Page 78 of Roads Behind Us
“Bax? What’s up?”
“I need formula.”
“What’s that noise? Is that… a baby?”
“Yeah,” I yelled over the incessant crying. “Abey’s on her way, but he’s hungry and I got nothin’ to feed him. You said you have formula at Ace’s House?”
“I’m on my way,” Devo said, and she hung up.
“Oh God, Dixon, what have you done now?” my sister said as she looked over my shoulder at the baby sitting on my kitchen table in a fucking picnic basket that looked like it was ready to unravel and fall apart.
Bea held him as long as she could, but the wailing hadn’t stopped once, and she was more than freaked out.
Abey raised her voice over the crying. “He didn’t even come to the house?”
I shook my head and looked at Bea, who happened to resemble a little girl, scared and worried, like Athena when her favorite lamb sprained his knee.
“No,” I said, “but he’s been around. Like a goddamn skulkin’ cat for weeks! I knew it. I felt it. Bea thinks he snuck in here and stole the extra key to her cabin.”
“The baby was alone in there this mornin’,” Bea said. “I wasn’t plannin’ to go inside, but I… forgot somethin’, so I ran in real quick, and thank God I did. I think your brother was lurkin’ around in the trees, makin’ sure somebody figured out that the baby was in there, but as soon as I carried him out the door, Dixon took off in his car.
“Clay tried to get the license plate number, but it was too late.” Bea shook her phone in the air. “One of the guys from the cabin crew just texted me and said it was an older, silver Honda Accord, but he has no idea what year and he didn’t see the plate. He said he saw it parked off the edge of the road where not a lot of people would notice it. Hell, I didn’t even notice and I drove right by it.”
“Goddamn you, Dixon.” He had the thing I’d spent the last three years mourning, and he just left it? Gave up his kid just like that? “What the fuck is wrong with him?” But I knew the answer. His and my fates had been intertwined the day Candy and Duo died, even more than they had already been.
My good knee jumped so fast beneath the table, I thought it might launch me to the moon right alongside Red Pepper the bull. “He did a good job of hidin’,” I said. “And the long hair probably kept any of the guys from recognizin’ him. He went to school with half of ’em.”
“He doesn’t look exactly… healthy, either,” Bea added.
“Bax?”
I didn’t answer Abey. I couldn’t. There wasn’t anything I could say that would help the situation. No matter how hard I’d tried, I’d never been able to fix my brother. He’d been a fuck-up his whole life. Our dad did a good amount of the fuck-up himself. Dixon was confused about who he should be. He always had been, and Merv hadn’t made that better by coddling him and excusing every stupid thing he ever did.
He'd been drinking heavily since he was sixteen years old, but the drugs hadn’t started until after Candy and Duo died.
“Bax, look at me, please?”
When I finally did, my sister saw the anger and the devastation on my face.
“Breathe,” she said.
Clenching my fists around my crutch handles, I stood and screamed, “I can’t! I-I don’t understand. I need to get out of here.”
“Go, brother, but come back soon so we can deal with this. I’m callin’ Mama.”
“Fuck! Well then I really need to leave.”
“C’mon,” Bea said. “I’ll drive.”
I didn’t say a word. I slapped the kitchen door open and almost fell down the stairs to get to Bea’s truck because the anger and pain were bigger than my body could contain.
Bea drove for miles without a word. I knew she had to be confused, but she must’ve understood that I couldn’t say the thing she wanted to hear.
An hour passed at least, and all the while I seethed and I tried so fucking hard not to cry.
The day Candy and Duo died came back to me in violent waves—the feeling of fear I’d felt when I realized I would have to raise my daughter alone, the look on Athena’s face when I had to tell her that her mama wouldn’t ever come home, and the loss I’d felt when I knew I’d never hold Duo, that there would be no baby boy. He was just gone, and it felt so fucking wrong.
The memories rocked me so hard I almost asked Bea to pull over so I could puke out the window.
