Conviction (8 page)

So they went together (in her car, because it was the one with the car seat) to the courthouse to change my name on the birth certificate from Stoddard-Huff to Raynor and to change my middle
name so I shared it with him and to add him as my father. To sit in the back of the car with me, my dad had to shovel pillows and clothing into the passenger seat and squeeze himself between her
bags of stuff.

These are all the things he told me about her: she was from Turlock. She had brown hair and brown eyes, like mine. (His and Trey’s are blue.) She drove over the speed limit carelessly,
changed lanes without checking her blind spot. Once she ran a red light. And there was something otherworldly about her, like she was always about to smile at a secret no one else knew, like she
wasn’t completely in the moment with you because she was somewhere else, somewhere better. He didn’t like that—he thought it meant she felt like she was better than everyone
else—but I did.

She was twenty, which was eight years older than Trey. My dad was thirty-eight.

In the courthouse, my dad held me in his arms for the first time. He was nervous, because when Trey was a baby, Elaine had done most of the work. On the way back home I cried, and Aureliana took
a hand off the wheel and reached into her purse, fishing around until something crinkled, then she tossed it to my dad.

“Here,” she said. “Give him this.”

It was a Ring Pop, raspberry-flavored, and my dad said, “The hell is this?”

“He likes those better than the pacifiers. You can get them cheapest at Smart and Final, if you have one near you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Even I know you don’t give babies candy. What kind of mother are you? You’re going to rot his teeth.”

“Teeth?” She laughed. “Mart, get real. He’s four
months
. He doesn’t have
teeth
.” Then she added, “The watermelon ones are his favorite.
But in the big bags you don’t get to pick the flavors.”

He was horrified, then furious. And he was going to tell her off, but then he looked at her one more time in the rearview mirror and she was young enough to be his kid, really, and anyway she
was obviously a terrible mother if she was leaving her baby with
him
, so he said nothing. Instead, he offered his fingertip to me and, miraculously, I stopped crying.

He smiled. He leaned down and whispered, “Hey, little guy.” He cupped his hand over my tiny head and stroked it with his thumb. “How about it, buddy? Huh? You want to come and
live with me?”

Back at home, Aureliana gathered her hair into a ponytail. “Well,” she said, “I gave you the bag with all his clothes and diaper stuff, and here’s the car seat,
so…” She glanced at her watch. She was already in LA in her mind—he could see that. “I guess that’s everything. So good luck. He’s not the best baby. He cries a
lot.”

It was just before dark when Trey got home that day, and my dad met him at the door and grabbed his arm. He’d been waiting two hours for Trey to come home. “Did you forget you were
grounded?”

Trey said, shortly, “No.”

“Then you better have a damn good—” My dad stopped, changed his mind. “Well, it’s your lucky day, because I’m letting you off the hook. Come upstairs with me.
I want to show you something.”

Trey yanked his arm away. “I’ve got homework.”

“I have a surprise for you.”

“I don’t care. Leave me alone.”

My dad closed his eyes. “Trey. Come upstairs with me and see the surprise, or keep this up and we’ll do it the hard way. Your pick.”

Trey muttered, “Fine.” He followed my dad upstairs. And in my dad’s room, lying in the middle of the bed, was a baby. (Obviously: me.)

Trey blinked, jerked his head back. “What is
that
?”

“That’s Braden. Your new brother.”

“My
what
?”

“Well, half brother. But don’t you dare call him that ever, because that
half
doesn’t matter.” Then he added, because he hadn’t exactly practiced what he was
going to tell Trey: “He’s a baby.”

“No shit.” Trey took a step forward, looking shell-shocked. “Where did it…come from?”

“Oh, come on, wiseass, I got the letter home about how you’re doing sex ed. Don’t try to tell me you don’t know exactly where babies come from.”

“So you’re its…dad?” A nod. “Then where’s its mom?”

“Gone. Didn’t want him anymore. So now he’s ours.”

Trey raised his eyebrows at my dad. “Really? Someone’s mom actually thought it was a good idea to leave him with
you
? Did you tell her how you—”

My dad drew his hand back, and Trey flinched. He shut up, and my dad dropped his hand, relieved. He cleared his throat and gave Trey hesitant smile. “Surprise, huh?”

Trey watched him warily for a second, then took a few more steps forward and crouched next to the bed and very, very lightly touched the top of my head. I made a sound like a baby seagull, and
Trey yanked his hand back and looked at my dad, his eyes wide. “Did that hurt him?”

“Scared him. How should he know if he trusts you?”

He watched Trey watching me. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so nervous about what Trey might think.

“Okay,” Trey said finally. “Well, that’s cool, I guess. I thought your surprise would be something mean. I want to hold him.”

“You want to what?”

“Well, what else do you do with a baby?”

“Okay, well—” My dad swallowed, ran a hand over his head, then slid his hands under me. “Okay. Sit back against the headboard. No, scoot to the middle. Get away from the
edge.” He lifted me carefully. “You drop him,” my dad warned, “or hurt him in any way, I will wear you out. You hear?”

“I’m sitting
down
. Where could he even
go
?”

“This baby’s made of glass, understand? Don’t think I don’t know what you’re like. I know you. So you be more careful than you’ve ever been in your
life.”

“I get it already,” Trey muttered. “You never trust me.”

My dad was still reluctant. This, he’d told me, was the other thing about Trey: sometimes at night he’d lock himself in his room and my dad would hear thuds like he was punching
things, or muffled yells, and he kept the door locked so my dad couldn’t go in and see what was wrong. You always felt like one day a kid like that would just snap. But Trey was waiting, his
arms out, and this was the first time in months Trey had acted like he even wanted to be in the same room as him, so my dad took a deep breath and deposited me, painstakingly, into Trey’s
lap.

“Here you go, buddy,” he told me gently. “This is your big brother, all right? This is Trey. Martin Raynor the Third.” He paused, then added, “My
firstborn.”

Trey stared solemnly into my eyes and took in my stubby eyelashes and faint pale eyebrows. He held his breath and carefully petted the top of my head with his palm, and exhaled, pleased, when my
eyes found him. He looked up at my dad. “His mom really just didn’t want him anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Dumbass.” He ran his fingers over my wispy hair and fingered my earlobes, then half whispered, like he didn’t want to scare me, “Hi, Braden.” He stroked my arm. I
flailed the arm around and he offered me his finger, and when I grasped it, he broke into a smile. He lifted my hand and inspected the fingers one by one, then said, “Dad, look, did you see
he even has little fingernails? And
knuckles
. Look.”

But Trey had moved too fast, or something, and I started to cry. Trey dropped my hand and tucked his arms around me tighter. “Crap. I didn’t do anything to him, I swear.” He
looked up anxiously at my dad. “I swear. I was just—”

“Didn’t I tell you to be gentle?” My back arched, and my face turned bright red as my screams got louder. My dad snapped, “Give him back.”

“Dad, I swear I didn’t try to hurt him. I wasn’t trying to make him cry.”

My dad reached out and gathered me gently into his arms so I was cradled upright against his chest, then he shot Trey a withering look over the top of my head.

“What’d I
just
tell you? I should’ve known not to trust you, you worthless bully. Can’t you see how little he is? Wouldn’t you be scared if you were him?
God
damn
, you ought to be skinned alive. I should’ve known.”

He rubbed his hand on my back and rocked me back and forth, kissed me on the nose and on the forehead. He bobbed up and down and ducked his head next to my ear.

“Hey, little man,” he crooned, turning away from the look on Trey’s face, “Shhh. Shhh. You’re okay, buddy, Dad’s got you, Dad loves you, it’s
okay.”

And—when he got to this part in his story, he sat up straighter—I stopped crying and went quiet and stared up at him, tears pooling in my eyes so they looked huge, and that was the
first time he ever saw me smile. And that was it, he told me: that was the moment he knew he believed in God and the moment he realized God had spoken to him and the moment he knew everything was
going to be different from now on. God had given him this son out of nowhere, the way he’d chosen the Virgin Mary. This new son had been sent to him to love him and be his own. This new son
was God reaching down from heaven and nudging past the years of sin and past the unbelief and right into his lonely, guilty heart.

When my dad turned around, Trey was sitting on the bed still; he’d hugged his knees against his chest and wrapped his arms around them. His eyes were hollow. He didn’t move when my
dad turned to him.

“Here,” my dad said impulsively to Trey. “Trey, here. Sometimes babies just cry. It happens. You were like that, too. Always scared me to death. Here.” He pushed
Trey’s knees down flat and positioned me back in his lap before Trey had time to say anything, and in that moment, he told God:
I forgive Trey for saying he wanted to live with Elaine
instead of me, and I forgive him for trying to run away from me, too.
“See? He wants you to play with him.”

But Trey still had that same unseeing look in his eyes. My dad tried again. “We’ll have a good time together, huh? All three of us. We can—” He stopped, trying to think
what you could do with three people that you couldn’t with two. “We can play keep-away with him. We can have a tiebreaker if we ever vote on anything. He’s lucky, you know that?
Every little boy should have an older brother.”

But Trey still didn’t answer. There was a feeling like a knife twisting in my dad’s stomach. Maybe he’d been wrong, and maybe he was hoping for too much. Maybe some things you
couldn’t fix.

But didn’t this baby mean he was forgiven? That he got another chance? That God loved him after all, and believed in him, and that maybe he could be different too? So he settled down next
to Trey on the bed.

“Trey,” he said, nervous. “Look. Maybe—look. I didn’t mean to yell at you, all right? I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I know you were trying to be nice to
him. And I know you do things you shouldn’t, but maybe I’m too hard on you sometimes. You know I love you. I blew my life savings in court so I could keep you. If I didn’t have
you, I’d be lonely as hell. I’d have nothing. I wanted a son my whole life.”

Trey turned his face toward the wall. My dad felt his heart sink, start to slip back into that swamp of guilt. Jesus, Trey was the size of this new baby once—Trey seemed so little
sometimes still—and what kind of man was so hard on someone that much smaller? He fought away the memory of beating Trey with his belt after Trey had tried to run away, and his stomach
turned. Of course Trey hated him. Of course he’d tried to leave.

“Trey, I want it to be different,” my dad said desperately. “I really mean it. I want things to be different. I want us to have fun together, and I want you to be happy when
I’m around, and I want you to trust me. I want you to come to me when you’re upset or you have a problem.”

His hands were shaking. “Listen—I really—I want that more than anything. How about this: I won’t hit you ever again or yell at you or any of that. Okay? I swear.
Just—if you stay here and don’t ever try to run off like that again. Then you can look out for your new brother and help me raise him. He’ll need you. And we can be a better
family now. Us three.”

Trey considered that. He said, tentatively, “You mean it?”

“More than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.”

“How do I know for sure?”

“Because I’m giving you my word.”

Trey looked down at the baby. “You swear?”

“I swear. I swear, Trey. A man’s word is the most important thing he’s got.” My dad held out his hand to offer a handshake. “I swear on my life.”

Trey’s expression didn’t change, but he shook. He said, soberly, “Okay, well, yeah, Dad, I guess I can do that. Stay here and help you take care of him.” Then he looked
up at my dad and then back down quickly, like he was nervous, too. “Um—I think the baby likes you. It was nice how he stopped crying for you. I think he thinks you’re a good
dad.”

On air, my dad talks about this only vaguely. He talks about how he was in darkness, and when he found God, he was in the light, and he talks about how God blesses people who obey him. What he
means is that, after that night, God turned his life around. My dad stopped swearing, started reading his Bible, and got new bumper stickers for his car. It turned out he was a good dad to this new
baby, and it turned out things with Trey were better with a baby there, too. One night at the station my dad asked if he could fill in for one of the night-shift DJs who was out on sick leave, and
it turned out he was good. He got his own spot on a weekly show, and then he got his own show. He bought a house, then a nicer house. His ratings kept growing and he made himself into who he is
today.

And, meanwhile, he found out I had it in me to be a good pitcher, maybe even a great one, and he started developing me. He coached a break into my fastball, taught it to paint curves around the
plate, taught it to come barreling forward knee-high before sinking like a plane losing steam midair. He taught me deception—how to not waste a single motion, how to shroud your movements so
they don’t give a thing away. And he taught me, too, that being up there on that mound with the whole game riding on your shoulders is the loneliest place you’ll ever know. That
it’s the time between throws, when you’re forced to face your own thoughts and fears, that can break you.