Page 42 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Brand

“I have somethin’ to tell y’all,” I said, watching my family’s faces as they gathered in Bax’s kitchen.

They had no clue the shit I was about to dump on them, but when I texted and asked them to meet me, they’d all agreed.

Maybe they expected good news about Lee Construction and the projects we’d been building on the property, or maybe they expected news about Roxanne and me. Every single one of them had badgered me for information over the last month, even Athena. Especially Athena, and even Stuey asked, “Where Ro?”

But I couldn’t talk to my family about Roxanne, because if I did, the need I felt for her would rise up and rage, and it wasn’t time yet. I wasn’t quite ready.

“Can we sit?”

“Sure,” Bax said, and we all took a chair at his kitchen table. “What’s up?”

“The kids aren’t here?” I asked. “There’s no chance Athena’s listenin’ in?”

My brother’s eyebrows dipped, and his head tilted in alarm. “They’re outside with Rye and Aubrey, like you requested.”

Wincing internally, I tried to shake off the “talking to” I’d received from Roxanne’s best friend. She’d chewed me out thoroughly after Roxanne told her she’d dumped me. Roxanne hadn’t told Aubrey why, not the full truth anyway.

Even after I’d let her down and broken her heart, Roxanne had kept my secrets safe.

But it was time to set the truth free because Roxanne had been right about me. Aubrey too.

Dixon’s sickness was like a virus, and I’d caught it years ago.

I tried to get ahold of him again, called the Coulters since he didn’t have a cell phone, but I hadn’t heard back from him, and whether it worked for his timing or not, I needed to come clean to my family.

For Roxanne, for Stuey and Merv, Bax, Bea, and Athena.

And for me.

“What’s goin’ on, son?” Merv asked, looking worried across the table. Abey and Devo had just arrived, and they pulled up chairs between Bax and Merv.

“I talked to Dixon.”

Merv gasped, and Bax narrowed his eyes.

“When?” Abey asked.

“I don’t have exact dates, but let me start from the beginning so you can understand. I won’t ask for your forgiveness. I’m not sure I deserve it, but here goes…”

Bea cried for Stuey’s mama. Merv looked relieved her youngest son was still breathing, and Bax looked like he wanted to murder me for keeping the truth about Stuey’s birth mother from him and Bea. And Abey looked ready to start a manhunt.

“When you saw him,” Merv said, “he looked good? You’re sure he wasn’t high?”

“As far as I could tell, no. He seemed to have landed in a good place with good people, and he said he’d been seein’ a therapist once a week and goin’ to meetings.”

Relief oozed out of Merv, and she nodded.

“If he’s sober, why hasn’t he come home?” Abey asked. “What did he say about that?”

“Just that he wasn’t ready, but his plan had been to come home in the new year.”

“Thanksgiving was last week,” Merv said hopefully. “That’s only a month away.”

“Yes, but Mama, I tried to call him this mornin’ before I got here, to tell him it was time for me to let you know what’s been goin’ on. I promised him I’d let him tell you about Stu’s birth mother himself.

“But the people he’s been stayin’ with, Brenda and Brooks Coulter, said he wasn’t there and they didn’t know where he’d gone.

They haven’t seen him in a few days. He didn’t show up for a job he’d been hired to do at a local farm, and his clothes and the few possessions he had were gone from his cabin when Brenda checked. ”

The disappointment hearing Brenda tell me Dixon had run again had been crushing.

My chest felt heavy when she said it, like there was a brick on my lungs not letting me take a full breath.

I’d had to force myself to see that the knowledge wasn’t any different than the heartache I’d been carrying all these years, and that my brother’s actions didn’t have to affect my life the way I’d been letting them since I was eighteen years old.

But I had to work to not let the lost hope I felt wreck me again.

“Well, maybe he decided to come home early,” Merv said. “Maybe he’s on his way, but he didn’t wanna say goodbye to those people. He never did like goodbyes.”

“It’s possible,” I admitted. I’d had the same thought, but Dixon’s history said otherwise. “But there’s no way for us to know because we can’t call him directly. He doesn’t have a cell phone, at least not one I know about.”

“You’ll see,” Merv said. “He’ll show up. He’s a good boy.”

“He’s not a boy ,” Abey said. “That’s part of the problem, Mama. You know this. If he does come home, you cannot keep treatin’ him like your baby.”

“Listen,” I said. “I found a therapist. I’ve been talkin’ with her for a couple weeks.

And yesterday, I went to a support group for families of addicts.

I think y’all should check it out. Even after just one meeting, I’ve learned a lot.

And it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who struggles with how to relate to my brother and how not to let his illness run my life. ”

Bax had been quiet, but now he asked, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’d you keep his secrets? Why didn’t you come straight here to tell us Dixon was alive when every day we worried and wondered?”

“I…” Here was the hard part. The part I’d been dreading. I didn’t want to rip open old wounds. Didn’t want to remind my family about the hell Dixon had to live through. I still didn’t think Bax had any idea how bad things had gotten with our father. “I felt guilty. I thought it was my fault.”

“What, son? What was your fault?”

“When I graduated high school and left home, I also left Dixon, and I thought it was my fault that things with him turned out the way they did. I thought I should’ve done more to protect him.”

“From what?” Merv asked.

Looking her straight in the eye, I confronted her with the truth she’d been trying to hide from since her husband died.

“From Dad. He hid the worst of it from Bax, Mama, because he wanted Bax workin’ the farm with him, but Abey and I saw the monster that man had become.

You justified his behavior or you ignored it or dissociated from it.

But when I left, Dixon was alone here. None of us can know how bad it got. ”

“ I was here,” Merv said. “I would’ve seen if…”

“You were here,” Abey said, “but you weren’t out there in that barn with them every day. You worked and you ran your household. God, I remember you sayin’ that all the time. Like made beds and a clean kitchen and bathrooms were more important than all the stuff that went down with Dad.”

Bea and Devo had been mostly silent, but it was clear they were uncomfortable. This—our mom and dad and the dynamic between them and us—had been the heart of the matter for years. But now, everything had come to a head, and we had to face it.

I did. If I wanted Roxanne in my life, the truth needed to come out and I needed to be free of my brother’s secrets.

And I wanted Roxanne like I’d never wanted anyone or anything in my life.

I loved her, and I missed her so much. I woke from dreams of her, sobbing. In the dreams, she still loved me, and we were together, building our house and making love in the stupid yurt again.

And the therapist helped me see that I needed to come clean for Dixon too. I’d thought all this time that protecting him showed I loved him, but in truth, it was the opposite. Me keeping his secrets only helped him stay sick.

Merv began to shut down. I watched it happen; her body became rigid in her chair, muscles tightening, face pinching. This was hard for her too.

“Why, Mama?” Bax asked. “Why did Dad hate Dixon? Why are we in this mess now? What did he do to his own son? You have to know. You may’ve been distracted, but you were here.”

“I don’t know.”

“Mama,” Abey said softly. “Please don’t get defensive. No one is blamin’ you or judgin’ you. It was hard for you too. We know that, but we need the truth so we can help Dixon when he comes home.”

Merv looked around the table. She relaxed a fraction, loosened her arms at her sides, but I could see in her eyes she wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know.

“It… What you’re askin’ isn’t somethin’ a mother talks to her children about.

You’re right that you deserve to know, but I’m not prepared to discuss it today.

Besides, this is about your little brother.

Don’t you think he should know before all of you?

When he comes home, I’ll be ready and I’ll talk to him. ”

She stood and smoothed her sweater over her hips with shaking hands.

“ If he comes home,” I said. She still wasn’t hearing us. She was still trying so hard to see only what she wanted. “Mama, the therapist I’ve been talkin’ to is really nice. I’d like you to talk to her too.”

She scoffed. “You want me to go to therapy ?”

All eyes were on me and Merv now. This was something my siblings and I had discussed for years, but Merv had always been insistent that she could handle her issues on her own. Just like I had. Like Dixon had. Which was the reason we were all in this mess.

“Yeah, Mama,” Bax said. “Brand’s goin’.” He looked at his wife. “Bea and I will go to help us process what happened with Stuey’s birth mom and how to handle that as he gets older.” Bea nodded, grabbed his hand, and held it on the table. And then Bax looked at Merv. “So, why can’t you?”

“Because,” she said. “Because in my day we didn’t spill our guts to strangers and pay them to listen to our sorrows.”

In a rare flash of anger, Abey’s chair slid out behind her as she pushed away from the table and to her feet.

“It’s not ‘your day’ anymore, Merv. Things have changed.

You may not like it or be comfortable with it, but that’s reality.

And this family needs help. We can’t keep goin’ like we have been. It’s too important.