Page 88 of Roads Behind Us
“Then whose job is it?”
“It’s theirs.”
“And if they don’t do their jobs?”
“Then it doesn’t get done,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean it falls on you. Do you think your dad would like to know that you think his happiness is your responsibility? Do you think he wants that for you? It’s a really big job.”
“No,” she whispered. “He probably wouldn’t.”
“You can’t just add a little of this and a little of that to make a person happy. They have to find and accept happiness for themselves.”
She narrowed her eyes and speared me with them. “So if you know this, then why haven’t you accepted it for yourself?”
Chapter Thirty
Bax
I spent most of the afternoon and evening in my room, working hard not to scream.
Images of Dixon’s baby kept flashing like neon lights in my head, and they warred with the image of Duo I’d conjured up and held tucked beneath my ribcage, behind my heart for three years.
It wasn’t the same goddamn kid! Had everybody forgotten that?
I fell in and out of sleep and dreams until I succumbed to exhaustion. And Bea never came back after she went to her cabin to call Brand. Where the hell was she? Maybe she decided to run after all. I couldn’t blame her if she had.
But when she was by my side, the strength I felt allowed me to act like a semi-normal adult again, and when she was gone, I felt like the same sorry guy I’d been the last few years. The shit dad, terrible son, brother, and husband. I felt like a failure, but how did that make sense? My wife and child died, but it wasn’t my doing. How had I managed to make it my fault?
Why had I done that to myself?
And just to fuck me up even further, Candy was there again in my dreams, screwing up the deepest sleep I’d had in forever.
“You like that show I told you about?” she asked.
It was clear this was a dream because the dead mother of my children was dressed in flowing robes. I felt no wind, but the yellow thing billowed out behind her in the bedroom we used to share, and it fluttered like she stood on the tallest mountain peak.
She almost glowed, she was so bright with love. Her light reminded me of that song from the ’80s about wearing sunglasses at night. Candy loved ’80s music. We used to argue about it ’cause I could never stand it, but she hated country.
“Yeah, I like Bea.” I answered her question directly ’cause I was damn tired of talking in metaphors. “I love her.”
Candy nodded. She closed her eyes and smiled, like it was the answer she’d been looking for all along.
“It’s a good show.”
“And the baby?” I asked. What was her answer for him?
Candy shrugged, and she lifted her arms as if she wanted to give me something, but her hands were empty. “Watched over him as long as I could.”
Watched over him… like a guardian?
The delicate color of her skin began to fade, but somehow I knew this would be the last time she’d come to me in my dreams.
This was goodbye, and it was overdue.
“Thank you, Candy. I love you. I always will, but it’s time for me to move on now.”
Half solid, half see-through, she stopped in the middle of her disappearing act. “The hard road is behind you, Bax. Take care of them and yourself and follow a new one now.”
And then she was gone.
