6

Know Thyself.

--Inscription of the Delphi Oracle

His hand was shaking as he poured the Scotch into the crystal glass and drank it down in one gulp. The liquor burned down his throat and hit his stomach like a bonfire. For a long moment, all he could do was breathe deeply and wait for the bloom of heat to fade. The buzz of impending intoxication hit him almost immediately. It had been a long time since he'd had a drink. He paused, the glass halfway to his lips before slowly setting it on the desk. If he did what he wanted to do, then he'd end up more than drunk. He'd be slobbering stupid drunk. The way he'd been the night his life had changed forever.

Ray deliberately pushed the crystal away from him and turned to face the file cabinet. It seemed to stare back at him, mildly, innocently. Another lie.

He'd returned to his father's house without a backward glance at the weeping face of his aunt. He should feel remorse. He should feel sorry for saying the things he'd said to her in the hall, but he couldn't scrape up an ounce. She'd lied to him. He couldn't get past that one fact. She'd lied to him. Gene had lied to him. And worst of all, his father had lied to him. His mother, twisted as she was, had at least told him the truth. She'd at least given him that, though far too late to his way of thinking.

Slowly, Ray crossed the room and yanked open the top drawer of the cabinet. His fingers swiftly roamed over the words on the tabs of the file folders. After a moment, he slammed the drawer shut and pulled out the next one with a snarl.

"Where the hell is it?" he muttered under his breath.

Finally, he paused, his fingers going still as they came across his name spelled out in his father's neat writing. Ray pulled the file from the drawer slowly, trying to tell himself that it was the alcohol that made his hands shake like they were. There was nothing in there that could hurt him any more than he had been.

But when he lifted the cover of the file, he realized that he was wrong. Until he'd finally opened that file, he'd held out a hope that this was all just a bad dream. Or his mother had lied. Or that Amy had been playing along with some bizarre practical joke.

Certificate of Adoption

Ray closed his eyes, unable to read any more. There was nothing identifying in it anyway. Nothing to give him a clue as to who he was. For a moment he could only sit there, listening to the silence in the house. His name was a lie. His life was a lie. When he'd left Chicago, he'd believed that he had a handle on things. His father was screwed up, true; but he'd been pulling his own life together. Neela, his job, his friends…all of it was bull shit.

With a foul curse, he tossed the file across the room. The papers inside flew out and fluttered to the floor like a hundred white butterflies. He turned away, stalking for the door.

"Ray?"

Ray paused for only a second before continuing to his room. He wasn't in the mood to talk to his aunt. He wasn't in the mood to deal with anyone that couldn't get him back to Chicago like yesterday. He snatched open the drawer that held his clothes and started stuffing them into his bag. He heard her light tread in the doorway behind him but refused to look in her direction.

"Ray? Please…"

"Leave me the hell alone, Amy."

"Ray…" She paused and he heard her sigh heavily. "We had a very good reason for keeping it from you."

"How nice for you."

"Don't take that tone with me, kiddo. I've lived with guilt for the past twenty-five years for not telling you."

Ray whirled around to glare at her.

"Well, you don't have to feel guilty anymore," he snarled. "I know now."

"Yes, you know, but you don't understand. Your father wanted a child. Your birth mother couldn't raise you. We never even knew her name, only that she was very young. He was so happy the day he got the call that you'd been born…"

Ray turned away and planted his hands on the top of the dresser. He tried to find some semblance of calm, but it eluded him. He turned his head to look at her, keeping his back between them like a barrier.

"So what…I was like a stray dog that needed a home? He just happened to have some free space?"

She flinched as he ended the sentence with a shout that hurt his throat.

"And I suppose now you're going to tell me how special I am because they picked me. How loved I was and still am because my mother chose to give me up rather than abort me or raise me in poverty. Is that what you're going to say? Because quite frankly, I don't want to hear it."

"Ray, all I can say is I'm sorry that you found out this way. I'm sorry that we kept this from you all these years…"

Ray swallowed hard and grabbed up a handful of clothes tossing them into his bag with as much force as he could muster. He was done talking about this.

"Too little too late, Amy. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to catch the next flight back to Chicago. I have some packing to do."

Her eyes widened as she took in the shambles in the room.

"You're leaving now? But the funeral…"

"He wasn't my father, Amy. I don't give a damn if some piece of paper said he was. A real father doesn't drink himself into oblivion every night and forget he has a son. A real father doesn't call his son on the phone begging for bail money because he'd just gotten another DUI."

Her face twisted in grief and anger.

"You don't know a damn thing, Ray. Stop being so selfish…"

His eyebrows shot to his hairline and he whirled on her.

"Selfish? I'm being selfish? I think that I have a right to a little selfishness."

"I know you feel that we betrayed you…"

"You don't have any idea what I'm feeling," he said flatly. "Now if you don't mind, I have a plane to catch."

She lowered her head, her eyes welling up with tears as he threw his bag over his shoulder and passed her for the door. He stopped long enough to gather up the papers in his father's office and stuff them in his bag before heading for the door.

"Ray?"

He paused, his hand on the door knob as his aunt's tearful voice called out to him.

"I'm so sorry, Ray."

A lump rose in his throat as he nodded curtly. He swallowed it down and yanked open the door, flinging himself into the night.

000000

Ray limped off the plane at O'Hare feeling more tired than he'd ever felt in his life. Not even when he pulled double shifts, staying awake for two days at a time did he feel like this. Suddenly a song from Jefferson Airplane started playing through his head. "One pill makes you larger; One pill makes you small…" That's what he felt like. Like Alice down the rabbit hole. Everything was fantastically strange and yet was exactly the same. As if he were moving through water rather than air. As if his head was filled with cotton, dulling all external stimuli. He felt disconnected, out of place.

And alone. Never had he felt this alone. Nothing was the same. He wasn't a part of a family. That family had lied to him time and again. Hell, they weren't even his family. He cringed inwardly at all the times that family pictures had been brought out at the family get-togethers. No one had ever said, "Ray looks just like his father," or, "Ray has Grandpa's eyes." They couldn't possibly say anything like that. He was just some stray that had been brought into a home. Like a dog.

He winced as he made his way slowly into the terminal and toward the front doors. His leg was killing him. His head hurt. But most of all his heart was aching with the knowledge that he had not been wanted. Not by the mother who'd given birth to him. Not by the woman he'd known by that name. His hand strayed to his pocket where he'd left Neela's ring. He'd pulled it from his bag on the plane and stared at it for hours. When he bought it, it had seemed like a symbol of what they had together. A beginning to a future that was as bright and beautiful as the diamonds in the setting. For some reason, when he looked at it now, it seemed dulled. Dirty. False.

So he'd stuffed it into a pocket of the jacket he'd finally stripped off wondering if he should even ask Neela to be with him now. He didn't even know who the hell he was.

Hailing down a cab wasn't hard. The cabbies seemed to stalk the airport entrance like a long line of yellow vultures, endlessly circling looking for prey. Ray felt like prey at the moment, slipping into the backseat, easing his aching leg to a semi-comfortable position on the seat beside him.

"Where to?"

Ray gave the man his address and rested his head against the window, watching the darkened streets of Chicago pass silently by. They were the same ones he had left behind two days before, but they looked different. Everything looked different. He'd felt like this only one other time; the night his life had almost ended. Waking up in the hospital, in more pain than he'd ever experienced in his life, the world had looked like this. Slightly skewed but the same. Ray closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of the streets, the people, anything but what he wanted to block out.

The terrible knowledge that he was living with.

The cabbie woke him up in front of his building, and Ray climbed out of the cab feeling as if he'd not slept at all. Paying the man, he turned to look up at the building, his eyes taking in the sight of the home that he and Neela had made together. A light was on in their apartment. He smiled painfully at the sight of that light. Neela insisted they keep it on in case they needed to get up in the night. She didn't want to trip and sprain her ankle again because he'd forgotten to put something away. It was that light that drove home everything, and Ray suddenly felt the insane urge to weep as he had when he'd awakened in the hospital.

That light was like a beacon leading him home, but would Neela accept him once she learned the truth of him? He could barely accept himself.

Breathing deeply to hold the pain at bay, he made his way up the stairs and into the building. He leaned heavily against the railing in the elevator as it ascended to his floor. He hobbled through the doors when they slid silently open before he limped the last few steps to his door gratefully. Quickly, he unlocked the door and eased it open to keep the hinges from squealing.

The apartment was silent but for the tick and whir of the refrigerator and the dull sounds of the apartment above. Carefully, he set his bag by the door and kicked off his shoes. Dropping his jacket over his bag, he moved carefully across the floor to their room.

Easing the door open, he stood in the doorway, staring at her as she slept. The faint light from the window fell across her face, relaxed in sleep. His heart clenched painfully at the sight of her. She was so beautiful. So beautiful inside and out. Her strength was amazing and shamed him that he felt so weak all of a sudden. Swallowing hard, he backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. He couldn't wake her up right now. Not until he could get his mind around this. He couldn't burden her with his shame right now. He didn't want to confess to her right now that he was nothing more than an abandoned child, unwanted by the woman who'd given him life. Unwanted by the woman who had taken him in.

If she knew all that, what the hell made him think that she'd want him? What the hell was so wrong with him?

With a heavy sigh, he made his way to the light and flipped it off before falling heavily on the couch. It was best that he stay out here until he could get himself together, or else he would end up confessing everything. He didn't want that. Being abandoned twice in his life was quite enough for him.

With that bitter thought in his head, Ray leaned his head back on the couch and fell asleep.