while simultaneously boiling potatoes for dinner. Aron's stockings were loose around his knees and Cal's hair was a mess of cowlicks. Lee inspected them with a critical eye as he checked a potato with a fork; there wasn't much else he could do at this point. Putting a lid on the simmering pot, he herded the twins out the front door and sat them on the steps. Lee stepped back, noticed a smudge above Aron's eyebrow and scrubbed at the grumbling boy's face with a wetted finger. Satisfied with the result, Lee turned to leave. There was a cough behind him and a tug on the hem of his pants, and he turned to see Adam's confused face looking up at him.
"Where are you going Lee?"
"...I'm need to make dinner Ada– Mister Trask." Lee leaned in closer to whisper, watching the bored photographer from the corner of his eye, "What do you need me here for?"
"Well you're in it too!" Adam tugged Lee down beside him, "Now hold still," a quick glare towards the twins "It'll blur if we fidget."
"Adam..." Lee trailed off.
"Ha! At a loss for words for once!" Adam grinned, "Don't you go thinking you aren't family." Lee gave a weak smile and his mind went for a moment to the potatoes on the stove. They would boil over, in all likelihood.
The photographer puffed on a cigarette stub, "I ain't got all day folks!"
"Yes, yes! Cal! Aron! Sit still! Everyone smile now."
The prints arrived a week later. Cowlicks, loose stockings, and bewildered smile preserved in silver nitrate. Lee had taken one of the smaller prints but had never found the time to frame it.
Lee felt something wet sliding down his cheek as the train gained speed. He wiped his face and stared at the inexplicable tear on his fingertip. He was not supposed to feel this way. Cal, Aron, and Adam should have joined the procession of families he'd served over the years; a sequence culminating in his bookshop, his own life, his own home. Panic rose in his throat as the California hills sped by. Somehow he had come to love the Trasks. He loved Aron and Cal's eternal bickering, the maternal trust they placed in his hands, their moments of quiet affection. He could not stand the thought of anyone else making their food, tucking them into bed, treating their cuts and scratches, watching them stumble through adolescence and grow into men. Lee's fists tightened as he stared at the other face in the photograph. The familiar smile and tired eyes he had seen every day for the past ten years and knew as well as the lines on the back of his hands. Adam, who stirred in Lee dark emotions he had avoided with moderate success for years. Lee had known since the night that he fished a bullet out of Adam's shoulder and scrubbed the blood from the floorboards that the Trasks would be the last family he would serve. He had watched Adam recover from the deep wound Cathy left, regain strength and fortitude as the twins grew. All the while Lee had tried to stay uninvolved, to keep his focus on a future that was his own. But he hadn't been able to stop the strange connection he and Adam developed; a relationship neither could define nor acknowledge the true depth of. They were tangled in the shadows of Samuel, Charles, and Cathy, but Lee loved that confused, wonderful, broken-hearted man.
Lee slammed his book shut, startling the passengers on either side of him. "Damn it all!" Lee muttered under his breath. It wouldn't do to walk back in the door less than a day after he left. It was clear that he would be putting down roots and holding fast to the land with his new family but he had to have some finality, some sense of closure. Perhaps he should consult his family in the city. Perhaps he should take a day to stare out at the San Francisco Bay and wonder at what his life had become. Perhaps he should give Adam a good dose of perspective on child-rearing… Lee returned the book and photograph to the basket and leaned back into the hard wooden bench, fingers laced on his lap and a smile on his face. The sea outside his window was smooth as glass and blue as heaven, and Lee had a family waiting for him.