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Pack light. Be prepared to leave everything behind.
That's what his mother taught. That's the way he lived for so long. It was something he was still working through years later, now that he was Neil Josten, now that he was a real boy. He had more than a backpack full of clothes. He had exy gear. He had Christmas and Hanukkah and birthday presents from various Foxes over the past few years.
He had keys to cars and rooms and homes.
But Neil didn't have anything from his childhood, and he probably would have said that this was all for the best. But then he walked into his uncle's study on a trip to London, and sitting there on a shelf was the mirror image of a bear that his mum had once given him. Whatever he had been about to tell Uncle Stuart evaporated from his thoughts. Neil crept toward the raggedy old bear in his coat and hat and rain boots--wellies, his mum had called them.
His chest ached.
"That was Mary's."
"She got me one just like him, like identical. He must have been an original. I had to have been around three or four, and she would read to me and I would hold my bear. I didn't understand what marmalade was because I'd never had it," as he spoke Neil could hear his accent (his accent that had always been a skill and a weapon and another thing that was lost to time) changing to sound like Stuart's, to sound like what he could remember of his mother's from so long ago. "Mum went out and bought some orange marmalade so I could eat it like Paddington Bear."
Neil felt his slight smile fall.
"Dad found the jar of marmalade and threw it on the kitchen floor. He made mum clean up the shards of glass with her bare hands. And he cut off the bear's head and pulled out all the stuffing. Told me I was too old to be playing with dolls."
"'Abram." Stuart's hand landed lightly on Neil's shoulder and Neil fought not to flinch away. He was with Stuart. He was safe. He was in London. His dad was dead. Andrew was right down the hallway. He was Neil Josten. He was safe.
"Can I..." But the thought, the sentence was so silly.
"Can you what, Abram?" Neil shook his head. "Tell me."
"Can I hold him?"
"Fuck, Abram, of course you can. You can have the damn thing if you want it."
Stuart slowly picked up the old toy bear from the shelf and placed it in Neil's arms. This bear, his mum's, felt so much more delicate than his had been, but that might be him projecting. Neil held the bear close and breathed in the scent. Not his. Not his mother's, at least not as Neil ever knew her.
"Did you ever get to try orange marmalade?" Stuart's voice startled him. Neil opened his eyes that he hadn't even realized were closed and lifted his head away from the bear. Neil shook his no. "Would you like to?"
"You don't have to try to fix my shitty childhood."
Stuart smiled but it looked sort of sad. "As if I ever could. I know I wasn't there for you, Abram--"
Neil butted in. "That's not entirely your fault. Mum and dad--"
"Your dad was a psychopath and your mother didn't run the second you were born. The second she found out she was pregnant. I should have...We should have stepped in. It never should have gotten as far as it did." Neil looked down at Paddington. He squeezed him tight and handed him back to Stuart.
"Are there any British things I missed out on that aren't too sweet?"
Stuart put Mary's bear back on his shelf, one of the only things of hers that was left. She had either taken her stuff with her to America or the family had gotten rid of it before realizing she was lost for good. The bear was all Stuart had had for so long, but now, standing in front of him was Mary's son, alive and mostly whole, unharmed. And if he wanted to bond over cakes and puddings, then Stuart was all too happy to indulge. Frankly, if the kid wanted to bond over foreign cars, he would indulge.
And if it meant Stuart had to put up with the blond pest, then so be it. Abram had been lost to him. And now he was back.