Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Chapter Thirty: My Father

“Are you ready to listen to me?” my ‘father’ asked quietly.

I was sitting on my bed, elbows on the windowsill, wondering if it was worthwhile to trudge downstairs and get a bowl of cereal. It was late enough that I was unlikely to encounter her- it was nearly eleven- and I was pretty sure I’d heard a car depart as I was waking up, over an hour ago. And since Dad was here, it was certainly Mom who had left. Still, it didn’t seem worth it. My hunger was an abstract thing, not seeming to belong to me. Even the thought that I should eat and be done before she came back wasn’t making much impression on me. At the sound of Dad's voice behind me, I looked around from the window briefly, shrugged, and turned to gaze back out at the dripping, overcast day. I couldn’t tell if my emotional apathy was due to the events of last night, or if it was the result of the discussion I’d had a little earlier with Joe.

Joe- pale and red-eyed and looking like he'd hardly slept- had come into my room soon after I woke. Tripping over his words in his rush to speak, he'd attempted to apologize for the revelation I’d overheard the day before. I’d hushed him quickly and bluntly, telling him to quit blaming himself for things he had no control over and never even suspected. Then I’d held him close for a few minutes, feeling a sort of respite from my wretched emotions. “You’re my brother,” I murmured. “No matter what the law or anyone else may label you, you’ll always be my brother.”

That rather unfortunate remark, meant to reassure him, had led us into an incredibly complicated and frustrating discussion. With much difficulty, we’d finally agreed on three things. First, what you called someone was not as important as how you felt about them; we might technically be cousins, but we felt like brothers. That conclusion didn’t take long to arrive at, but the next one took some debating. It was that, although feelings were most important, labels did matter. Joe was disinclined to admit that, but I pointed out that if labels didn’t matter, he wouldn’t have been nearly so upset about Mom saying I wasn’t her son. I also gave him a bit of first-hand demonstration by calling him ‘sis’ until he conceded the point.

The third thing was the most complicated and got us both rather upset: after my ‘sis’ demonstration, Joe told me flat out that under no circumstances was I ever to call him ‘cousin’. Not even jokingly. I doubted it would ever feel like a joke to me, but wondered at his vehemence. “I don’t have a cousin,” he told me firmly. “And I never will have one. I have a brother, and if he tries to disappear and replace himself with a cousin, he’s due for a sharp surprise. My cousin doesn’t exist, and I’ll act accordingly.”

When I asked why, he replied- somewhat less grimly- that he was afraid my penchant for being accurate would override my feelings. “I don’t want to run the risk that you’ll get more interested in being legally accurate than emotionally accurate,” he said, with some justification. For I had been about to point out that this left me with a bit of a problem: how could I call him ‘brother’ and yet call his parents ‘aunt and uncle’? It seemed awfully misleading, not to mention confusing. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to call them ‘Mom and Dad’ anymore, either. Calling him cousin, while still feeling brotherly towards him, would have been the simplest solution. Then we’d all have the correct labels, for the first time in our lives. But I kept my mouth shut on the remark, for we’d just agreed that it wasn’t labels that mattered most. It was how we felt about each other. And we’d already proclaimed that we were brothers and always would be- by choice and by blood- so changing my mind would be a bad idea indeed. Especially if it meant Joe would shun me. I’d just have to decide what I was going to call my legal guardians, never mind what confusion it might engender.

Having worked our way through that very emotional conversation, I lay back down to rest while Joe went to do some of his chores. After a while, I heard rain pattering on the window and sat up to stare out at it, half-mesmerized by the gray sheets whipping sideways in the strong wind. Fifteen minutes later, Dad tapped on the door, wanting to talk to me. I wondered vaguely if that letter he’d gotten yesterday was a new case. If so, he wasn’t doing much about it, for he was wearing his work-around-the-house clothes: old pants and a shirt with paint splatters on it. Probably doing some of the chores Mom had mentioned at dinner last night.

“You said last night that we’d deceived you all your life,” Dad began, and I heard the door click shut behind him. “I wanted to explain that.”

“Explain it?” I repeated, almost contemptuously. Oh, this ought to be good.

“Yes.” The foot of the bed sank as he sat down. “I can understand why you feel lied to, but believe me, there was no deception involved, Frank.”

I glared at him. “You hid the truth from me and you say there was no deception?”

Dad hesitated. “No deliberate deception. Tell me, have you given any thought to why I call you my son, instead of my nephew?”

“No.” I paused, thinking about that. “You didn’t want me to know. You didn’t want to have to talk about my father.” After all, my real father was his twin- had been- and losing him... I felt a sudden, traitorous sense of sympathy; how would I feel if I lost Joe? But then why would Dad want me around at all, to remind him of his dead twin? Maybe his sense of duty had prevented him from passing me off to someone else.

Dad shook his head. “I call you my son because, in my heart, you are my son,” he said simply. “I was there when you were born, Frank. I was the third person to hold you, after your parents. I loved you from the beginning, and the more time passed, the deeper it grew.”

I was not expecting such a statement and didn’t know how to handle it. For a moment, all I felt was a profound disbelief, a sort of cynicism. That was his reason for not telling me my true parentage? Because he-

-perceives me as his own?

“I never thought of it as deceiving you, Frank; just the opposite. When I say ‘son’ to you, it may not be the exact truth, but it is how I feel towards you. To me, you’re as much my son as Joe is. I’m not interested in the legal definitions and terms. They may be technically true, but they don't allow me to- to convey my feelings accurately. I couldn't love you more if you had been born to me- and I can't count how many times I've wished that you had.”

There was a long silence as I tried to take in that astounding statement. He felt the same way towards me that Joe and I did towards each other- that the truth was more in how we felt than what we called each other. And I- how did I feel? My anger and cynicism struggled against this overwhelming feeling of love and acceptance; I turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears filling my eyes. “But you never adopted me,” I whispered. Dad slid closer to me, laid his arm across my shoulders.

“That was something we debated for a long time, Frank. And in the end, we decided- not that it wasn’t necessary, but that it would be better for you. We wanted you to grow up with real parents, not to feel the uncertainty and insecurity that some adopted children feel. We never wanted there to be a question in your mind that you belonged to us.”

“And didn’t that work out well!” I choked. “You should have told me! All my life, I wondered what was wrong with me! What I was doing, or not doing, or saying, or behaving- what in the world was it that made Mom not love me! Nothing ever worked, Dad- good grades, good behavior, doing extra chores, being polite and helpful and not complaining and- and none of it mattered, none of it made even the slightest difference!” I stopped, panting for breath.

“Oh, son...” Dad groaned and held me close. “Oh, my dear boy.” A moment later, I felt another hand press against the back of my shoulder, and reached up to grip it tightly. Joe’s touch and presence were far more comforting to me than Dad’s well-meant hug, for Dad had known the truth about me. And he’d known Mom didn’t care for me as a mother should, yet he’d done nothing to solve either problem. He said he loved me, and it seemed he did- his behavior over the years argued for that- but he could have saved me so much misery just by telling me the truth.

It took me a while to calm down, and when I did sit up, I continued to hold Joe’s hand. “You should have told me,” I repeated quietly. “Especially when you saw how she was treating me. You didn’t have to pick between truths; you could’ve told me about my parents and about how you felt. You made my decisions for me, never gave me a choice.”

“Frank, we did what we felt was best. Maybe we were wrong, and if it hurt you, I’m truly sorry.” He was opening his mouth to say more when we heard a car pull into the driveway. I turned quickly to look out the window. Yes- she was home. A moment later, the front door opened and we heard Mom calling Dad’s name. “I’m upstairs,” he called back, and I spun around to glower at him. “In-”

“She’s not coming into my room.”

Dad sighed again, gave me an awkward pat, then stood up and moved to the door. “You know, you’re going to have to talk to her sooner or later,” he said, sounding patient but not happy.

“Later, preferably.” Which wasn’t what I wanted to say, but it was the thing that would make him leave quickest. The last thing I wanted to do right then was get into a debate about whether I ‘had’ to talk to her or not.

***