One Of Gran’s favorite sayings was ‘Blood Is Thicker Than Water’. She always said that when someone in the family wasn’t playing by her idea of the family rules. And, from the way she put it, the family rules seemed to come straight from God or the Bible. Really, with Gran, though, God and The Bible were one and the same. 

All my life I heard stories about Uncle Brian. Gran said he didn’t give a damn about his family or he would be more apart of it. And, boy, was Gran strict about what it meant to be apart of the ‘family’. She expected Mom to do everything for her. Whenever Gran called, Mom had to jump. It was ridiculous. And, from what I remember Gramps was no help. He didn’t want to take Gran anywhere so it all fell on Mom.

I guess that’s why it was so easy to believe all the crap my Mom and Gran told me about Uncle Brian. I mean what they told me was pretty much all I knew about my Uncle. He never spent much time around us. We’d see him on Holidays, but only for a minute or two. He always seemed to be in a hurry to get away from us and for the longest time I couldn’t understand why. So, it was real easy to believe that he was a heartless prick. 

Then in one felled swoop, Mom and Gran and Danny were gone. Just like that. I was so scared and I felt so alone. When Uncle Brian showed up at the hospital after the accident, I figured that was it. I knew he was my guardian from hearing my Mom and Dad fight about it. But, because of everything I’d ever heard, I figured he come in, sign me over to the state and be done with it. I mean it wasn’t like he ever cared, right? But, boy-o-boy did he surprise me.

He took being my guardian very seriously. Even to the point of taking on my school or calling the cops on my Dad for trying to run off with me shortly after I got out of the hospital. He has made sure that I get everything I need for school and for home. He even gave up his loft and bought a house because of me. He doesn’t ever put it that way. He says that he bought the house because of space issues and that is true. The loft was kinda small, but it was his. He owned it outright. But, he gave it up so that we’d have more space and I’d have my own room. 

This is the man that my Mother and Grandmother called heartless? Hardly. He even has his friends fooled. That guy Michael, the one who says he’s Uncle Bri’s ‘best friend’, even he doesn’t know UB as well as I do. And, that Melanie woman who’s Gus’ other Mom makes UB sound like the anti-Christ. He does a lot of stuff for those guys, but he never takes credit for it. And, God knows his ‘friends’ aren’t just going to give him the credit he deserves. 

I guess that makes me pretty lucky actually. I’m one of the few – along Justin and Gus – who get to see the ‘real’ Brian Kinney. The one who would turn his life upside down for a nephew he hardly knows. The one who would show up at a ‘Career Day’ event and talk to a bunch of bored 7th graders because he wanted to be a part of my life. This is the man who helped me with my school work so I’d get caught up after the accident and who makes sure I have lunch money and supplies for science projects and all that stuff. This is the man who is more like a dad to me than my own father. Kinda flies in the face of everything I was ever told about him. 

And, there are some other things that I have figured out for myself, too. Mom claims that she did everything for Gran and Gramps and that UB got away with murder. But, I know it isn’t true. Because I know from the things that I’ve heard and the stuff I’ve come to know about my Uncle that he paid for everything and not just the stuff he did wrong either. UB paid for . . . for being. I know now that when Gramps drank too much, and even when he didn’t, he took everything out on UB. 

The clincher was when we started going through those two old boxes that UB and Justin found in the storage area in the basement of the loft. I’m not used to seeing UB get all misty eyed and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t do it very often. But, the way he was looking at all the old stuff in those boxes made me see the truth. And when he said that he was pretty sure that his Mom, my Gran, actually loved him once upon a time, I got goose bumps. I mean who doesn’t know that their mother loves them. 

I may have bitched about my Mom, but I knew that she did everything she did, right down to making UB my guardian, because she loved me. Not because she had to, but because she just did. Period. I never doubted that. How does a person, a parent, a mother, put so much doubt into her own child that he has to wonder if his mom really loved him or not?

It’s nothing if not eye opening. And, it makes me wonder just who the heartless ones really were. 

The End.