Chapter Two: The Thing He Had Been Holding
“You keep telling me how much you love me.”
His voice was quiet and uneven, the way a voice is when the emotion in it is not hysteria but something older and more serious. “Everyone keeps telling me. My lawyers, my counselor, my —” He stopped. Started again. “Both of you. How much you love me. How much I mean to you. How long you’ve been waiting.”
Rachel had her hand over her mouth. Diana’s hand was still on her sternum.
“But this whole time,” Tommy said, “has anyone asked me how I feel?”
The question sat in the courtroom air.
“I’ve been in meetings and appointments and assessment sessions for four months. People ask me which house I like better and what my bedroom looks like and whether my school is close to which address. They ask me about logistics.” His voice caught, and he stopped for a moment, and then continued with the particular determination of someone who has decided that this is the moment and there will not be another one. “Nobody asked me how I feel about being the thing two people are fighting over.”
Diana looked at the floor. Rachel’s shoulders had begun to shake.
“Every time I’m in a room with both of you, you’re fighting. You’re crying. You’re telling me your side. You’re asking me to understand why the other one is wrong.” He looked up now, directly at them, and his eyes were very clear in the redness. “I’m twelve. You’re asking me to be the judge. And I already have a judge.” He glanced, briefly and without malice, at Judge Holloway. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she said quietly.
“I’m scared,” Tommy said. “I’ve been scared since this started. Not of either of you. Of the choice. Because I love —” His voice broke for real this time, and he stopped, and when he continued it was slower, more careful. “I love you both. I didn’t want to say that because I thought it would make everything worse. I thought if I said I love Diana then Rachel would be devastated and if I said I love Rachel then Diana would think all those years didn’t matter. And they did matter. All of it mattered.” He looked at Diana. “You were there. Every single time. All the things you said, the pneumonia, the school stuff — I remember all of it. You’re my mom in every way that I’ve ever actually needed a mom.”
Diana pressed her hand harder against her chest.
He turned to Rachel. “And you’re — I don’t know what you are to me yet. I don’t know how to feel about the beginning, about why you left. I think maybe I can understand it someday. I’m not there yet.” He paused. “But you came back. You looked for me for ten years, which is — that’s my whole life. You spent my whole life looking.” Something shifted in his face, something complicated and young and very tired. “I don’t know what to do with that either. But I know it means something.”
He looked at both of them together.
“The problem isn’t me not having a mother,” he said. “The problem is that both of you stopped looking at me while you were busy fighting for me.”
