Read Online April & Oliver by Tess Callahan - Free Book Online Page A

talking blood.”
    “What does that make us?”
    “Strangers, I guess.” He laughed.
    April stood, stone-faced.
    “Stepcousins,” he corrected himself.
    “You’re lying. My father would have told me.”
    “My father only found out when he got married and needed a birth certificate. Who knows? Maybe your father doesn’t know.”
    “And when were you planning to tell me?”
    “Tell you what? Nothing’s changed. She’s still my grandmother.”
    “I want to go home,” she said. “What’s keeping them?”
    “I’ll go see,” Oliver said, rushing into the house.
    They never spoke of it again.
    April leads Nana to a chair. “They certainly don’t look like brothers, do they,” April says, nodding at the photo.
    “The uniforms are adorable, aren’t they?” Nana answers.
    “It can be important to know who your blood relatives are,” April says. “If you get sick, for instance, and need a kidney.”
    “Lucky we have such a big family.”
    “Hm,” April says.
    “You think I’m an old fool, don’t you. You think I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
    “An old wizard is more like it.”
    “I had my reasons, let’s leave it at that.”
    April sorts the curlers on the table, the back of her neck prickling. She didn’t expect Nana to concede so quickly.
    “If you think Hal is any less my son than your father was, you’ve got another think coming.”
    “I’ve never thought that,” April says.
    “Think of your father, all his life thinking
his
father deserted him. You think that did him an ounce of good?”
    “Hal’s mother didn’t abandon him. She died.”
    “Do you think there’s a difference to a one-year-old?”
    “He’s not one anymore.”
    “He knows.”
    “But you never talk about his real mother. Wouldn’t she have wanted him to see a picture, hear stories about her, something?”
    “His real mother?” Nana says, her voice rising. “I raised him from when he was a baby. Just who do you think his real mother
     is?” Nana has switched to Spanish, a sign of how upset she is, and although April’s comprehension is generally spotty, this
     time she catches every word.
    “Lo siento,”
April says, but Nana shoves the box of curlers across the table.
    For an instant, April sees herself lifting Buddy from his crib, him giving her his shy, drowsy, through-his-fingers smile,
     his body warm and soft, conforming to hers, resting his head in the nook beneath her chin. She smells the milkiness of his
     skin, the down of his hair against her cheek.
    “Just who do you think raised him?” Nana says.
    “I’m sorry,” April says. “You did a great job with both of them. Everyone knows that.”
    Nana glances at the photograph. She wipes the dampness from her face with a dishtowel. “It was easy with Hal,” she says, switching
     back to English. “You praised him, and he was a sponge. Your father was made of something else. He craved attention, but it
     wouldn’t soak in.”
    April collects the curlers and parts her grandmother’s hair. She moves the comb gently. Nana’s face is flushed. What an idiot
     April was for upsetting her.
    “Your father turned out all right, didn’t he?” Nana says.
    “He was a good father.”
    “He must have been, the way Buddy adored him.”
    April feels woozy. “And me? Didn’t I adore him?”
    Nana looks up, her eyes more focused than they had been earlier. “Abrilita?” she says, using her childhood nickname. “What’s
     wrong?”
    April holds the table for balance and knocks over the rollers. “You want the usual?” she says, twirling a lock of hair. “Or
     something new?”
    Nana turns in her seat to see April’s face. “You’re pale as a stone,” she says.
    “We could change the part,” April says, guiding the comb. “Take advantage of your cowlick.”
    “You look like the devil,” Nana says.
    April smiles and puts a bobby pin between her teeth. “It’s the only face I’ve got.”
    Nana stands, holding on to the back of