Chapter Text
It only took a thirty-second voicemail to turn Jack's life upside down.
He was so busy that the ringing of the landline didn’t register with him until it was almost over. Cardboard towers balanced all around him, walling him in with textbooks wedged onto every flat surface, sweat gathering under his collar as he piled the last four years into boxes. He let the final ring die, using the brief distraction to drop his arms and rest his aching shoulders. The temperamental old window unit decided to quit on him a few weeks ago and his landlord was in no rush to replace anything with only a week left on his lease. Across the room, the CD player rattled, drowning out the beginning of the message until a woman's voice cut through the music.
"-calling from San Diego Children and Youth Services about your brother. We would like to speak to you regarding placement for Andrew. Please call us back on-"
The group home looked more like somewhere you went to have blood drawn than somewhere children were supposed to live. Concrete block walls, fluorescent lighting, a lawn out front with a sign reminding them not to step on it. Jack had spent the flight imagining all the things he might say to Andrew and none of them had survived the walk through the front door.
A harried woman pointed him towards a child-sized bench before disappearing through one of the many doors. Jack stayed on his feet. He had been confined to a plane seat for hours, but sitting now felt impossible.
The foyer was full of the evidence of children. Jackets hung half on their pegs. Shoes had been kicked towards open cubbies. Backpacks slumped against the wall, surrounded by whatever toys and drawings had escaped them. Each space had a laminated nameplate decorated by its owner, some covered in stickers and carefully drawn stars.
One of them belonged to his brother.
Before his father’s disinterest had split his small family, he had spent years asking for a brother. He had pictured a smaller version of himself: scraped knees, endless questions, enough restless energy to make every new military base feel less lonely. His mom always told him they had their hands full with one.
Apparently somewhere out there, his father had decided to try again.
Jack paced the pegs looking for Andrew’s name. It was easy to imagine the kid had inherited the same inability to sit still. The same friendly gap toothed grin. Harder to imagine him without his mother. Without his twin.
At five, Jack had barely spent a night away from home. His father still appeared most mornings behind a newspaper, and his mom built her life around keeping Jack steady whenever they moved. She had let him live at home through college. She cried when he had accepted an army commission to pay for medical school, but she hadn’t lived to see him graduate. Some ugly part of Jack was relieved she would never have to count down the years until the Army ripped her family apart again. A deeper part hated that when the orders would finally come after his residency, he would be responding to them alone.
The twins had spent two days alone before anyone noticed.
That was why Jack had come. Not to take him home—there was no way he could take a five-year-old into a studio apartment two weeks before starting his residency—but to see him. Make sure he was all right. Give him a phone number and a family member who might answer it.
Andrew’s cubby was the last one on the far wall. His name had been scrawled across a plain white label. No photograph, no lamination, no stickers pressed crookedly around the edges. His jacket hung neatly with the sleeves tucked into its pockets, and his sneakers sat side by side beneath it. There was no backpack. No picture or toy. No indicator as to the type of child Andrew was.
A knot tightened in his chest. He reached down to hold one of Andrew's sneakers, it fit easily in his hand. Jesus, at that age Jack had barely spent a night out of his mother's home. He had known Andrew was five. Sarah had told him over the phone, along with all the other facts Jack had written down as though this were another exam he could prepare for. Five years old. Twin sister named Julia. Mother in custody.
And Jack was already planning how to leave this kid here.
Beyond the row of windows above the pegs, children swarmed through a large playroom. Their voices bled through the glass in a chaotic, overlapping drone. Every few seconds, a sharp laugh or a sudden shout would rise above the noise.
"Mr Abbot?" His head snapped up to see a woman leaning out of the playroom door, gesturing him closer. "Andrew's just through here if you're ready to meet him?" He nodded, hands rushing back to wipe the sweat on his jeans. Nothing could make him ready.
Inside, the children blurred together. Jack had apparently expected blood to perform some minor miracle for him—to look across a crowded room and recognise the brother he had never met. Instead, a boy ran close enough to brush his side and Jack’s gaze jumped helplessly between unfamiliar faces. His guide caught his attention and directed him towards the back of the room.
The reading corner was slightly darker than the rest of the room. Andrew sat almost completely motionless, head pressed between his knee and arm to block out the noise. One of his hands riffled the edges of a book repetitively. He seemed to be curled into himself, pressing himself into the smallest space he could manage. Jack's eyes wouldn’t peel away from his kid brother for a second as he crossed the remaining distance.
“Andrew, this is your brother.” Andrew didn’t react to their introduction. As if Jack’s guide never spoke he maintained his hunched position. “Jack flew down to come and meet you.”
She shrugged a little at Jack and lowered her voice. “Sarah is coming in an hour. She said she’d talk you through the situation some more and you can ask her any questions you’ve got.”
He sank down onto his knees next to Andrew, resisting the urge to reach out and make contact. Andrew’s hand stilled, and he turned his head just enough to eye Jack. Once he seemed satisfied Jack wasn't moving closer, his hand resumed running the edges of the pages against his thumb. "Hey," Jack said, keeping his voice a low, steady murmur beneath the din of the room. "Mind if I sit here for a second?"
Andrew didn't answer or even tilt his head to look fully in Jack’s direction. Jack sat anyway, leaving enough space between them that Andrew could decide whether to close it. After a moment, the pages began moving beneath his thumb again.
"I'm not much for crowds either, to be honest." Jack reached into his back pocket, his fingers sliding against his wallet. He pulled out a creased, glossy photograph. "Your social worker—Sarah—she told me you were asking about your dad."
He didn't push the photo into the kid's face. He just laid it flat on the floor next to Andrew's beanbag, right where the boy’s downcast gaze could find it. "That’s him a few years ago. His fortieth birthday," Jack explained, pointing at the man in the center of the picture. "He lives over in New Mexico now. But when I was your age, he had us moving every couple of years. Travelling all over the country whenever he transferred bases. I didn't even know where he'd moved to until Sarah called me."
Jack pointed to his own much younger face at the edge of the photograph. “That’s me, I was fifteen in that photo. Our dad probably had you a few years later.”
“He didn’t say a word to me the entire time I was with him.” Jack barely waited for the door to close behind him as they moved to a small office. Sarah stood against the desk and fixed him with a flat look. She looked too tired to spend time reassuring him.
“Jack, I explained to you over the phone he’s very reserved.” She held up a hand to stall the interruption he had been about to voice. “He’s been through a lot. Andrew’s mother was picked up an hour north of their home when an alarm was triggered during a bank robbery. The twins had been home alone fending for themselves for two days at that point.”
The room contracted around him, too small to contain the energy he could feel thrumming through his limbs. “And no one noticed kids that small on their own?”
“It doesn’t seem like they had much in the way of supervision even when Janine was home. They came to us underweight and scared. It was an easier transition for Julia — she’s a very independent girl. She’s reading, writing, and adjusting very well to life away from her mother. She’s settled in on her own with a family with two other little girls, and she’s thriving.” Sarah took a second to catch his eye; to stop his pacing back and forth on the rug. “Andrew’s a different story.”
“You think he’s too damaged to get a placement.” Jack’s voice was hard. “He’s a kid. He just needs someone to care about him.”
“We just haven’t found a placement for Andrew yet. He’s very reserved, until something upsets him. When he is upset it can take two adults to keep him from hurting himself or someone else. Julia seemed to be the only person he would respond to but even she got hurt at times.”
His breath was coming a little quicker than he wanted now, betraying his anger. He really had thought he was going to come to check in on his half-brother and return back with his life plans unchanged. That reality was unravelling more and more as the social worker spoke. He could feel himself tensing his jaw, the words as he spoke them less audible as he forced them out. “So you split them up.”
“We did place them together initially. Three placements in five months.”
The admission knocked some of the anger out of him as he sat down abruptly. Three placements. What the hell had been going on? He couldn’t picture the small boy he had just met hurting anyone. Andrew had been so isolated in the reading corner. Did none of the other kids in the home have any interest in playing with him? Had he been so upset he’d alienated himself?
“Unfortunately Andrew’s outbursts meant they had a difficult time maintaining placements - he needs a lot of structure and support. It was decided that Julia could be placed easily into a long term solution while we continued to explore familial solutions for Andrew. Which leaves us with you.”
“What do you mean? Didn’t you contact my dad?”
“He refused responsibility. I am afraid you are my best shot at finding Andrew a long term placement.” Sarah’s attitude had been calm professionalism since she had introduced herself, but he could see that control slipping.
“I’m about to be working more hours than there are in a week - there’s no way I could take in a five-year-old on top of that. How would I be any more stable than the group home?”
“Jack, Andrew is a kid at risk right now.” Sarah leaned forward, hands gripping the desk tightly. She held Jack’s gaze. “He has a lot of anger and there’s limited support we can give him in this home. We need to balance his care against keeping the other children safe - there are fourteen other children here. We can’t give him the same one on one support he could have in an individual placement. If you’re weighing how hard your residency is against giving this kid a chance I really don’t think there’s much of a choice. I don’t mean to pressure you but I need you to understand the stakes.”
“Don’t make this about whether or not I care. I’m asking who watches him when I’m at the hospital for twenty-four hours. I don’t have any family who could help me. How the hell would I manage my shifts?” Jack scrubbed his hand down his face. Parents did residencies all the time, but they were the minority. And that was two parent households, single parents with families to act as a support network. It wouldn’t work.
“Lots of parents utilise professional childcare. You’ll receive a monthly stipend for caring for Andrew. You can find childcare resources in Pittsburgh.”
“I don’t know where the hell I’d start finding childcare. I’ve basically got a lease and a job, nothing else. How would I find someone trustworthy?” A twelve-hour-turned-fourteen-hour shift was hell on his body as it was, detouring to collect an exhausted five-year-old and wrangle them into bed seemed impossible. He remembered his rotations in med school and how it felt like there wasn’t enough time in the week to breathe and take stock of what he needed to do. He’d barely kept food in the fridge in the last year of med school and relied far too heavily on cafeteria food. He couldn’t do that to a kid.
“Andrew is old enough to be in school, there will be affiliated clubs you can utilise for childcare. If you agree to take Andrew in you’ll have a local case worker as well as myself who will help you get him enrolled in a school and find suitable care solutions. We won’t hand you the kid and ignore you, our responsibility is to give you every chance to thrive.”
“I can’t predict when I’d be home. Sometimes a shift starts and doesn’t end for two days.” He threw out one of his last defences. “Parents in my line of work have support.”
“If you agree, I will personally help you organise a round the clock solution.” He looked over at Sarah, startled. “I really don’t want Andrew to fall through the cracks in the system.”
“This just seems insane. There’s no one in California who could take him in?”
“We strongly prefer kinship solutions where we can. Andrew might not know you any more than any other placement but you’re brothers. You’re family, and maintaining family connections matters. Finding the right fit outside of a family member could take years.”
For one awful second, Jack could see Andrew at ten: five years older and five years angrier. Was he really the best chance for the kid? “Andrew refused to talk when I was sitting with him. How is sending him to live with a man he doesn’t know better than where he is now? At least he’s close to his sister in California.”
Sarah frowned. “Andrew and Julia have been together their entire lives. I don’t think they’d spent much time apart at all. We believe they were raised to believe that family members were the only people they could trust. Julia hasn’t had it easy, but she was very open to the idea of new people. The first two months I had their case I never heard Andrew speak once - Julia did it all for him. When they were together Julia was very preoccupied with managing Andrew. She would talk for him, play with him, look after him. She’s just five herself, Jack. We think a new family member is the right first step to connecting to the outside world.”
He pressed his forehead against the heel of his palm as if the pressure would stop the headache forming behind his eyes. Sarah hesitated, but continued on. Her voice lowered, softened as she tried to win him over.
“He takes time to adjust to change, but he’s a quiet kid. He was hanging on your every word. And we think a period of separation would be good for the twins. It will be good to let them develop individually so when they do spend time together, they’re playing together as siblings. Right now it’s not healthy for either of them.”
Sarah’s face softened with a smile. “Jack, I really believe you could be great for Andrew. I think you could be the first person outside Julia he chooses to trust.”
“And if I can’t take him in?”
“Then he remains in his current placement until we find something else for him. We can’t promise when a placement will appear or how many disruptions he may experience first.”
“Fuck.” He ran a hand down his face. “Fuck. I came here to meet him. That was it. I already don’t know how I’m supposed to leave him here.” All of a sudden that terrible antsy energy was back, and he ran his hands down his thighs and rocked forward on his feet.
Leaving a phone number had been a comforting idea when Jack still believed someone else would give Andrew a home. It allowed him to offer something without dismantling the life waiting for him in Pittsburgh. If Jack walked away, Andrew would remain here with his temporary label and empty cubby while strangers continued deciding whether he was manageable. Jack didn’t know how to fit a five-year-old around residency. He didn’t know how to fit a residency around a five-year-old. But Andrew had lost out on a carefree childhood for his first five years, and he wasn’t going to be the next person to refuse to give him a chance.
He could figure out the rest later. “What would I need to do?”
“We need to start the interstate placement paperwork immediately, and get a home visit. I’m willing to expedite this so we can get Andrew settled with you before your residency is due to start.”
It felt too intrusive to take Andrew by the hand. Andrew’s arms were wrapped firmly around himself, one hand rubbing soothingly across his side as Jack led him down the steps. He settled for a light touch on Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew’s head tilted towards his arm, shoulder raised to almost trap Jack in contact. “I flew down this morning and rented us a car, we should be back in Pittsburgh by Monday.”
No response.
He hadn’t been expecting one, really. Jack had phoned Andrew twice in the intervening week to keep the kid up to date on their plans: once when the home visit had been successful and another to tell Andrew when his flight had been booked. Both times he had been rambling into silence, never quite sure if Andrew was still there.
“-leaving here at 5am on Friday, so I think I’ll definitely be picking you up before lunch. I was planning on driving back to Pittsburgh. There’s no rush, work doesn’t start till the week after we get back. I’m not sure if you’re a football fan but we should probably give it a shot when we move-”
Andrew stopped at the bottom of the stairs and fixed the house with a long stare. Sarah and someone he recognised from his first visit stood in the doorway, watching them leave. Andrew's hand never left his side, but he raised his shoulder again to trap Jack’s hand tighter against his cheek. Jack took another step, guiding Andrew to the rental car parked just a few steps further down the sidewalk.
“I figured neither of us have any reason to be in Pittsburgh before the first, so why not drive up? We can get to know each other before we need to share a studio apartment. Sarah wasn’t very impressed it was a studio but I can’t afford to break the lease now.” He sent a smile Andrew’s direction. He was rewarded with a wrinkle of Andrew’s nose, blink-and-you’d-miss-it, but it filled Jack with warmth.
“I picked you out a bed we can build when we get back.” He hiked Andrew’s backpack further up his shoulder. “Pretty much most of the stuff is still in boxes but we’ll figure it out.”
He opened the car door and leaned across the back seat to position Andrew’s backpack in the far side footwell. “In you get.” Andrew clambered into the seat and arranged himself neatly on the booster. “I’ll just buckle you in. There. Do you feel like speaking yet? That’s okay.”
He smiled, trying to sound casual and untroubled by Andrew’s silence. “I had another idea. I figured you could give me a thumbs up or down if I ask you any questions. I’ll be able to see you in the mirror. Let’s test it- you all ready to go?”
Andrew’s thumb twitched in his lap. His feet pointed together and hands remained clasped between his legs. “C’mon, a little bigger for me. I need to see clearly if you’re okay.”
Andrew looked up at him through his eyelashes. Jack’s idea was failing fast. He reached out and adjusted the seatbelt so it no longer pressed against Andrew’s neck and flashed his own thumbs up, wiggling it. It was a little humiliating how quickly he had morphed into a suburban dad stereotype. If it got him a response from Andrew, he could deal with a little embarrassment.
Jack kept his own thumb raised, smiling until Andrew cautiously copied him. His thumb remained enclosed in his other hand, barely visible above his tightly clasped fingers. It was still resting in his lap, but it was the first deliberate answer Andrew had given him.
Jack swallowed the urge to celebrate too loudly. “Great. That’s perfect.” He pointed towards the rearview mirror. “When I’m driving, I’ll need you to hold it up near your face so I can see it from the front. Can you do that?”
Andrew watched him, arm unmoving. Whatever confidence Jack had felt disappeared under the weight of the kid’s stare. “I won’t be able to see your answer if you don’t,” he explained, demonstrating with his own thumb beside his cheek. “You don’t have to talk. I just need to know what you’re telling me.”
A little huff escaped Andrew. For a moment, Jack thought that would be the only response he received. Then Andrew slowly raised his arm, keeping it tucked close to his body until his fist rested against his cheek. His thumb emerged beside one eye.
“There you go. Nicely done, kid.” Jack tried his luck with another question. “Do you want me to put on some music for the drive?”
Andrew’s forehead furrowed. The thumb rotated downwards.
“Quiet it is, kiddo.” He made his way to the drivers seat, twisting the volume knob down to zero before turning the car on. The engine rumbled to life, but no radio station began to play. As he adjusted the rearview mirror to capture Andrew’s face, he could see just how intense Andrew’s observation of him was.
“All right. Last check. Are you ready to go?”
Andrew’s head turned, looking back up towards the building. The front door had closed, sealing the noise and chaos behind its walls. Jack waited, resting his hand on the wheel. Eventually Andrew settled his cheek against his fist. His thumb lifted.
Jack put the car into drive and pulled away from the kerb. The group home disappeared behind them. In the mirror, Andrew’s eyes remained fixed on Jack.