Page 98 of Forever Finds Us
“Hey, Brand. I’ve got an update on the search for your brother. I tried calling Abey a couple times today, but she’s been busy. I can wait to talk to her at book club later this week if that works better?”
“No,” I said, my heart racing, “please go ahead. What have you found?”
Abey hadn’t decided to look for Dixon again because the family was worried. I mean, we were, but Bax and Bea wanted to adopt Stuey, and they had been coming up against roadblocks because the local courts wouldn’t accept the notarized paper relinquishing Dixon’s parental rights he provided the day he’d abandoned his son.
They’d found a death certificate for Kellie Gale, Stu’s birth mother, but not one for Dixon so the judge had contended that until he could speak to Dixon and make certain he was in the right frame of mind to make such a big decision, he wouldn’t grant the adoption.
But we still had no clue where Dixon was. It had been a year and a half since he’d disappeared from the Coulters’ place in Mad River, and now we needed to talk to him but hadn’t had any luck finding him. That was when we brought in Billie again.
“Unfortunately, not much. Look. I’ll keep my auto searches set to alert me if the dude comes back online, but from what I can tell, Dixon’s still off the grid. He either doesn’t have a cell phone or he’s using a burner. That’s not unusual for addicts though.
“But I can tell you he’s alive. There’s no John Doe cases or death certificates I can find matching his description. The floral tattoo you gave me a picture of helps with eliminating him when a case pops up with a similar description.”
“You weren’t able to find him in a rehab facility anywhere?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t in one. But I can’t hack every single rehab in the US. If we had a clue as to where he might be, it would be a start. I’ve looked through the rehabs in the area of California where he was before, in and around Redding, and there’s one other place in Idaho I caught a short trail of him, but that’s a dead end.
“I can’t find him.”
I sighed. I couldn’t help it. The hope I’d had dissolved inside my chest like there was a leak in my lungs.
“I wish I had better news for you,” Billie said. “Look, I’m not usually one for pep talks, but Abey and Roxi are family to me, which I guess means you and Dixon are too. Don’t give up hope. He’s got something to live for. He has a son. I used to be a jaded bitch, and I would’ve told you that didn’t always matter to an addict, but I’m about to pop out a munchkin myself, so I finally get it. It does matter. It doesn’t mean your little bro’s addiction won’t win, but I know he’s fighting, wherever he is.”
“Thank you, Billie. That means a lot. Can I pay you something? I know you said you’re doin’ this as a favor to Abey, but I don’t feel right knowin’ how much work you’ve put into this.”
“I won’t take your money, Brand. I don’t need it. But you can make a donation to Ace’s House or to a rehab here in Wyoming or something. That’d be cool.”
“I’ll do both,” I said, “in your name. Thanks again.”
Bax and Bea had a good lawyer, a Wisper local, Brady Douglas, and he said he could try to find a way around Dixon’s absence so they could adopt Stu. Bax didn’t feel right about going forward without at least notifying Dixon, but even if we couldn’t find him and they weren’t able to go ahead with the adoption, it wouldn’t change Stuey’s role in their lives, in mine or Merv’s.
But Dixon’s story still ate at me. Not because I wanted to fix him, but because it was an ending I couldn’t control, an unfinished life. A loose thread that tickled my neck.
But I had better ways now to deal with my control issues. Much sexier ways.
A mile and a half away from Bax’s and Merv’s houses, the log A-frame I’d built for my wife sat nestled between the trees on a bluff, and the front door opened and closed softly, so I left my study and rushed to our living room to greet Roxanne after a long day’s work. Her uniform was rumpled, and she looked tired, but she seemed happy to see me.
She smiled at me as she hung her hat on the hook by the door, and all the rest of my worries floated away.
Through therapy and meeting and talking with other families of addicts, I knew that I might never see my little brother again.
But I still had hope.
Roxanne
“What is that?” I squeaked. “It looks like one of those crocheted plant hangers from the seventies, but gargantuan sized.”
“That, my beautiful wife, is a suspension system.”
After work, my husband led me to the secret room in our home only he and I knew was there.
I supposed my sister-in-law, Bea, knew it was there because she had been the only other person Brand allowed to work on it when he built it, but she didn’t know what was in it. Bax, Rye, and Clay had all seen the plans too. They poured the foundation and helped frame our house, so they knew something was there in the room behind our bedroom in the loft of our gorgeous mountain house with fabulous counter space.
But I was betting not one of them could guess what Brand had transformed the room into.
I hadn’t even seen it, not since we’d painted the walls and Brand asked me to trust him to outfit it with new toys for us to indulge in. We’d started out with white walls and rudimentary tools and toys—dildos, crops, nipple clamps, which I found I loved—but we were moving up in the world. My devilishly handsome other half had finally convinced me to let him go to town.
The deep, dark, dusty-blue color of the walls calmed my nerves. And I had a lot of nerves right about now. Some of the items I saw when he led me to our newly decked-out playroom looked medieval.
