My brother’s girl—shit, what’s her name?For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.She didn’t say anything, but she looked up at me, and I watched as realization dawned in her eyes.She lifted the phone on her desk so slowly, it looked like she was moving in slow motion, and she pressed it to her ear, hit a button with a long finger, then spoke quietly, “Get out hereright now.”
She hung up the phone and stood, smoothing wrinkles out of her uniform pants with flat hands.“Dixon.”
“Hello.I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”Looking at the nametag over the pocket of her stiff brown shirt, it read R.Fitts-Lee, and then I remembered.“Wait.Roxanne?You were my brother’s girl.”
“Roxi.”She nodded.“And now I’m his wife.”
A door slammed somewhere in the back hallway.I still remembered what that long, daunting corridor looked like from my teens and all the times I’d been dragged back to the sheriff’s office.
I wasn’t in trouble now, but my tongue felt thick and my heart started racing again.“Y’all got married?”I said to Roxi, but my eyes didn’t stray from the hallway.“I’m sorry I missed it.That’s great.Congrat?—”
But my best wishes stuck in my throat when my baby sister appeared at the end of the hallway.
Tears filled Abey’s eyes, and she rushed toward me and threw her arms around my neck, reaching up on the tips of her work boots to hug me.
I had been right to find her first.My sister was the embodiment of light and love, and her acceptance of me bolstered me and infused me with the confidence I needed to face the rest of our family.
She held on tight, and tentatively, I hugged back, letting feathery wisps of her hair that had frizzed out of its bun tickle my cheek while I remembered the last time she’d tried to hug me, when I broke my arm because I had been too drunk to stand upright on my own.
But I’d pushed her away then, and that broken arm was the reason I’d been in the passenger seat of my sister-in-law’s truck the day she died.And it was maybe the reason the CPR I’d administered hadn’t worked.
The pain pills the hospital had given me for the break had been the reason I’d discovered heroin.And for a long time, I blamed those doctors for my dependence, but the truth was that my addiction was my own damn fault.I knew the first time I took one that those pills would lead me to Hell if I kept taking them.I remembered the moment I held the pill bottle over my toilet, but I didn’t dump them.I pocketed them and shoved two in my mouth.
It was the last decision I remembered making before Hell really had rained its fire over my life.And it was the decision I regretted more than any other because it led to the most dire mistakes I’d ever made.
Abey let go and began patting me all over, like she was trying to make sure I was real and at the same time check me for weapons or drugs.She pulled back and looked in my eyes.“Are you okay?When did you get here?Have you been home yet?”
“Yes, I’m okay.I just got here, and no, I haven’t been home yet.”
“Shit,” she said.“Mama’s gonna lose her mind.”
“How is Merv?How’s her health?”I asked, using the nickname we’d given her years ago.She wasn’t “Mama” in my head anymore.Good manners would make me call her “Mama” to her face, but inside, the name was too vulnerable, too painful, because mamas were supposed to protect and defend.Mervella Lee hadn’t so much, and part of the reason I’d come home hinged on being able to flip some darkness from my past into the light of day.Merv would be pretty integral to that objective.
But she wasn’t the main reason I’d come home.That honor went to Stu.
And to me.
“She’s good.Older than you’ll remember, but she’s healthy.Um, okay, can you wait for me?The mayor’s sittin’ in my office right now and we’re on a video call with the governor.Or Roxi could drive you to the ranch.”
Abey looked at her deputy, and Roxi nodded agreement, but I didn’t want to inconvenience her.
“Thanks, but I need to stop in at the community center next door.I checked online, and they have AA and NA meetings there.I wanna get the schedule.I’ll wait for you, if that’s alright?I might grab somethin’ from the coffee shop.”
“Yeah,” my sister said, wiping an escaped tear from under her eye with her index finger, “that’s fine.I’ll be a half hour probably.”She grabbed hold of my hand, squeezed, and smiled so widely that my heart ached.“Just… don’t leave, okay?”
Shaking my head, I promised, “I won’t.”
No, I wouldn’t be doing that.No more running.I’d come home to stay.It was fixing to be painful and uncomfortable, but my son was a bright and shining tether to my hometown, and there was no goddamn way I’d risk losing my grip on it again.
When I leftthe station and headed across the alleyway to Ace’s House, Wisper’s community center, the midday sun blinded me.I’d left my sunglasses in a roadside john somewhere in northern Nevada and hadn’t bothered to replace them, but now I wished I had.
There used to be a sundry shop down Main Street.Henly was the owner’s name, and if he was still running it, I was betting they’d have some cheap shades.If I had time after talking to the community center people, I’d head that way and see what I could find.
When I was a kid, the building I had just entered housed the local newspaper’s offices.Merv could probably tell me when that had gone out of business and been bought by whoever turned it into a community center, but somehow, it still smelled the same, like musty, yellowed paper and wet ink.
As my feet crossed the threshold, a memory bubbled up from the depths of my subconscious of my dad dragging me along to place an ad in the paper for summer help on our sheep farm.My brothers and I helped after school, but we had been young and Noah Lee needed grown men with muscles and lambing experience.
Usually, I worked hard not to let memories of him enter my active thoughts, not unless my ass was glued to the seat of a chair in a therapist’s office, but this memory seemed innocent enough.There were no fists shaping the memory or words of degradation, just a little boy following the man he looked up to more than anyone into an old brick building, hoping that after, his dad might take him for an ice cream cone or a milkshake.
