DeBeers 06 Dark Seed Read Online Free PDF Page A

the value of a promise in this house, too, don't we, Scott?"
He nodded again and then raised his eyes to see how I was reacting to this little cross-examination his mother was holding.
His mother settled back on the settee, pulling the light blanket she had at her knees up a bit, and turned her attention more to me.
"Scott says you just recently learned about yourself. Is that true. Willow?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
"It's not an easy thing to live with. I know, Everyone treats it differently, I suppose. and I suppose no one should know better about that than a man like your father, but we thought it was better for Scott to know everything as soon as we thought he would understand, because we wanted him to know without a doubt that we couldn't love him any more than we already did.
"Besides," she continued, smiling at Scott, "I had him in my arms moments after he was born, anyway. I gave him his first bottle and I changed his first diaper."
She stopped smiling and turned back to me.
"When other people find out about you, some of them are going to look at you differently. That's because they won't know what to expect. Too often children get measured in terms of their parents. If someone's father is a good athlete, they expect his son to be, or if a girl's mother has a nice singing voice, they expect she'll have one, too.
"But you're a bit of a mystery, and that sometimes makes other people uncomfortable. Scott and I and his father have talked about these things many times, haven't we, Scott?"
"Yes," he said.
"We want him to be comfortable with himself. I suppose your father will be doing something similar with you, if he hasn't already, and your mother." she added.
I wanted to tell her, no, my mother would never do anything like that, but I was ashamed of it, especially there and then in the slow of the love she and Scott obviously shared. I don't think I ever felt as poor as I did that moment. I had a bigger home and we had so many more expensive things in it. but Scott Lawrence was far wealthier than I was, I thought.
"Why don't you show Willow your and your father's electric trains," his mother said, closing her eyes a bit and sinking in the settee. "I need a little rest. honey."
"Yeah," Scott said. "C'mon."
He grabbed my hand and tugged me roughly off the chair to lead me through the house. In a room down from the kitchen. Scott and his father had installed one of the most elaborate and wonderful sets of electric trains I had ever seen. The trains ran through a miniature city with tiny people, cars, buses, even school buses. There was so much to see.
Scott went to the controls and put on a train engineer's cap.
"Here we go," he declared, and started the engine that pulled boxcars and flat cars and passenger cars with people in the little windows. He began a second train that ran under and around the first. They even made sounds and sent little puffs of smoke up in the air. Some of the storefronts had lights that flickered on. "How long did it take to make this?" I asked.
"Me and Dad been workin' on it for years and years." he said proudly. "You want to work this?" he offered, showing me the controls, "Go on, try it."
I did, and while I did, he went to a partially constructed new building, a lumberyard company, and started to work on the tiny sticks.
"I told Dad I'd finish this one before he got home from work today," he said.
What impressed me most about the tiny toy city and the trains was the obvious love and care that had gone into it, that was still going into it. How many, many hours must Scott and his father have spent here together, I thought. How jealous it made me.
Scott's mother was very sick, but there was so much less darkness in this house than there was in mine. No wonder he couldn't care less about his being an adopted child, I thought, There were probably dozens of children in our class who were naturally born to their parents and did not share half as much of their love and life.
I visited Scott's house often