Page 71 of My Fiancé's Brother 2

I wondered, for the hundredth time, why he worked so hard to keep me here. He stood looking at me for a long moment and then he was gone.

I satat that kitchen table for a long time while questions battled my mind. Was I doing the right thing? Was I crazy to stay here? Why did he even want me to stick around? It was so obvious he loved her. I did not understand Jackson. He was still such a mystery to me.

You know when you know that you shouldn’t do something, but you do it anyway? I’m not going to defend my actions or justify them in any way. I grabbed a flashlight and walked upstairs. I needed a chair to pull the stairs down from the attic. It took me 45 minutes, but I finally found where Jackson had hidden the journal.

I needed to find out more about my husband.

JOURNAL OF HARRY JARVAIS

February 9,1998- Jackson and Matt are both ten years of age. Jackson spends close to half his time with us. Matt and Jackson play like brothers, but Irene is a bitch in her treatment of Jackson. The other day, I came home early from work and without any of them knowing I was there, I stood and watched the three of them at the dinner table. Matt deliberately knocked over Jackson’s milk when Irene was not looking. Irene walked over to Jackson and slapped him hard across the face, and she said, “You’re a hateful, horrible child. There is a reason why no one can love you.” Instead of intervening, I walked back out of the house.

February 2, 2001- Three years have passed. Irene’s verbal slights towards Jackson are hard to stomach.

“Jackson you're not a nice person.”

“Jackson, only people who are worthy of love, get loved. Learn to be worthy.”

“Jackson, no one is ever going to love you in life if you continue to be so bad.”

He is 13 years old and completely untouchable. When she speaks, it's as if he doesn’t hear her. I watch him so close, for anyflinch, any reaction from him, but it's as if she is speaking on a frequency he doesn’t hear. He doesn’t defy her with his looks anymore. He carries on with whatever he is doing as if she isn’t speaking. I’m not sure he's capable of feeling emotion. Perhaps all the violence he experienced as a child made him incapable of emotion.

July 9, 2003- Something shocking happened today. Two gentlemen claiming to be Jackson’s baseball coaches appeared at our house after dinner. Apparently, Jackson has been playing baseball since he was six. The two men told us that Jackson was gaining a lot of interest with scouts. I told them that Ted was their legal guardian and he should be the one consulted.

July 15, 2003- I couldn’t help myself. I attended one of Jackson’s baseball games. Jackson was exceptional. What shocked me further was watching Ted in the stands. He was completely sober and looked as cleaned up as I have ever seen him. He kept track of statistics on a pad, and he called out encouraging words to all the players, all of whom he knew by name. I could see his hands. He was shaking. It costs him a lot to be sober for this, but he was doing it. After the game, Jackson walked over to Ted, and they sat down and looked at his pad of paper. Together they discussed the statistics. I felt a sense of loss that I didn’t understand. Without either of them seeing me, I left.

September 5, 2003- Jackson is 15 and spends more and more time with Ted. There have been almost no trips to the hospital. Ten days ago, when the familiar address came over the CB radio, my heart stopped. Domestic disturbance. I was the first one on the scene, and I was shocked to see that it was Jackson sitting on the couch. Ted was hospitalized for three days. I hustled Jackson out of there, but it was a lucky escape. If anyone had caught Jackson there, it'd have been a huge mark against him and my family. We don’t need people asking questions.

October 10, 2003- Jackson and Ted fought again. This time he didn’t even call the cops, he just called me. Jackson told me that Ted had threatened to come to my house and hurt Irene and Matt.Something has to be done. Someone is going to get hurt and I’m going to make sure that is isn’t my wife or my son.

October 24, 2003- Ted came into the drunk tank tonight, completely incoherent. I waited until it was the middle of the shift and no one was around. Using my baton, I hit Ted on the back of the head. He wasn’t breathing. I rolled him onto the floor onto his back. His body was discovered during shift change. They ruled it an accident. Now on top of being a liar, a cheater, and a person who has forsaken his own child, I have also become a murderer.

October 25, 2003- I brought Jackson out to the porch after dinner. I calmly told him that Ted had fallen in the drunk tank and had died. Jackson’s reaction shocked me. He sat there and stared at me for a long time and then he cried. I've never once seen him cry. Even when he was a tiny child with broken bones, enduring incredible pain, he never shed a single tear. He has been so hard to read, so unemotional all these years, that I believed that he was incapable of emotion. I've never seen him lose his temper. I've never seen him get angry or upset. He's never lost control.

I sat there while he wept, inconsolable and unable to speak. For some reason, I thought that he'd be happy. This deep, intense sorrow baffled me.

He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to be left alone. I told Matt and Irene not to disturb him.

October 26, 2003- Jackson was gone when we woke up. He left no note. Four days before his 16th birthday and he has disappeared.

October 30, 2003- Today Jackson turned 16. He's still missing. For someone as quiet and silent as him, the house seems empty without him. He seems to have sucked all the life out of our family. None of us wanted him. Some of us loved to hate him, and now that he's gone, it feels like we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Once again, I’m driving the streets every single night, looking for someone I’m not sure I want back. All I know is that I won’t stop looking for Jackson. History seems to repeat itself.

December 21, 2003- When we woke up, Jackson was home. He never said anything about where he'd been, and we didn’t ask. I think we were all so glad that he was back, we just went back to pretending that he hadn’t left. The house seems lighter with him in it. As I write this, I can hear him and Matt talking as they play ping-pong in the garage. The house appears to have come alive again. I don’t understand my feelings nor do I want to. But I feel like somehow along the way I have made the worst mistake of my life.

January 31, 2004- Something has changed in Jackson. He's withdrawn. He told me that he's no longer interested in playing sports. We've had no less than four coaches show up at our house, but he's indifferent. He will not play. He will not try out for teams. He said he'd rather work. He got a job at a local garage working as an assistant mechanic. He seems to spend all his time there working. His marks are exceptional. It feels like he is in mourning. He's pulled away from us, and everyone in the family can feel it. Somehow he's learned to retreat behind some invisible wall. He’s as untouchable as I remember his mother to be. My anger that I held onto all these years has faded to deep pain. I feel a sense of loss that I can’t understand.

October 30, 2005- Jackson turned 18 today. In the eleven years that he has been part of our family, not once do I recall us ever celebrating his birthday. Irene baked him a cake. He sat there and looked at the candles with an impossible-to-read expression on his face. He cut the cake, dutifully handed us all pieces and we ate together. Then he announced that he had joined the navy. He politely thanked both Irene and myself for our charity.

At the door, he looked at me for a long moment. Then we shook hands, and he walked out of the house. I'm sitting here with my scotch, and I feel a sense of loss that is so big it's hard to comprehend. We all know that he's not coming back.

November 4, 2008- It has been three years since we've seen Jackson. He left a teenager and came back a man. He towered over me. I took him out on my boat to fish. I didn't dare to tell him that I was his father. But I did apologize for allowing him to live with Tedand get hurt by that man’s hands. I told him that I should've had him live with us full-time and that I should've been a better father to him. I asked him to forgive me. And asked him if he had it in his heart to give me another chance to be his surrogate father.

He just stared at me, with those eyes. And he didn’t speak for the longest time.

Then when he spoke to me, he talked to me like a man.

He said, “Ted was a messed up, fucked up loser who couldn’t keep his shit together if he tried but he was a thousand times more the father you ever were to me. You had me in your home half of the time, but Ted made more of an effort with me in a single day than you made with me in 11 years. You had your chance. My father is dead, and he died in a drunk tank.”

When we got back home, he packed up his gear and with a polite apology to Irene, he left our home without once making eye contact.

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