The Ransome Brothers Read online

  The Ransome Brothers

  A Ransom Novel

  Rachel Schurig

  Contents

  Copyright

  1. Will

  2. Will

  3. Daisy

  4. Daltrey

  5. Reed

  6. Lennon

  7. Lennon

  8. Cash

  9. Will

  10. Cash

  11. Reed

  12. Will

  13. Daisy

  14. Will

  15. Reed

  16. Cash

  17. Will

  18. Cash

  19. Reed

  20. Lennon

  21. Daltrey

  22. Daltrey

  23. Will

  24. Reed

  25. Will

  26. Reed

  27. Cash

  28. Lennon

  29. Reed

  30. Daisy

  31. Will

  32. Lennon

  Also by Rachel Schurig

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 Rachel Schurig

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  * * *

  To find out more about her books, visit Rachel at rachelschurig.com

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  Will

  I have never been so exhausted in my life.

  It really shouldn’t be a surprise. Tired is my default these days. But no matter how weary I might be, no matter how bone-deep the exhaustion gets, I’m still finding it nearly impossible to sleep at night.

  I rub my knuckles into my eyes, keeping a tight grip on the steering wheel with my other hand. We’re almost there now, only a few more miles to go. After days of driving, it should bring relief, to be so close, but when I think of the task that awaits us, me and my boys, when we reach the new house, the wave of exhaustion seems to rise up even higher than before.

  My eyes go to the rearview mirror, straight to Lennon’s face. The six-year-old is staring out the window, eyes huge and dark in his pale face. What is he thinking? I clutch the steering wheel harder, fighting the urge to pull over, to grab my son up into my arms. That, too, is nothing new. A constant battle that rages in my chest—the desire to hold on to the child, to make sure that he’s okay, to assure myself that the boy is, in fact, still with me.

  “Are we there yet?” Cash whines from the back seat. There’s no point in keeping track of how many times I’ve heard those words since we left California—it has to number in the hundreds.

  Before I can reply, Reed turns from his seat in the front to glare at his younger brother. “We’ll get there when we get there,” he says, mimicking the words I’ve been saying for days. He even sounds a little like me, his voice far too serious and jaded for his nine years.

  “I have to pee,” Cash continues. “And Daltrey keeps touching me.”

  “I’m not touching you!” Daltrey yells. In the rearview I see my youngest son, crammed in the middle between Lennon and Cash, shove his brother as hard as his tiny arms can manage.

  “Don’t. Shove. Me!” Cash cries, smacking his brother over the head.

  Daltrey starts to cry and I close my eyes.

  “You’re such a baby,” Cash sneers. “God.”

  “Dad said don’t hit!” Reed demands, reaching across the center console to punch his brother.

  “Hey!” Cash punches him right back. “Quit it!”

  Only Lennon remains silent, his eyes still focused on the window, like he isn’t even aware of the maelstrom going on around him.

  “You’re both being babies,” Reed informs his brothers in his too grown-up voice. “Can’t you just sit there?”

  “Don’t you call me a baby!” Cash yells, reaching up to punch Reed again.

  “Everyone stop.” My voice is low and they must hear some warning note in it because they all cease their bickering. Reed looks up at me, expression nervous.

  “Why don’t you find us a good song,” I tell him, nodding at the radio. “We’ll have to figure out all the good stations around here.”

  Reed fiddles with the dial, the sound of static filling the car as he searches for a decent signal. “Country, gross,” Reed mutters. “Country…country.” His brows knit with worry. “What if all they have is country?”

  Then it’s going to be a very long year, I think. Finally the sound of Tom Petty’s voice comes through the speakers, Reed and I sighing in relief simultaneously. “Thank God,” Reed mutters, leaning back in his seat. Out of the corner of my eye I can see my son tapping his fingers against his denim-clad knee in time with the rhythm. For the first time in a very long while, I feel a smile tugging up the corners of my mouth.

  I exit the freeway, pulling a scrawled sheet of directions from the visor and handing it to Reed. “Tell me what that says.”

  Reed sits up straighter. “Turn left at the light. Then right at the…the…” his grown-up swagger seems to diminish. “Land…ro…mat?”

  “Laundromat,” I correct and Cash snorts.

  “Thinks he’s so cool,” he mutters.

  Reed’s cheeks flush, but he raises his chin. “Then another right onto Maple.”

  I reach over and ruffle his hair. “Thanks, bud.” Reed beams, shooting a smug glance back at Cash. In the rearview, I watch the eight-year-old roll his eyes.

  Five minutes later I pull into the driveway of a blue-sided colonial. “Wow,” Reed mutters. “It has two floors?”

  “Yup,” I say, eyeing the house. Our place in California had been a ranch. “Your rooms will be upstairs.” I turn back to the younger boys. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  Both Cash and Daltrey glance from me to Reed before answering. “Yeah,” Cash finally says. “Pretty cool.”

  “Cool,” Daltrey parrots.

  Lennon is silent.

  “Well,” I say, not having any idea how to finish my sentence. The five of us look through the windshield at the house. There’s a sick feeling in my stomach and my head is starting to pound. Somehow it all seems so much more real, now that we’re actually here. But I know damn well that there is no point in lamenting the fact. The situation is what it is. There’s no turning back now.

  I square my shoulders. “Might as well get started.”

  I open the trunk so the boys can grab their overnight bags then I lead them up onto the porch and unlock the door. “Come on in,” I say, holding it open for them. Daltrey has planted himself on Reed’s heels, squeezing close to his brother the way he does when he’s nervous. Lennon is hanging far back, still down on the steps to the porch. “Come on, Len,” I urge, trying to keep my voice bright, to not let my son see how tired I am, how beaten down. The kid is only six, but I always had the sense that he could pick up on things like that, even before everything got so monumentally messed up.

  “It smells funny,” Cash whispers.

  “Shut up,” Reed whispers back.

  I close my eyes, trying to muster up some enthusiasm. “It’s been closed up for a while,” I tell them, walking into the living room to pull open the heavy curtains. Light filter
s into the dingy space. “We just need to open it up, do a little cleaning. It will be fine.”

  I turn to face the boys. They’re grouped together right by the door, looking around the room with guarded expressions. Even Reed, who always tries to put on a confident face, seems nervous, Daltrey now clinging to his legs. Lennon is still outside.

  “Why don’t you go up and check out your rooms,” I say. “Cash and Reed, you’re at the end of the hall. Dalt, you and Lennon will be right by the stairs.”

  Daltrey’s wide eyes go to Reed, and I feel a little surge of unease that I try to tamp down. I should probably be worried about that, the way the younger kids are starting to look to their older brother for answers. But it’s too overwhelming right now to think about it. I have plenty of other shit to worry about, much bigger shit. “Go on,” I say, my voice sharper than I intended, and the boys scurry up the stairs.

  I take a deep breath and go out onto the porch to get Lennon.

  “Come on, bud,” I say, kneeling down so we’re face to face. “Don’t you want to see the house?”

  Lennon merely shrugs.

  “I think you’ll like your room,” I go on, trying to make my voice bright. I doubt I’m succeeding. The truth is, I’ve never been any good at this stuff. Not even when Rebecca was around.

  At the thought of her name, my stomach clenches. God damn it, Rebecca, I think. You should be here. Moving is probably hard on kids under any circumstances, particularly moving halfway across the country, to a town they know nothing about. Doing all of that mere months after their mother left? It seems impossible that I can be capable of getting them through it. Not on my own. I try to push the doubt away, try to smile at my son. But when I look into Lennon’s dark eyes, so sad they could take a man’s breath away, I’m suddenly sure I’m not going to be able to do this.

  No choice, I remind myself. You’re all they have now.

  I stand, taking the little boy’s hand. “Come on,” I say, sounding as tired as I feel. “Come see your room.”

  * * *

  The moving truck arrives an hour later, and I put the boys to work carrying boxes. They like that, at least, the big truck in their driveway. They like the metal ramp, too, the way it clatters when they run up and down from the truck to the pavement. There isn’t much furniture—we’d been renting in California—and the movers help me carry the beds and a few bookcases into the house.

  “What about a couch?” I hear Cash whispering to Reed. “What about dressers?”

  “Dad will go shopping,” Reed replies, but he sounds a little doubtful.

  The boys stand on the lawn, watching the truck pull away, Cash hooting and waving his arms when the driver blasts the horn. As the truck turns the corner, disappearing from sight, another car pulls up in front of the house. For the first time that day, I feel a stirring of something like relief. Lillian.

  “Well look at how big you’ve all gotten,” my sister says as she heads up the driveway. “Get on down here, boys, and give me a hug.”

  Again, Cash and Daltrey look at Reed for direction. Reed looks at me. Lennon looks at the ground.

  “Go on,” I say, nudging Reed’s shoulder. “You remember your Aunt Lillian.”

  The three boys troop down to the driveway to accept her hugs even though, in truth, they probably don’t remember her. I haven’t gotten them out to this side of the country in years—Daltrey had been a toddler. And Lillian rarely came to visit us.

  She meets my gaze over Reed’s blond head as she hugs him—God, he’s getting so tall—and her expression is sad. Then her eyes go to Lennon and I can see that they fill with tears. I reach down and place my hand on the boy’s head, defensive.

  “Well,” Lillian says, blinking away the wetness in her eyes. When our gaze meets again, her expression is back to normal, no-nonsense and brisk. “We probably have some work to do.”

  She doesn’t hug me as she passes, not that I expect her to. We just aren’t that way with each other, not even when we were kids. We hadn’t been raised in a touchy-feely kind of house. It had been different, for me, with Rebecca. She’d been a physical person, always wanting to hold hands, running her fingers over my arm or my shoulder when she passed me. She’d been like that with the boys, too, constantly tickling them, touching their heads or shoulders when they were near, pulling them into hugs a hundred times a day. My chest seems to constrict when I think about how many fewer hugs they’ll be getting now that she’s gone.

  Lillian gets to work cleaning the kitchen while I set up the beds in the boys’ rooms. I’ll need to get to the Salvation Army to pick up some dressers. And, as Cash pointed out, a couch. And a dining table. One thing at a time, I tell myself. It’s my mantra these days, the only way I’ve managed to get through the hell we’ve been living in. Just focus on the next thing to do. Don’t think about what you’re leaving behind. Don’t worry about Lennon not talking. Don’t, under any circumstances, think about Rebecca. Otherwise, I knew, I would fall down under the weight of all of those things, those memories, those worries. And I can’t afford to fall down right now.

  We order pizza for dinner, me and Lillian sitting around the old card table, the boys sitting on the floor in front of the TV, eating off of paper plates.

  “The drive okay?” Lillian asks.

  “It was long,” I say. “But it was fine.”

  She’s quiet for a long moment. “You’re all going to be fine, too,” she says, her voice more gentle than I’m used to. My sister is a no-bullshit kind of person who always seems to choose her words on the basis of efficiency, rather than sentiment. “You did the right thing, Will. Coming back here.”

  I watch the boys for a long moment. Cash and Reed are laughing at the cartoon. Daltrey seems ready to fall asleep in his pizza. Lennon is watching the floor. I sigh.

  “It will get better,” Lillian says. “I know it will.”

  I nod. It has to.

  Later that night, once we’re mostly unpacked and Lillian has headed home, I send the kids upstairs to brush their teeth and get into pajamas. I go into my own room, trying not to think about how huge and empty the bed looks, and start to unpack some clothes. After a few minutes, I hear a familiar sound—the boys are fighting.

  “Just shut up,” Cash yells. “You’re not the boss!”

  “Dad’s going to hear you!” Reed snaps.

  “Stop being mean to him!”

  I want nothing more than to sink into my bed, to ignore the sounds of their fighting. Or maybe to run away from this house, run away from my responsibilities, from everything that had happened. Then I hear Reed again. “Come on, Daltrey. Stop crying!”

  A great rush of guilt courses through me at the direction of my thoughts. My kid is upstairs, probably scared, crying. And I’m dreaming of running away.

  I shove my shaking hands into my pockets and head upstairs, finding the two older boys grouped around Daltrey, who’s frantically wiping his eyes while Lennon watches from his bed. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Reed says quickly, straightening up. “Everything is fine.”

  I look at the little one. “Dalt?”

  “How…how…” his lips tremble and he wipes his eyes again. “How is Mommy going to find us here? If she wants to come back?”

  “She’s not coming back,” Reed hisses.

  Cash crosses his arms, looking away, his little face angry and hard. “Stupid kid,” he mutters.

  Until a few weeks ago, I could have counted on one hand the number of times I’ve cried in my adult life—at the birth of each of my sons. But damn if I don’t want to cry now, if I don’t want to pull the four of them into my arms and just let go, crying out every last bit of exhaustion and terror and pain I’ve been feeling since that terrible day.

  But that isn’t how I handle things. Instead, I do the only thing that has ever really made sense to me.

  “Come on,” I say, holding out my hand to Daltrey. “All of you.”

  “Where are we going?�
��

  “To my room,” I say. “I just unpacked my guitar.”

  Their faces light up, even Lennon’s, and a weight seems to lift from my shoulders as I lead them downstairs. In my bedroom the boys crawl up onto the bed as I pull tambourines, an egg shaker, and a small set of bongos from an open box. I pass out the instruments, giving Reed the bongos, before pulling my guitar from its case.

  “All right,” I say, looking them over. “Who wants to go first?”

  All the boys sit up straight and tall, eyeing me hopefully. I narrow my eyes, as if thinking it over, before passing the guitar to Lennon. The little boy’s face changes entirely—he actually seems happy. My chest expands—I hadn’t realized just how much I needed to see the fear leave the kid’s face. “Okay, Len,” I say. “Show me your chords.”

  His hands are tiny against the neck of my guitar, but he manages to stretch his fingers enough to play the four chords he knows by heart.

  “Nice,” I say. “You’ll be ready for a whole song soon.”

  The other boys take their turns as well. Daltrey’s fingers aren’t long enough to hold the right frets so I do it for him while he strums the strings with a pick, laughing the whole time. Reed knows most of his chords already, as does Cash, and the two of them play a few simple Beatles tunes—“Love Me Do” and “Here Comes the Sun”—while the little boys rattle their tambourines, all of them singing along.

  After that, I take the guitar back. “Okay,” I say, settling down on the bed between them. “What do you want to hear?”