one
[ — the beginning]
Everything fell apart right after his fifth birthday.
A plane crash, they told him. That’s what it had been.
One minute, his parents were alive, breathing, tangible beings he would see in a promised few days, and the next…they were gone.
He remembered staring down at the metal table that his clasped hands had rested on, the chair beneath him as frigid as the holding room they'd sat him in while they worked out who to contact to come pick him up. He'd never felt so simultaneously cold and numb in his life. Involuntary shivers wracked his body, and there was nothing he could do to stop them.
The room had been a stark white, with a shoddily painted mural of a smiling lion surrounded by balloons on a grassy savannah with a lone, leaf-less tree behind it. Even at five, he’d wondered why there were balloons surrounding it. Maybe to make the whole image brighter—to put kids in similar situations as himself at ease.
Not that it did.
After an hour of being alone, a man in a worn, dull gray suit that hung off his skinny frame let himself into the room. He wore cheerful-looking round, horn-rimmed glasses that clashed with his weary face. He looked so exhausted, Peter almost offered to let him take a nap on their couch at home, before he remembered there was no one there to let them in.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut and watched quietly as the man took a seat across from him, unloading a heavy-looking satchel with a hard thunk on the concrete floor beside him.
"You must be Peter." He said by way of greeting. Peter opened his mouth to say something, but no words came to him. His jaw snapped shut, and he watched the man warily, the events and news from the day finally catching up to him. "Not much of a talker. That's alright. Good, even, I daresay." The man murmured to himself, nodding as he pulled out a yellow legal pad and a blue pen who's cap had been gnawed on so thoroughly Peter would've bet his life on the fact that the stranger across from him owned a puppy.
"I'd like to preface this conversation with some condolences," the man stated, not even glancing up at Peter, "losing a parent is very difficult, and I can only imagine losing both at once—"
"Will I get to see them?" Peter interrupted, the words bubbling up and out of him before he could stop them.
The man paused, and watched him over the top of his glasses, his expression unreadable.
"More of a talker than I thought." He said, absentmindedly. Then: "Who?"
"My—" Peter hesitated, suddenly feeling very small in his seat. "My parents? Or, well, their bodies, I guess." He managed to squeak out.
The man heaved a bone-weary sigh and leaned back in his chair. It creaked with the movement.
"I'm afraid that's not possible. Now, as I was saying—"
"Why not?"
The man took in a sharp breath and straightened his shoulders, staring at him.
"Well, the wreckage from their flight..." He hesitated then, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't have all of the details, but what I can tell you is that there was reportedly nothing left for the search and rescue team to find, Peter. I'm sorry." Despite his lack of warmth leading up to that moment, the man really did look sorry, even if it was only due to the fact that he had to be the bearer of bad news.
Tears suddenly welled in Peter's eyes, and he sniffled, hard. He wiped furiously at his cheeks, his mind reeling.
The man pulled out a packet of Kleenex tissues from his coat pocket, and slid them across the table towards him, frowning. Peter ignored his expression and took a tissue, wiping at his eyes before blowing his nose like his mom had taught him.
"Listen, kid." The man said, once he'd seemingly determined that enough time had passed for Peter to pull himself together. "I'm going to be honest with you, because I wish someone had been honest with me when I was in your shoes. This system will eat you alive, if you're not careful."
Peter stared at him, barely comprehending what the man was saying. His mouth kept moving, but Peter couldn’t hear anything he said around the loud buzzing that had started up in his ears.
His parents were dead.
It didn't matter what words of wisdom the man felt imperative for him to hear; nothing would ever be the same again.
________________________________________
They didn't let Ben and May pick him up for almost six months.
The man he'd met with at the police station—his social worker, he would later learn—told him it was because the State had to ensure they were a good fit. There were, apparently, all sorts of processes they had to complete: background checks, and verifications, and paperwork, and—well, it didn't really matter what else, not to Peter, at least. He'd asked the question, but the legal jargon didn't make much sense to him at that age, anyway.
In the interim, he was placed in a halfway house filled with jaded, older kids who glared at him the minute they found out he had family members trying to gain custody of him. Most of the kids there had no one else to turn to and they would remain in the halfway house until they aged out of the system—if they didn’t run away or get themselves locked up first. None of them liked that he had people waiting for him, so they kept him out of everything they could.
All of them, except for a seventeen-and-a-half year old boy named Josiah, who, as menacing as he first appeared to be, actually had a heart of gold. He’d give one stony look to any of the other kids that gave Peter any sort of side-ways glance, and they’d scurry off before saying anything. Once he stepped in, the other kids left Peter alone.
Those first three weeks in the half-way house had been lonely and terrifying.
Peter had always been a quiet kid to begin with, and though he’d avoided the other kids to the best of his ability—overstimulated and overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids and rules of a world he’d been unwillingly thrust into—he still managed to get shoved in the hallways on the way to lunch, dinner, and the lights out call at the end of every night. It’d gotten so bad at one point, he was pretty sure he had ‘pick on me’ permanently stamped across his forehead.
Josiah put a stop to it as soon as he realized what was going on. There was a hierarchy in the half-way house, and Josiah was at the top since he was the only kid old enough to hold down a steady job and still cook dinner for everyone else. His word was the unspoken law of the land.
It helped, too, that he was kind. That, and the fact that he was the only kid the woman who ran their pitiful excuse of a foster home—Ms. Sunny, who most certainly did not live up to her name—trusted with a key to the fridge that she otherwise kept locked every hour of the day.
Josiah was an aspiring chef, something he'd told Peter the first time he’d wandered into the kitchen to find the older boy dutifully whisking eggs and sneaking a glance over his shoulder as he dropped a cup of sugar into the vat of oatmeal on the stove.
Ms. Sunny was very particular about the amount of food she kept in the house, and even though Josiah had managed to gain her trust and was the only kid there with regular access to the fridge, sugar was a commodity few of them could afford.
Josiah didn’t care about Ms. Sunny's rules, though. All he cared about was making good food that the rest of them could enjoy.
It was sort of an unspoken rule that Josiah, as the oldest kid in the group, took care of the rest of them; and it was a responsibility that he took seriously.
“The way I see it, cooking is a love language all in its own.” Josiah had murmured as he’d reverently handed Peter a butter knife and walked him through how to cut the strawberries he’d snagged from the Farmer’s Market on his way home from the overnight shift at the local supermarket. He told Peter about his goal to open his own restaurant, and the little boy had listened in rapt attention as he’d tentatively cut the strawberries into thin slices, just like he’d been shown.
“My pops owned a restaurant, back when I was just a little kid like you, pipsqueak.” Josiah had said, ruffling Peter’s hair affectionately. “But that was before the recession. He lost everything when that happened, and I’ll be honest, I think that was the thing that killed him.” Josiah wasn’t the kind of guy who opened up often, and Peter was too young to really understand what he was talking about—save for the fact that they both knew what it was like to lose someone like they had. Josiah never mentioned anyone other than his grandfather raising him, and Peter longed to ask him about his parents, but the one time he’d tried to, Josiah’s face had shuttered with darkness, and he’d shaken his head with pursed lips.
“They weren’t good people. That’s what Pop’s always told me, and since he was the one who raised me, I believe him. Besides, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t true, right?”
For the next five months, Peter became Josiah’s shadow.
Wherever he went when he was home, Peter followed. The other kids didn’t bother him again, but they still refused to include him in anything. When Josiah was at work—which was often—they piled the chores they’d been assigned on to him. He did them without complaint, too afraid of someone beating him up again, even they all knew Josiah would kick their ass if he ever found out.
He fell into a routine at the halfway house: wake up, eat whatever breakfast Josiah made, do chores while Josiah worked, eat whatever horrible lunch Ms. Sunny put together whenever she was forced to cook while Josiah worked, do the rest of his chores, read a book if he had time while he waited for Josiah to get home, cook and eat dinner with Josiah, and read a book with Josiah before going to sleep.
Josiah had made sure that he was moved into his room, and he’d given Peter the top bunk of their bunk beds. They’d often talk late into the night—even though they both knew Josiah had to work at an ungodly hour—until Peter finally fell asleep.
“Are they still coming for me?” Peter found himself asking, one night, once all the lights had turned out and Josiah’s breathing had slowed to the point that Peter knew he was about to fall asleep. His voice was small, even to his own ears, and he heard and felt the bed creak as Josiah sat up. “Do they even want me?”
“Of course they are.” The older boy had said firmly. “They’re your family. Besides, who wouldn’t want you?”
“I dunno.” Peter had said, frowning as he’d tugged his thin, ratty blanket up to his chin. It’d smelled like mothballs and dust and he’d wrinkled his nose at the scent. “I just think if they really wanted me, I would be with them by now.”
Josiah went quiet, but his hand crept up over the side of the bed, rapping expectantly on the metal bars until Peter slipped his palm into his. Josiah gave it light squeeze.
“I promise, Pete. They want you. It’s just…this system is so messed up, y’know? I don’t think I’ve ever told you, because you’re honestly too little to hear it, let alone understand it, but I’m gonna be honest with you, because if I’ve learned anything about you, it’s that you’re insanely smart. Like, almost scarily so. So, I’m gonna explain some things about the world to you. Because you are young, but like I said, you’re smart. Cool?” Peter frowned but nodded. When he realized Josiah couldn’t see him, he squeezed his hand again.
“Cool.” He murmured in soft agreeance.
“Alright.” Josiah said, decidedly. He paused for a second, and Peter could practically hear the gears turning in his head. Then he took a deep breath and started speaking. “There’s a lot of bad people in the world, Pete. That’s why a lot of the kids here are so mad. And so sad. Because they’ve been in homes with those bad people. Because, for whatever reason, those people get approved to watch us, or ‘take care’ of us until we age out of the system. I myself have been in too many homes like that to count. I finally told my social worker I just wanted to stay here, three years ago. Because I was tired of putting up with those people. And at least here, I could help look out for kids like you. Because, unfortunately, the government doesn’t really care about us. We’re just a paycheck, for a lot of people. And it’s not cool, and it’s not fair. But that’s just the way things are. Some of the social workers care, they really do, but they’re severely underpaid and overworked to the point of exhaustion. So they don’t really do the checkups on the people they’re supposed to. And even though they’re supposed to investigate our potential homes, even after people have been approved to watch us, it just…doesn’t always happen.”
“So, is that why my aunt and uncle haven’t come to get me?” Peter had whispered, tears welling in his eyes. Josiah gave his hand another reassuring squeeze.
“It’s not that they don’t want you, Peter. I’m sure they’ve been fighting like hell to get you. But the system is probably working against them.”
________________________________________
Peter’s social worker always seemed to be stressed and running behind schedule, and when he breathlessly told Peter on their second-to-last meeting that Ben and May were granted custody of him, he found he didn’t really care. He had become pretty numb by that point, the lingering loss of his parents still a sharp ache that made anything else dull in comparison, making it so that nothing really mattered.
None of it did.
Not at first.
Later though, he’d wonder how some of his foster "parents" got past the supposed checks they’d performed on Ben and May, and Josiah’s words would ring in his ears. If they’d been that extensive with people as good and kind as his Aunt and Uncle, he had no clue how some of the people he ended up with later ever passed the supposed checks the government put in place.
His social worker allowed Josiah to come with him to the first meeting, mostly because the teenager, scrawny as he was, still looked like he could kick the hell out of the case worker, and he’d insisted that he wanted to make sure Peter’s new family were good people.
Peter remembered being grateful for that small kindness. He didn’t remember much about Ben and May from his life before, having only met them once or twice, and Josiah had become something like a brother to him in the months he’d known him.
“I’ve got you, Pete.” Josiah had murmured, reaching down and grabbing his hand as they’d entered the stout, graying building where they were supposed to meet May and Ben. “You just give my hand a squeeze if you wanna go.” Warmth had bloomed in Peter’s chest, and he’d laced his fingers tighter with Josiah’s, swallowing nervously.
The room his social worker took them too was different than the one he’d given the news of Peter’s parents death in, and Peter was grateful for that. Ben and May were already inside and Ben was sitting in one of the worn, cushioned chairs while May paced nervously behind them.
"I'm just worried he's going to think we abandoned him or something, Ben."
"May, he's not going to think that—"
They froze when the door opened, and Peter found himself nervously sliding behind Josiah as they stepped into the room. Ben immediately stood, reaching for May’s hand. She fell into place beside him, her other hand rising to her mouth. She blinked, taking the sight of them in.
“Hello,” She’d said, stepping forward and tugging Ben with her as she pulled Josiah into a hug, “you must be Josiah.” The older boy had nodded and stepped back quickly, gently pulling Peter forward from behind him.
“Thanks for letting me come, ma’am.” Josiah had said, ever the gentleman. “I know it’s a little unusual, but Petey and I have gotten pretty close these last few month, and I just wanted to make sure everything was square before I let him go.”
May had grinned widely at that, not at all challenged by why Josiah seemed to be implying. “Well, we really appreciate you looking out for our boy, Josiah. I’m glad he had someone in his corner when we couldn’t be.” Josiah nodded seriously and nudged Peter gently.
“Say hi, Peter.” He encouraged, offering him a tight smile.
“Hi, Peter.” Peter mimicked. There was brief silence, and then Ben and May broke into a fit of giggles. Relief swept over Josiah’s face, and his smile turned genuine.
“Why don’t you guys get to know each other?” Peter’s head snapped up as Josiah edged towards the door, his hand tightening in the older boy’s. Josiah squeezed back once, then opened his palm to let him go. He dropped to his knees and opened his arms. Peter frowned, but ran into them, squeezing tightly to the person who had been his constant for the last six months. “I’m always around, Petey. If you really need me.” The words were a whisper in the shell of his ear, said so softly that Peter knew only the two of them could hear. He squeezed Josiah tighter at the reassurance, an unfamiliar feeling rising in his chest.
Before he was ready to let go, Josiah was gently untangling him from his grip and spinning him around to face his aunt and uncle. Then, he was quietly slipping out of the room, letting the door click shut behind him, but not before he’d set Peter’s worn suitcase beside the peeling paint of the doorframe.
Ben approached first, nudged forward by May. When he'd stooped down to hug him for the first time, Peter was as rigid as a board. He wasn’t sure how to hug him back; he didn't know them, and everyone in the halfway house, outside of Josiah, seemed to have an aversion to affection. So, he kept his arms loose at his sides.
“It’s okay.” Ben had whispered, holding him close. “We’re here now.” He’d given him one last gentle squeeze, and then let go to stand up, grabbing the suitcase Josiah had left for them. May had smiled tightly, her eyes slightly watery.
“Hiya, Pete. You’ve gotten so big.” She’d sniffled, silver tears suddenly streaming down her cheeks.
He never saw May cry again, not even at Ben’s funeral.
________________________________________
The first two months with Ben and May were an adjustment for everyone.
Being in a semi-familiar environment with people he'd known since he was born, seemed to unlock something in his subconscious that he'd managed to keep carefully hidden away in the half-way house. Ben and May were often woken up by his screams at three a.m.; nightmares of his parent’s death making him thrash and tangle himself in his bedsheets until they were shaking him awake.
Neither of them made it out to be a bigger issue—they were always patient with him, gently waking him up before soothing him back to sleep. Ben would read to him for hours until Peter would finally feel sleep creeping up on him, his curly-haired head dropping against his uncle’s shoulder while May dozed, warm against him on the other side.
Once they'd gotten his nightmares in check—or as much as they could get them in check—they quickly moved towards building a routine.
Ben went back to work after three weeks, having used all of his time off for the year to get Peter settled in. On the mornings he wasn't working, he would make breakfast. It'd become the new normal for Peter, and despite how much he found himself missing Josiah, he was surprised at how effortlessly he got along with his aunt and uncle. They were both young, and although they were older than his parents had been, they treated him differently than his parent's had.
Ben looked like his dad. They had the same, kind brown eyes and salt and pepper hair, but where Peter primarily remembered his dad as being serious, Ben was more relaxed; softer, even. He always had a smile ready for Peter, or a joke, or a gentle hair ruffle and a hug. When Peter fell off the bike they'd surprised him with on his third week living with them, Ben had raced after him and set him on the sidewalk before dropping a kiss on his scraped knee. Then, he'd pulled him into a bear hug before telling him a joke that made him laugh so hard it felt like his sides were splitting in two and he forgot the pain.
His dad hadn't ever been that affectionate, and it was a jarring difference.
May, on the other hand, reminded him so much of his mom it hurt. They weren't related insofar as he was aware, but the similarities were almost unsettling. They both had the same pin-straight, long brown hair, and May joked that they shared the same dye. They took their coffee the same way—two sugars and cream—and when they laughed, the crows feet around their eyes crinkled the same way. Whereas his dad had been distant, May was as warm as his mother had been. Being around either one of them was like standing in your own personal patch of sunshine.
One of the few differences between them was that May couldn't cook to save her life.
“You catch one dishtowel on fire, and they act like you burned the whole building down.” She’d tease, bumping her hip gently against Peter's, whenever the topic came up.
Both May and Ben made him feel like he'd found a home again. And it wasn't necessarily easy but it did get a little less painful to think about his parents and more about his new life, whenever he was with them. They got him back into a routine, and while it was different from what he’d known with his parents, and the half-way house, it wasn't bad.
They'd eat breakfast as Ben would make jokes, before May walked him to school. Ben was a firefighter, so when he was done cooking, he'd ruffle Peter's hair, straighten his backpack straps and make sure Peter's inhaler was easily accessible before he sent them on their way and got ready to sleep the day away. May would pass him his brown sack lunch once they reached the school grounds before dropping a kiss into his curls and waving as she watched him walk in the front doors.
When school got out, one of them was always waiting for him, and he'd run into a warm embrace before they’d walk home. If Ben was the one to pick him up, they’d sometimes grab dinner, surprising May with her favorite Thai place; though more often than not Ben would make a home-cooked meal. Ben would leave for work after they ate and May would attempt to help him with his homework before tucking him into his bed with a kiss and a quick book read.
It took time, but he finally outgrew his nightmares. He stopped imagining the plane going down and the terror that his parents must have felt. He stopped dreaming of burning wreckage in a foreign forest, or his parents calling out for him as he dug desperately through rubble. But with the loss of those dreams, he realized that he was slowly losing the memories of his parents as well.
One night, he crawled into their bed, burrowing under their covers between them. May woke up first, her face bleary with sleep as she rubbed his back and tugged the covers up higher over them.
"You alright, kiddo?" She asked, her voice low and sleepy.
"Yeah," Peter whispered. "Just..." he snuggled closer to her. "I realized I don't remember what my dad's voice sounds like anymore."
May hummed contemplatively, and kicked Ben, who stirred with a grumble.
"Pete?" He asked, when he finally blinked his eyes open. "Everything okay?"
"He said he doesn't remember his dad's voice." May explained, softly.
“Oh," Ben rubbed at his eyes and tugged them closer to him, cocooning them in a bear hug. "S'alright, Pete. I sometimes forget, too." He kissed the crown of Peter's forehead, then May's. "It’s okay though, buddy. We might not remember that, but we'll always remember how much we loved him. And, how much he loved us, right?”
Peter blinked away tears and nodded against May's nightshirt. His uncle always seemed to have the right words, like he knew exactly what his nephew needed to hear, before Peter even knew he needed it.
_______________________________________
They celebrated two of Peter’s birthdays as a family.
And god, how Peter had loved those birthdays.
Ben and May would both take the whole day off, and they’d wake him up early and take him to see his parents’ graves. They'd never recovered their bodies from the plane wreckage, but they'd inherited a plot of family land reserved in the cemetery from Ben's parents and May had insisted that they have an honorary place for them to rest.
Peter hadn't been allowed to attend the funeral that Ben and May had organized, all those months ago and while they both had wanted to wait to grieve with Peter, Jewish tradition dictated that the funeral occur as soon as possible and that Shiva be sat immediately afterwards. They'd upheld the tradition without him, to honor the family members they'd lost, though Peter could tell that they felt guilty for not waiting for him.
They made up for it by patiently waiting while Peter talked to the dirt, their arms linked while they smiled encouragingly anytime he looked back at them. They'd assured him that he could take as much time as he wanted.
Afterward, they’d walk to the nearby park for a picnic under the big willow tree. He had two pictures to commemorate those birthdays.
Both had been taken by a sweet elderly woman, who had been leaving the cemetery herself. She'd told them that she stopped by every year on the date of her anniversary with her husband, who had passed a few years prior.
“You have such a beautiful family." She’d said, upon their first meeting. "Reminds me of Elmer and I a bit, when we were young.” She’d had long, silver hair and soft, wrinkled hands that were steady when she took the camera from May to take their photos.
The first one she’d captured was of him, sitting on Ben’s lap, his smile missing a tooth while May cut the cake, her head thrown back in laughter, eyes sparkling as Ben and Peter stared up at her fondly. The second was focused more on May as she was frozen in time, bent slightly to kiss the top of his head, Ben’s arm wrapped around her waist, smiling widely at the camera.
May had printed them both, and framed them for his nightstand.
"For if you ever wake up scared." She said, when she'd put them there. "We're always watching over you, kiddo."
Wilted, worn, and browning at the edges, they were the only pictures he still had of the three of them.