Page 93 of Forever Finds Us
“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.
“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.”
