Glorious Boy. Aimee Liu

inside the house.

      “They are not yet back, Mem.”

      Shep remembered then. Som and Jina had gone over to Aberdeen for the morning.

      “Shouldn’t they be home by now?” Claire appeared, her yellow dress a flame in the doorway. “That’s beautiful work, my sweet. You’re remarkable, Naila. You’ve taught him all his letters.”

      She kept her voice light, but Shep could hear the effort this cost her. They’re like sister and brother, had lately become a wistful refrain. Sometimes when she said this, he could tell she was thinking of her own disastrous history as a big sister. Other times, maternal jealousy over Ty’s affection for Naila strained her voice. And sometimes this would stir up questions in himself, which Shep tried to deflect, about his own childhood.

      He and Vivvy had once been as close as Ty and this girl, though that was probably because Shep’s parents wanted nothing to do with them. He’d always considered himself damned lucky to have Viv on his side, but she hadn’t been able to stopper his longing for his mother’s affection and his father’s approval—she’d never fully replaced his parents for him, as Naila increasingly seemed to do for Ty.

      Whether Ty’s bond with Naila was related to Claire’s intermittent absences, or to the same complex of factors that kept Ty from talking, or perhaps to something Shep himself had done wrong, he had no idea. But it made his head spin and his heart hurt as he watched Claire struggle to connect with their son—struggle without ever admitting how much her child’s rebuffs hurt her. Ty was no more communicative with him, but Shep held a firm conviction that the boy would grow out of this phase and bond with them in time—especially once they’d left Port Blair and returned to a world where he could see how happy families were supposed to live.

      The problem may have seemed more personal to Claire because of Ty’s temper fits as a baby. They’d persisted for over a year, and Shep suspected that Claire blamed herself for them. One minute, Ty was engrossed in some activity—rolling a ball, or splashing water, or studying a dragonfly—and the next, he’d simply erupt. Screams. Fists. Spitting and kicking. The amount of energy he expelled in each episode could have lit up Ross Island all night, and the tantrums did seem to occur on Claire’s watch, usually just days before she was scheduled to go back into the field. At one point, Shep thought she might be provoking Ty so she could tell herself he wanted her to leave him. Then, about two years ago, a night came that crystallized the toll this was taking on her, and Shep realized he was reading the situation all wrong.

      He’d arrived home from the club too late to help. The bedtime battle was over, and Claire was spent. He found her on the veranda, where Naila and Ty were playing so contentedly now. He remembered two punk sticks glowing like eyes in the darkness. Claire sat jackknifed on the steps, arms wrapping her knees. Sheet lightning lit up the east, but otherwise all was dark and drenched in liquid heat.

      Shep sat down beside her, was reaching to touch Claire’s shoulder, when the night ignited with rain, and she sprang away from him into the slanting needles. Head flung back and cheeks streaming, she lifted her right hand as if it were burnt and fisted it at her breast. A crack of voltage silvered the yard, crowning her with an illusion of pearls, and he saw she was weeping. With frustration, with sorrow or yearning, or all of it, he didn’t know, but he loved her more in that instant than he’d ever thought possible.

      In the next downbeat he was around her, undoing her hands, peeling off her wet dress. Tuning his lips from her sternum down between the bared wings of her rib cage, he breathed the trembling out of her until she calmed and turned home to him, and he never doubted her again.

      After that night, the edge of tension that had been hardening between them for months softened and let go. At the same time, a shift occurred in the household so subtle that Shep might not have noticed, except that Ty’s tantrums subsided.