Free Adam's Peak by Heather Burt Page B

it.”
    Adam looks around the table. At the sight of Susie wiping her eyes, he deflates. “Oh crap. I’m sorry. I got carried away. Sue, I didn’t mean to ...”
    Susie smiles weakly. “It’s okay. Let’s just eat,” she says, and goes back to feeding Zoë.
    Dutifully, Rudy takes a forkful of rice. At the head of the table, Dad reaches for a pappadam. He breaks off a piece and places it on his tongue like a Eucharistic host. “Excellent meal, Mary,” he says.“Just like the old days.” In his voice and posture there is a hint of resignation. The skin under his staring brown eyes is loose and tired.

    LATE THAT NIGHT , Rudy finds his sister in the trophy room. The lights are out, and she’s sitting cross-legged in Dad’s chair.
    â€œAre you okay?” he says from the doorway.
    â€œYeah. Fine. Just thinking.”
    â€œAbout this afternoon?”
    â€œSort of.”
    â€œAdam shouldn’t have gone on like that.”
    Susie unfolds herself from her lotus position. “It’s okay. What he was saying made perfect sense.”
    â€œYeah, but ...”
    â€œNo, really, Rudy. I’m not upset about anything Adam said.” She comes into the hallway, where she lowers her voice. “He’s been having a rough time with Dada lately. Coming out and everything. He needs our support.”
    Rudy nods. “It’s late. I’m gonna hit the couch. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    When his sister has disappeared up the stairs, he goes into the trophy room with his diary and turns on the light. He examines the photographs on the wall. His favourite was taken long ago at the summit of Adam’s Peak. It’s a black and white portrait of two young men standing on either side of an ancient bell. One of the men is a tea taster from Grandpa’s estate. The other is Uncle Ernie. He leans in to get a better look at this uncle he has never met, the black sheep who left home and was rarely heard from again. He’s a handsome fellow, more European in appearance than Dad, though the family resemblance is evident. The square jaw has resurfaced in Adam, along with the cheeky smile.
    â€œMaybe a few other things as well,” Rudy muses aloud. “Things that would have made you a real black sheep back then, eh, machan?”
    Renée can’t understand that he could have an uncle living somewhere in the world—Sri Lanka probably, though not necessarily—and yet have no particular desire to meet the man. He isn’t entirely surehimself, but it seems to him just as logical to wonder why, apart from the indulgence of a mild curiosity, he
would
want to meet his uncle.
    He sits in the armchair and opens his diary. Glancing out the trophy room window, he thinks of Clare Fraser. Though he can’t actually see the Fraser house from the trophy room, he imagines her at her window, watchful and quietly receptive, just as she was the first time he ever really noticed her, standing under a sprinkler on a deathly hot August day. The opportunity will never arise, he is certain, but if Clare—the solemn, watchful creature behind the glass—were to ask him about his family, he wouldn’t resent it. He would welcome her detached interest.
    He dates the page and taps his pen. He writes “Hello, Clare” then pauses, considering the move he has just made. Strange ... silly even. But he carries on:
    I’m sitting in my father’s trophy room, looking at the old photos. Uncle Ernie on Adam’s Peak, Susie’s first communion, Grandpa and his cook, the last family gathering on Grandpa’s tea estate before we left for Canada, etc. etc. It was on that visit that I first learned who Ernie was. And so much else, of course. I don’t remember most of the details, just the emotional extremes. How I started off bored and glum like everyone else and ended up ecstatically happy.
    He stops writing. It seems he