The Castaway Hotel - 5 - 29. Chapter 29 - The Aftermath

“Do you want to talk about any of this?” I asked them, now that their mother was gone. I thought it might be best to clear the air completely and see how each of them was feeling about what had just taken place. I looked at Cole first and was surprised to note that he seemed pretty calm and unfazed by what had transpired, but Graham didn’t look as comfortable. I knew he was dealing with issues he hadn’t voiced yet.

“What’s up, Graham?” I asked, trying to draw it out of him.

“She’s all alone and has no one,” he began, “and we pretty much told her that’s all she’ll ever have. I feel sorry for her, that’s all.”

“Why, she never felt sorry for us?” Cole challenged, while expressing his anger.

“That’s not quite true, Graham,” I told him. “This doesn’t mean she’ll be alone now. I told her before, that I’d be willing to let her visit one or both of you, but I wasn’t about to give either of you up.”

“I know, but Cole pretty much told her we didn’t want to see her again – ever,” he explained.

“I did not!” Cole disagreed. “I just told her I didn’t want to see her, but I told both of you that you had to speak for yourself. Don’t blame me if you didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t, because I didn’t want to hurt you either,” Graham admitting, while looking both sad and hurt. “You just seemed so angry, so unforgiving, that I didn’t want you to feel like that about me too.” Cole suddenly realized that his brother had misread his anger and thought it was directed at him too, after which he seemed surprised that Graham would even think he would do that to him. It was apparent he now had to convince his brother that wasn’t the case.

“Graham, I would never hate you. Never, ever!” he emphasized. “We’re brothers and I’ll always love you. No matter what.”

“But she’s your mother, and you don’t love her,” Graham pointed out.

“But I do love her, it’s just that I don’t like her or trust her any more,” Cole explained. “I don’t care what excuses she makes, because she knew what she was doing and she either chose her boyfriend or the drugs and alcohol over us. I’ll never forgive her for that.”

“Not even to give her a second chance?” Graham pressed.

“Do you really think she deserves one?” Cole asked. I wasn’t sure he really wanted to hear Graham’s answer, until he leaned forward and moved slightly closer to Graham, to let him know he was serious.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Graham asked, very innocently. “Dad always says we all make mistakes, and the only thing he asks is that we learn from them. What if she has learned from her mistakes? Doesn’t that mean she would deserve another chance?”

Cole didn’t answer right away, because he knew he had to think about this before he dared respond. Graham had really put him on the spot, since Cole understood that I had previously given them and their brothers more than one chance to prove to me they had learned from a mistake, so he didn’t want to say anything to upset me or make Graham question what I had done for them. Once he had considered all of the alternatives, he finally responded to his brother.

“If it was a minor mistake, maybe I’d be willing to do that,” Cole told him. “But her mistakes weren’t minor. Don’t you realize what she did, Graham? We could have starved to death in that apartment or have been badly hurt by being left on our own? Don’t you remember how skinny we were and how we didn’t even know what cereal was when we first came to live here?”

“I remember some of that stuff, but…” Graham never got to finish, because Cole jumped up and raced out of the room before he could continue. Neither Graham nor I understood why Cole had left so suddenly or what had upset him so badly, so Graham looked at me, before turning toward the doorway and wondering if he should chase after his brother. Instead, he came over and sat on my lap.

“Do you think I’m wrong, Dad?” he asked, very simply. I pulled him tightly against me, before I answered.

“No, Graham, I don’t think you’re wrong, but Cole sees this from a slightly different perspective,” I explained. “He was older, so he remembers more things than you do, and some of those things hurt him very deeply. You’ll each have to make up your own mind about this, and neither of us can do it for you.”

“I know, but she’s still my mother,” Graham stated, as if that was all we needed to know.

“And she always will be, no matter which way you decide,” I assured him, “so there’s no argument about that. It’s just that you can’t just make your decision based solely on that fact. You also have to consider how much you want to do with her from this point on and how much input she’ll have concerning your future.”

We were about to continue our discussion when Cole came bursting back into the room, carrying something in his hand. As he approached, he reached out and handed the items he had to Graham. I could immediately see they were photos of the two of them when they first came here to live with us. “See, this is what we looked like,” he stated, emphatically. “It looks to me as if she hardly ever fed us at all. Now do you remember?”

Graham looked at the pictures and studied them closely for a few seconds. When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes. “Yes, I remember, but I didn’t want to,” he admitted. “But she IS still our mother.”

“In name only,” Cole snarled. “She never took care of us or protected us like a mother should do.”

“So you’ll never forgive her?” Graham asked again.

“I don’t know, maybe some day, but not just yet,” Cole admitted, while leaving the door open concerning a future reconciliation. “It’s still too fresh in my mind to forgive and forget just yet.”

“But maybe just to spend some time with her?” Graham offered, hopefully.

“I’d only do it to make you happy, not her,” Cole stated. “If you’d feel better if we let her visit, then I’ll do it for you. Just don’t expect me to be nice or pretend I’m happy about it.”

“I won’t,” Graham agreed, “but I don’t want to make you do this, if you really don’t want to.”

“Like I said,” Cole replied, “I’m willing to do it for you, not for her. I’d do anything for you, like she should have done for us, but I’ll never agree to go live with her or anything like that.”

“Okay, I understand and thank you, Cole,” Graham told him, before he scooted off of my lap. “I really do love you,” he added, before he embraced his brother, with Cole eagerly returning the affection. After a second they turned toward me, to see if I concurred.

“Is that okay with you, Dad?” Graham asked, in his little boyish, pleading voice.

“Whatever you want is fine with me,” I assured him. “I only want what’s best for you boys and my biggest wish is that you are both happy with what you decide. It’s not up to me to forgive or accept her apology. Only you two can do that. However, if you want to spend time with her, either here or so you can go other places with her, I’d be willing to try to get in touch with your mother and set it up.”

Graham thought about this briefly, before he responded. Once he had a chance to consider the matter further, he answered. “Only if she calls or comes back on her own,” he stated. “If this isn’t important enough for her to do that much, then we’ll just forget about the whole idea. I guess I still need for her to prove that she really has changed and does care about us. Okay?”

“Whatever you say, big guy,” I concurred, while tousling his hair. He smiled in response, so I pulled him closer, so I could give him a hug. “You know, you’re pretty smart for someone your age,” I added. He merely smiled more broadly at me, but said no more.

I concluded he might be right about this, so that’s the way I left it with them, while wondering what might happen next and when.

The problem with having a large family is, you can never concentrate on just one matter at a time. It seems something is constantly happening with one or another, or many of the boys at once, so I knew I couldn’t focus all of my effort on just this one issue. That became even more evident at the beginning of May, when Ricky got another phone call from one of the members of the exchange program selection committee.

Since I had an inkling about who was calling and what it was about, I went to get Ricky. He suggested we take the call in my room and put it on speakerphone, so I could also hear what was going on and then he wouldn’t have to explain everything to me later. When he suggested this, I told him it wouldn’t be a problem, but it turned out to be unnecessary. The gentleman merely wanted to set up a face-to-face conference with us, so we agreed to meet with him, and the rest of the selection committee, two nights later.

When we arrived at the appointed location, several committee members were already present and quickly began to ask Ricky a series of questions. “Hi, Ricky,” the chairperson began. “We just wanted to check with you again, to make sure you’d still didn’t have a problem with giving up your summer vacation to become an exchange student.”

“No, sir, I don’t have a problem with that,” Ricky concurred. “My dad and I have already talked this over, and if I get to go, I’ll stay an additional month at the end of the exchange program, so I can take a little vacation there, before I come back home. That way I’ll also have a chance to travel around and see more of the country I’m in, but I still want to get back in time so I can graduate with my class.”

“Well, it sounds like you have things all worked out,” he agreed, “so we can get down to the remaining business. I’m pleased to inform you that you are the committee’s top candidate and we have an opening for an exchange student in Australia. We wanted to use this opportunity to see if you’d be interested in going there and, if so, we have a few follow-up questions for you.”

Ricky was so excited he could barely contain himself from leaping around the room, but somehow he did manage to control his excitement. However, he did flash that irresistible Ricky smile, which seemed to light up the whole room and everyone in it. “Yeah, that really sounds great,” he finally blurted out. “Australia would be a great country to go to. Do you think I’ll get to see kangaroos out in the wild?”

“Well, I’m not sure about that, but I’m glad you’re willing to go there and are accepting our offer,” the chairperson agreed. “Here is what we have planned for you. You will be going to a city called Penrith, in New South Wales. Penrith is just west of Sydney, about an hour and a half away, and it’s in the southeastern part of the country. Penrith is also only a couple of hours away from Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory, and not all that far from Melbourne or Brisbane either. Therefore, you should be able to travel to all of those places, as that part of the country has fairly good bus and air service. Therefore, you should be able to explore at least that much of the country.”

“That’s really great,” Ricky agreed, “but what about the school I’ll be going to. What is that like?”

“That’s a very good question,” another committee member agreed. “We have an opening in Kingswood High School in Penrith, and judging from what we’ve seen from your records and from talking to your teachers, the committee thinks you would fit in well there.”

“Well, I guess that sounds pretty good,” Ricky confirmed. “I’ll check it out on a map and then look it up online too. I want to know all there is to know before I go there.”

“That would be an excellent idea, but there is one more thing I need to make clear to you,” the chairperson informed him. “You’ll have to leave the last week of May, in order to get there on time, since they expect you to be ready to begin classes during the first week of June. Their school year runs from the end of January to mid-December, so you’ll be getting there to start the second half of their school year. You’ll be staying with a family in Penrith and they have a son about your age, or maybe a few months younger. Would you have a problem with any of that?”

“Heck, no. That sounds great,” Ricky told them. “What grade will I be in? Will I still be a senior when I get there?”

“You’ll be in what they call year twelve, or the equivalent of your senior year,” he was advised. “You’ll also be expected to pass whatever courses you take and we have a tentative class schedule set up for you.”

After learning that much, they talked about the tentative schedule, before discussing the community and surrounding areas in more detail. Once that had been completed, they went over what other types of things he might expect to find or see there and explained a little more about the family he would be staying with. Once they finished going over all of this information, Ricky formally accepted their offer and was congratulated by the entire selection committee.

Ricky was so excited about having been chosen that he could barely contain himself all the way home. He was ranting on about everything he had learned up to this point, while also speculating about what it might be like there and what he hoped to do. When we arrived at the house, he raced inside to tell his brothers all about it, because he wanted them to know everything he’d been told about the school, the family he’d be living with and the area in general.

The boys were all eager to hear about this too and many of them found it very interesting. It was really kind of cute to see Ricky so excited and I could tell his enthusiasm was rubbing off on the others, as they were beginning to pepper him with all sorts of questions in return. Even Jake got involved in this, but I think he was basically trying to get Shannon excited about the possibility of being an exchange student the following year. I got the impression he was hoping that Shannon might want to try to do something like this following his graduation from high school and before going to college, since he hadn’t had the opportunity to visit any other places. This way he could afford to get to see another part of the world, without it costing quite as much as if he had to pay for everything on his own.

It took nearly an hour before things began to settle down, and then Ricky went up to use the computer, to look up the various sites the committee had given him about the area. After he did that, he also did a general search, using his favorite search engine, so he could look up more facts about the community and surrounding areas. When he had finished with all of his searches, he came back to share more of this information with me and was even more excited now than he was before, which I didn’t think possible.

After he filled me in on all of the new information he had discovered, I tried to get him to calm down, so he would actually be able to go to bed and fall asleep. Even though I attempted to do this for him, I was pretty sure my efforts would be in vain and he wouldn’t be getting very much sleep tonight. The thing was, I might not either, but I also didn’t have to attend classes the following day.

In getting caught up in Ricky’s excitement, the rest of us had kind of forgotten about some of the other things that were going on in our lives. During the day or two that had passed since our encounter with Cole and Graham’s mother, we still hadn’t heard back from her, so we had no idea about what she might do next. Due to her lack of contact with us, both boys began to assume that maybe she had decided we wouldn’t give in to her demands or she had changed her mind altogether. They even began to wonder if maybe she had already left town.

I know Graham was slightly hurt by this thought, since he was hoping to get to know her a little better, but I think Cole was relieved this ordeal might be over. I did speak to Graham about his feelings on this topic and at that time he shared his suspicions with me. Once he brought his fears out in the open, I asked him how he’d feel if she had changed her mind and left town, and he told me quite frankly that if she didn’t bother to return or try to get in touch with either of them again, then he would just assume Cole had been right about her in the first place and that she didn’t really care about them. I tried to explain this might not necessarily be the case, even if she didn’t come back right away, but I think by that time his mind had been made up.

It was just a day or two later, however, when someone else came to our door. This also happened while the boys were at school and when I opened the door, I found a fairly young man standing there. He was probably in his mid-twenties and dressed in business-casual clothing. He merely asked me if I was Josh Currie, and after I answered in the affirmative, he served me with a summons and left.

I was somewhat stunned, but took the paperwork inside and examined it. The summons indicated I was to appear in family court on a specific date and time, as well as indicating a judge would determine if I had strong-armed Cole and Graham’s mother into giving up her sons. This document alleged that I had tried to poison the boys’ minds against her, causing one of her sons to hate her and the other to be uncertain if he wanted to get to know her again. I was a little surprised at how it was worded and what was inferred, but I concluded she must be desperate to try something like this.

Immediately, I picked up the phone and called Steve (Judge Shay), but he informed me he already knew about the summons. It had come across his desk, to be placed on his calendar. Of course, he had already recused himself from the case, on the grounds that he was our attorney, so this matter would now be presided over by a judge from a neighboring county. He wasn’t sure who that would be just yet, but told me he’d let me know, just as soon as he found out anything specific.