“Yeah, Mama.I know, but it doesn’t change the fact that I need to look in his eyes.Preferably without you between us.”
“Oh,” she muttered, nodding and staring down at the table.“I-I understand.”
I finally noticed the sad, defeated set of her shoulders.Maybe I wasn’t the only one holding on to old stories.Maybe she’d had a hope or two left inside her that William Messer, Jr.could fold right back into her life all these years later.
“I’m sorry,” I said.“I don’t mean to hurt you by sayin’ this, but I need to face William alone.You left me to face Noah alone, so that’s how I need to do this too.”
“You’re right.You should do that.I understand.”
“Merv?”
She shook her head.She couldn’t look at me, so I stood from my chair at Abey’s dinner table and crouched in front of the woman who’d loved me so much, she loved me right into sickness.I held her hands, feeling the dryness of her skin and trying not to irritate the arthritis festering inside her joints too much.“Thank you for finally tellin’ me the truth, Mama.I know it wasn’t easy for you.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.“You can’t know how sorry, but for the longest time, I thought I had to keep the truth from you to protect you.And I thought I was protectin’ both our hearts, ’cause if you knew Willy… if he knew you, he would’ve loved you, but it would’ve taken all our safety away.I couldn’t risk it.
“A-and some of it was selfish.If he knew you existed, nothin’ would’ve stopped him from comin’ for you.I would’ve had to watch you bein’ loved by the only man I wanted to love me.But I betrayed him.He couldn’t love me, and I didn’t think I’d survive watchin’ him love someone else.So I tried to love you enough for both of us.
“For a long time, that’s what I thought I’d been doin’.When Noah died, I thought I could tell you the truth, but I never did, and it just got harder and harder.And then you left, and it was my fault, and I?—
“Oh God, what have I done?”Her hands lifted and she covered her face.Sobs burst out of her chest.“The things… you’ve had to… t-to live through.All that pain.I’m so sorry.”
“Mama, it wasn’t your fault.Not completely.I made choices as an adult that shaped my life, that made me an addict.I didn’twantto know the truth.I wanted to stay angry.It wasn’t until Stu came along that I figured it out.
“That’s how I knew Noah wasn’t my father.I knew because there was no world where I could ever treat Stu the way Noah treated me.I could never have treated Stu’s mama the way Noah treated you.”
She hugged herself, trying to quiet down the sobs, but it wasn’t working, and I heard my brothers and Abey on the porch.Someone had begun to pace; I knew because like clockwork, every fifteen or twenty seconds the same floorboard creaked.My siblings could hear our mama crying, and like I wanted to, their instinct was to do or say something to make it stop, but they were also trying to respect my wishes and stay out of it.
Carefully, I hugged her.“I can’t make this okay for you.You’ll have to figure out how to forgive yourself, Mama, but I love you and I forgive you.I have to, ’cause if I don’t find grace for what you did, the anger will come back, and I can’t risk that.
“Not with Stu watchin’.”
ChapterThirty-Seven
Dixon
An old,beat-up trailer sat like some white-trash mirage in a desert, parked alone in the middle of a dirt valley in nowhere Wyoming, with only one horse catching shade in a rickety lean-to next to it.
AJ waited for me in the van.She had multiple pep talks locked and loaded.I doubted I’d need one, no matter how this conversation went, but her support was the strength in my steps as I approached my father’s front door.
The magic man, who didn’t look now like he had much magic left in him, opened his screen door ten seconds after I rapped my knuckles against it.He was Willy Bronc for sure.He looked like the man in all the old photos I’d found online from his rodeo days, just older, but the light in his eyes had gone.
Silence had followed him to his door.I heard no noise at all.Not his breathing.Not the wind.Not the whir of a fan or an air conditioner in this unseasonable heat and humidity.For once, I found myself wishing for some kind of sound to kick on, to distract us both from the truth and intensity of what I’d come to say.
William Messer, Jr.seemed worn out and tired, and he stood there, looking at a man unknown to him, and waited for me to speak.
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and true, “but are you Mr.William Messer, Jr.?”
With narrowed eyes, he answered, “I am.And you are?”
“I, I’m… Shit.”Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be.“I’m your?—”
“Dixon,” he breathed, “is that you?My eyes ain’t what they used to be, and you look mighty different than you did even five years ago.”
Faster than the speed of light, my heart tried to punch through my ribs.“Y-you know who I am?”
“C’mon in,” he said easily, like some long-lost boy showing up on his doorstep was no big thing.“I expect you’ve got questions and a mountain of a story to tell me, and I’ll listen.”
“Yes, sir.”
