Page 43 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

“If you can’t do it for yourself or for your own children, you will do it for Athena and Stuey. And if you ever want to have a relationship with Dixon, you better get your shit figured out before he comes home, or he’ll just run again.”

Merv didn’t react. She just stood there and took it. Finally, her eyes cast down to the floor, she said, “Okay.”

“Mama,” I said, opening the door when I heard her on her porch. She’d just gotten back from a walk through downtown Wisper in the flurrying snow with Clay and her walking group, and she reached her arms high in the air, stretching out the muscles.

“Son?”

More than three weeks had passed since our family roundtable, and the weather had turned. We already had a foot of snow, and more would come.

Things had been strained between Merv and the rest of us, but she wasn’t shutting down like she would have in the past. And still no Dixon.

Bax and Bea were irritated with me, but preparing the ranch and the animals for winter took up most of our time, and Bax seemed to work out his anger as he worked the farm. Bea chewed me out nearly every time we talked, but her temper had died down some.

I hadn’t spoken to Roxanne since the week after Thanksgiving, when she had to drive out to Abey’s house for some work-related task. She said “Hi” and walked away from me, and I died inside at the lack of connection between us, but it wasn’t gone. It had just gone into a dormant state. I hoped.

She’d said I couldn’t work out my issues in five minutes. That was true, but I could at least get started. So that was what I did, and I would keep doing it until Roxanne was back in my arms and my brother’s illness was his alone.

Abey told me last week that Roxanne had decided to fly home to Oklahoma for Christmas, and I knew that would be hard for her. I had a plan to make it better, but I needed a little moral support.

“How was your workout?” I asked Merv, judging her mood.

“Good. That Clay’s a talker. I barely have to say anything. It’s kinda nice since I’m so out of shape.” She watched me. She could probably feel the energy buzzing under my skin. “What’s goin’ on with you?”

“There’s somethin’ I need to do. Will you come with me? It would mean missin’ Christmas mornin’ with your grandkids.”

“Is it important?”

“The most important thing I’ll ever do.”

“Then yes. I’d be glad to go with you.”

“Pack a weekend bag,” I said. “We leave tomorrow mornin’.”

Her eyebrows lifted in question. “A bag? Where we goin’?”

“Oklahoma.”

Understanding dawned in her eyes, and she nodded.

“I need to sweep someone off her feet.”

“Better pack a sweater then,” she said. “There’s a big winter storm predicted across the Rockies for Christmas.”

“Yes, ma’am, but ain’t no storm gettin’ in my way.”

We flew from the private air strip in Jackson on the same plane Roxanne and I had taken to California. I owed my buddy, Mason, for the use of his jet, and I knew he’d come to collect at some point.

When we touched down in Oklahoma City, Merv and I headed straight for a rental car company in the small regional airport, grabbed a car, and then I dropped Merv at our hotel’s spa while I made my preparations.

A friend of Evan Moran’s from back in his rodeo days lived south of the city on a horse ranch.

The guy, Billy Wilson, agreed to transport two of his draft horses into Choctaw with an old-fashioned sleigh.

I spent the afternoon decorating it with Christmas lights, and I stocked it with whiskey and champagne and blankets.

Billy said he’d stay close in case I needed him, but Evan told him I had experience with horses, so Billy agreed to let me loose on my own.

I didn’t let on that my experience with horses didn’t quite extend to recent times, nor did I tell the man that I’d never been around a draft horse.

The animals were huge! But the two mares he’d transported up in a trailer seemed docile enough, and he said they had been trained to work around city traffic.

When the sleigh was ready and the horses had been fed and watered and were hitched and itching to get going, I lifted the reins and kissed the air twice, and they walked on, out of the deserted city park I’d used to prepare.

It was only a mile to Roxanne’s parents’ house, and I spent that long mile trying to slow my racing heart and practice in my head what I wanted to say to her.

Merv sat next to me, her hair shiny and her skin glowing from her spa treatments. I’d called the hotel manager and asked her to drive my mama out to Choctaw so she could be a part of this with Roxanne and me.

I had no idea what I’d do if Roxanne said no the question I planned to ask her. Merv was there to pick me up off the floor if she did.

Roxanne was it for me. She was everything.

Merv was over the moon about being included in my life, and the hotel manager had been happy to drive her, especially when I tipped her probably the equivalent of a month’s salary and wished her happy holidays before she drove back to work.

“Are you nervous, son?” Merv asked as she rubbed her hands together.

Christmas Eve in Choctaw was a crisp thirty-four degrees and dropping at eight p.m. When we landed in OK City, the temperature hovered in the mid-forties, but snow was expected tonight, and I hoped for it.

Snow would make everything perfect with the twinkling lights and Christmas decorations smattered everywhere through town.

Roxanne’s parents’ middle-class neighborhood had been decked to the nines, and a huge blow-up Santa waved at us from someone’s front yard as I guided the horses onto Forest Cove Road. Traffic was non-existent. Everyone was home with family and loved ones, celebrating the holiday.

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel like I might be sick. If she says no…”

“She won’t. How could she? You love each other. I don’t have to know what happened or what you said to upset her, but you just say you’re sorry and tell her all the ways you love her, and she’ll say yes.”

Merv nodded to herself, trying to convince us both she was right. I hoped like hell she was.

“I asked Roxanne to keep Dixon’s secrets for me. She said no and she broke up with me.”

Merv harrumphed a laugh. “I knew I liked her.”

“I’m sorry he didn’t keep his word, Mama. I really thought he would this time. But now I know that it has nothin’ to do with me or you or anybody else. If Dixon ever comes home, it will be because he’s ready and because he wants it, not because we do.”

The Coulters had called me back to ask if we’d heard from Dixon.

He’d taken off from Mad River without a word.

No one in town or at his NA group had heard from him, and he’d skipped out on his weekly therapy sessions.

Brenda had wished us a happy holiday and said she had faith Dixon was on his way home to us, that maybe he had gotten waylaid, but she knew in her heart we’d see him again.

But I knew he had run just like every time in the past when things got too hard. I had no way of knowing if he was using, but if he was, it had no bearing on my life anymore.

He had been right that his decisions were his alone and that I shouldn’t feel guilt or shame about them. I’d done everything I knew to help my brother. If he ever came to terms with his demons, he could come home. His family would always be there, waiting to welcome him back.

“Here we go,” I said as I pulled the horses to a stop in front of the second house on the right. The mid-century brick home had a long curved driveway, great for the horses, but I could see the cracks needing to be filled in and resealed.

“Wait, Brand,” Merv said before I disembarked. She held onto my forearm with a strength that would rival a pro ball player’s grip on his bat. “I never said thank you. You’re right about Dixon, and I’m learnin’ to live with the choices your brother has made.

“Dr. Tammy says I have to move on. I can’t stop livin’ just because one of my sons is sick.

When she said it like that, it made sense.

If you or Bax or Abey had an illness, I wouldn’t stop livin’.

Why should addiction be any different? But I know how hard you tried to help Dixon, and I’m grateful.

I know you didn’t do it for me, but I’m still proud of you and grateful for your generosity. ”

“Thank you, Mama. But you’re wrong, it was for you. Part of it anyway. I’m just sorry nothin’ I did for him worked. But you and Dr. Tammy are right. It’s time we move on. It’s time we live. It’s time all that pain from our past takes a backseat to happiness.”

Merv nodded, and she leaned over to kiss my cheek.

Taking a deep breath, I climbed down, patted the horses and thanked them for their hard work, and then I helped Merv down from the sleigh, and she followed me to the Fittses’ front door, where a wreath had been hung, decorated with dried oranges, berries, and deep red bows.

When I pushed my finger to the doorbell, a bell chorus of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” rang out.

Thirty seconds later, the door swung open, and I could hear little kids squealing in delight.

Somewhere inside the house in a room I couldn’t see into, a TV played Miracle on 34 th Street, and it sounded like another TV in a different room was playing a football game.

Glasses clinked together and more than two women were arguing about something animatedly and laughing.

Roxanne’s parents’ house was a busy, happy clatter of Christmas sounds, sights, and scents. The smell of warm cinnamon wafted out to me on the front porch, and balsam and cedar hinted in the air.

Finally, I focused on the person who’d opened the door, and it was a man with a bit of a beer gut under an Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt, a trimmed, graying beard, and a hint of laugher in his eyes.

“Duuude,” the man said, eyeing me, my cowboy hat, my mama, and then the sleigh. “You’re gonna put all these women in an uproar.”

I straightened my coat and my sweater beneath. “Excuse me?”

“We were just lookin’ you up online, and all five of Riri’s sisters, including my wife, said they’d leave their husbands for you.”

My face flushed Christmas red. “Uh. Well… sorry?”

“Drew,” he said, chuckling and extending his hand to shake mine. “You’re a brave man, Brand Lee. Good luck.” He stepped back from the door to allow Merv and me inside and jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Go on then,” he said, “go get your girl. She’s in the kitchen.”

“Thank you. Uh, this is my mama, Mervella.”

“Come on in, Merv. May I call you Merv?” Drew asked with faux formality.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Merv said with her usual sneer.

Drew laughed. “I think you’ll fit in just fine around here.”

We entered the small foyer, I removed my hat and tucked it under my arm, and a little girl appeared from the living room. She reached for my hand and held it. “Are you Aunt Riri’s boyfriend? She told my mommy you were fifty shades, but you look like one color to me. Like my tan crayon.”

A woman came charging at us, her face the same shade as the red bulbs on the huge fir tree behind her, and her hair was the same color as Roxanne’s, light brown with hints of wheat and shiny flax.

“Oh my God, Maizie. Leave the man alone. I’m so sorry,” she said to me, embarrassed, and pulled Maizie away by her hand.

“Maizie, get your cousins. Grandma said y’all can open your Christmas Eve gifts now while Aunt Riri and the nice man talk. ”

Maizie, who couldn’t have been more than seven, pumped her fist in the air, smiling and flashing a missing front tooth. Her white sweater had a knitted Christmas tree on the front, with little light-up bulbs sewn into it and tiny, multi-colored pom-poms for the ornaments.

“Present time!” she screeched to her cousins.

A scurry of children poured out of every room and headed straight for the tree, some near Maizie’s age and others older and in their tween and teenage phases. They all knelt or sat cross-legged around the tree, staring at the opening that led to the kitchen.

An older man and woman appeared through the rounded arch, each carrying a mug, and the woman, Roxanne’s mama, held a third mug. She nodded at Merv and me and handed the extra mug to Merv. I could see the shape of Roxanne’s eyes in her mama’s, and she had her dad’s height and regal stature.

I assumed Roxanne’s sisters were the five women now huddled up by the fireplace, watching me and whispering to one another, and their husbands were the men plopped on a sofa, in a small den off the living room, all of their eyes fixed on a huge flat-screen TV showing a football game playing at a low volume.

Drew threw me a thumbs up over the back of the couch, and the other men peeked occasionally, trying to appear uninterested but clearly curious about the unexpected Christmas Eve drama.

“Hello, Brand. I was hopin’ we might get to meet you. I’m Doris, and this is Ed, Roxanne’s parents.”

Ed reached out to shake my hand and then Merv’s. “You’re both very welcome,” he said with an easy smile.

“You can meet everybody else later,” Doris said, and she shooed me toward her kitchen. “Mrs. Lee, please join us, won’t you, while your son and my daughter talk?”

Merv looked up at me and I nodded. What I needed to say to Roxanne didn’t really warrant a peanut gallery, so I left Merv there with Ed and Doris and took the last steps to their kitchen and my destiny.

When I saw her, Roxanne stole the breath from my chest without even touching me.

She stood in front of the kitchen counter, her hands planted on it to hold her up, watching me coming toward her, breath heaving in her chest, fire-lit eyes glued to mine. The look in them was curious but wary, and I saw a little hurt still there too.

“What are you doin’ here?” she asked, breathless, and the sound of her voice reminded me how much I’d missed it.

I’d missed her more than I could ever say, missed her laugh and her willingness to try to see the good in everyone. I missed the way I could feel her heart slow and her body relax when I touched her. I missed the gentle way she touched me, even when we were in the throes of hard sex.

She’d only said it twice, but I missed the way her eyes had flashed with forever when she told me she loved me.

Her name came out of my mouth like a plea. “ Roxanne , if you’ll permit me, there’s some things I need to say to you.”

Her fingers began to tap the counter. “Here? Now?”

I nodded. “Will you listen? Tell me yes.”