Chapter Eight
“Tomorrow”—Sixx:A.M.
T he next morning, I decided to get up early and go by the attorney’s office that signed the will. The front desk receptionist didn’t seem overly optimistic that Mr. Rushing would be able to squeeze me in, but I was waiting until I absolutely had to leave.
Just in case.
“Mr. Dixon?” a rotund man with heavily gray hair asked as he stuck his head out into the waiting room.
“Yes, sir. That’s me,” I replied.
“Come with me, please,” he instructed, and I immediately jumped to my feet. I followed him down a short hall and into an office full of open books, several computer screens, and plenty of sunshine filtering in through the sheer curtains. “Have a seat.”
I did and waited.
“I’m surprised that you came in. I’d been in the process of tracking you down. Without a forwarding address, it’s been a process. Legalities, you understand,” he began. He clicked away at his keyboard before he found what he was looking for, then he returned his attention to me. “All the furniture and belongings were sold in an estate sale, per the conditions of the will. She figured you wouldn’t want any of it because you didn’t know her. That money was donated to a children’s home, per her wishes.”
“I don’t really care about all that. What I care about is how this happened. How did a woman whom I’ve never met, leave her home to me? How long was she aware of who I was? And why didn’t she come forward sooner—like back when I was a kid?” I asked.
He sighed and removed his glasses. “When Mrs. Dickson found out she was dying, she was alone. At the urging of a neighbor, she did one of those DNA tests to see if her deceased son or grandson had any illegitimate children she didn’t know about. You came up but your last known address was here—and you weren’t. She also didn’t know why your name was spelled differently—unless it was to hide you from your great grandmother out of spite.” He shrugged.
I let out a heavy breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding.
“Though she died before she was able to find you, you are her only heir, and she wanted you to have her home. Mrs. Dickson was a… uh… overly, um… stern woman. It had caused a rift between her and her son, then in turn, she never really knew her grandson—your father. In her later years, I think she realized what that had cost her, and she was trying to make amends. This probably means very little to you at this point, but I felt you had a right to know. I honestly don’t expect you to keep the house since you live out of state. I don’t think she did either.”
“Jesus,” I muttered as I ran a shaking hand through my dark-blond hair.
“How did you find out about the house anyway?” he asked with unhidden curiosity in his tone.
A humorless laugh escaped my throat. “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Try me,” he countered.
With a sigh, I explained what had happened. By the time I was done, the attorney’s eyes were wide, and he shook his head in disbelief. “Mr. Kris Kimble, you said?”
“Yeah. At least that’s what the waitress said his name was.” I shrugged.
“Well, I’ll be. What a coincidence.”
“What?” I didn’t know if I could handle many more coincidences.
He held up a finger as he hit the speaker phone button. “Miss Howard, can you please go get that box Mr. Kimble dropped off?”
“Yes sir. Be right there, sir,” she replied, and the call was ended.
“Box he dropped off?”
“Mr. Kimble attended the estate sale. There were several boxes in the corner of the storage room on the main level of the house. They were sealed and in a back corner. My guess is they were dropped off after the death of your father and Mrs. Dickson had forgotten she had them—after all, she was over a hundred years old when she died. Anyway, Mr. Kimble bought them unopened, as unknown lots. He brought one back in because he said he didn’t know what to do with the items inside, but that the new owner might want them—if it was a relative of the Dicksons,” the attorney explained. “I didn’t look through it thoroughly. It looked like some old pictures. We put it in our storage room, but somehow, we found it with our Christmas decorations when we pulled them out this year.”
The woman from the front desk brought in what looked like an old boot box. She was carrying it to Mr. Rushing, but he motioned for her to give it to me.
“Thank you,” I told her. She blushed and hurried out of the office.
“I’m very sorry to rush you out, but I have a client coming in about ten minutes. If you can stop by later in the week, I can have all of the paperwork ready for you to sign for the house.” He stood up, politely signifying the end of our conversation.
I got to my feet and shook his hand. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, especially with your tight schedule.”
“Of course. I wish I’d had a bigger time slot for you today. Mondays are always busy though, then I’ll be in court the next couple of days. Thursday is fairly open, so I’ll have Miss Howard call you and set up a time for then or Friday,” he said with a kind smile.
I tucked the slightly heavy box under my arm and went out to my truck. After a quick glance at the time, I set it in the passenger seat and headed into work. If traffic wasn’t bad, I had time to grab some coffee and a sandwich before going into work.
Killswitch met me at the door as I was carrying my food and coffee in.
“Thanks, boss man.” I grinned.
“Any time. You wanna eat then I’ll show you around?”
“I can eat while you show me around if that’s okay. I’m almost done.” I held up the remainder of the bagel sandwich I’d picked up.
“Sure thing.” Killswitch showed me the room I’d be working in, and we popped our heads into the two other rooms with artists in them. They all seemed cool, but they were busy tatting or working up sketches for clients, so we didn’t linger.
We ended back at my room. Dallas had done me a solid last night and dropped off my toolbox I kept all my supplies in. Well, he said the prospects did most of the work—another reason I was good with not doing that prospect thing. Either way, I was thankful.
I popped a mint in my mouth and got started.
The day went by quickly and I was just going over aftercare with the second client, when I heard a child’s shout and Killswitch making… monster noises?
I walked the guy out and was shocked to see Ryian standing at the counter and Killswitch holding… my son. That still seemed so strange to think.
“Ryian?”
She turned my way and the sun hit the green flecks in her hazel eyes. I’d always loved when that happened. When she cried, they turned completely green—I both loved and hated that. Loved the color, hated to see her cry.
“Hey, Dalton,” she started, then she turned to her uncle who was struggling to hold Anson still.
“Okay, hold on you little monkey,” Killswitch said to Anson as he carefully set him on his feet.
The little boy stared at me, then walked straight to me. He stopped when the toes of his little Converses nearly touched my Vans and tilted his head back to look up at me.
“You’re my dad,” he matter-of-factly announced.
Though Ryian had warned me, it was uncanny the way he spoke. Almost like a little old man. I crouched down so I could be at his level.
“Yeah, buddy, I am,” I confirmed.
He scratched his nose, and I noticed the light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose that scattered onto his cheeks. Dallas and I had both had them as kids too. His big blue eyes were like looking in a mirror.
“We all came home now,” he added.
Ryian and I glanced at each other. I heard her whisper to Killswitch. “What? He’s never lived here. Home for him was always Chicago.”
To which Killswitch smirked and replied, “Obviously not. I’ll let you guys talk. I have a client coming in soon.” He made his way back to his room.
“I wasn’t trying to rush you or be a pain,” she started, but I held up my hand.
“It’s okay. But how did you know this was where I worked? Did your uncle tell you?” As I asked, Anson leaned in closer and started to trace one of the tattoos on my arm. I placed the other one around his small frame. The feeling that rushed over me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. There were truly no words for the emotions running through me.
She laughed and the sound hit me square in the chest. “Actually, no. Umm, Anson said he wanted to go see Uncle Bowie. I figured we had time, so I agreed. He fell asleep on the way. When we got here, he woke up and announced, ‘My dad’s here.’ You can imagine my shock. Though last night, I already thought it was another weird coincidence that you became a tattoo artist when that’s what my uncle is.”
“Yeah, well, I can add to the ever-growing coincidence list. The club your uncle is a member of?”
She immediately became wary, and I rushed to ease her mind. “My brother, Dallas, is also a member. How’s that for small world? That’s actually how I found out about the opening here.”
Her jaw fell. “How can there be so many coincidences going on?”
“Maybe because they aren’t coincidences at all,” I offered. “Anyway, I’m done for the day if the two of you would like to leave. I thought maybe since it’s getting dark, we could grab some food, then go down to City Park and walk the Christmas In The Oaks. Maybe get some hot chocolate?” I tempted with a smile at Anson.
“And Roman candy?” Ryian asked as she bit her lip and held back her excitement. She loved that stuff. I used to buy it for her all the time when we were young.
“It wouldn’t be proper not to,” I replied.
“Then what are we waiting for?” She clapped her hands.
Pretty sure she might be more excited about this than Anson. At least until he saw it and got a taste of the magic that was Christmas in New Orleans.
“What do you think?” I teasingly asked Anson. “Should we take Mommy to go see the Christmas lights and get hot chocolate? Or should we make her stay home?”
Ryian let out an indignant gasp and Anson giggled. Then he said, “We take her, but if she frows a fit, then no hot chocwat.”
“Mmm, good idea,” I concurred with a sage nod.
Ryian stood with her arms akimbo as she playfully glared at the two of us. “Oh, I see how this is gonna be.”
Since she had Anson’s car seat in her red Tacoma, we agreed to drop my truck off at the hardware store and then take her truck. Anson waved at me through the window after we buckled him in, and I closed his door.
“See you in a few,” she murmured, ducking her head, then turning and getting in the vehicle.
I followed her until we reached her family’s store. Then I parked and walked to her door. She rolled down the window. “Want me to drive?”
“Maybe on the way home. You know, when my belly is full and I’m sleepy,” she replied with a grin.
“Sounds like a plan.”
She drove us over to City Park and we got lucky with parking. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, then started our adventure.
If someone had told me last week that this would be my life today, I would’ve considered having them locked up for their own safety. It would’ve sounded insane. Yet, here I was, walking hand-in hand with my son , as his mom drank her hot chocolate and ate her Roman candy.
“Oh my gosh!” she squealed. “They still have Mr. Bingle here!”
Sure enough, there was a vendor set up that had several options to choose from. As she cooed over them, she paused and glanced at me with a shy smile. “I still have the Mr. Bingle you bought me the first Christmas we were friends.”
“What? No way.”
She nodded and I chuckled. My heart clenched, but I ignored it.
As Anson talked a thousand words a minute, I kept stealing glances at Ryian. The happiness on her face was priceless, but still, it rivaled her beauty. In the soft glow of the lights, her dark hair fell in shiny waves over her shoulders. Her eyes glittered as if every star in the sky had taken up residency within them. Pink flushed her cheeks from the cool air and her excitement. She was stunning and I realized that despite all the messy, muddy water under our bridge, she still drew me in like a moth to her brilliant flame.
As we wandered, she glanced at me several times before she finally opened her mouth. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“Me?” I asked, but Anson jerked on my arm, pulling me on to look at the next display.
About twenty minutes went by and she didn’t bring it up again. When I realized she wasn’t going to, I simply stated, “No, Ryian. I’m not seeing anyone. Not engaged. Not married.”
She ducked her head to cover her flaming cheeks. I thought it was cute.
By the end, I was carrying Anson. His head rested on my shoulder, and his eyes were droopy.
“I should probably get you guys home. I think we wore him out,” I quietly told her.
Her hand rested on Anson’s back and she kissed his cheek.
In my mind, I wondered if the people milling around us looked at our little group and thought “what a great-looking little family.” I shook that off. It was too soon.
Too soon? Was that what I wanted? I’d only just found out I had a son. Yet being here like this felt so right—like it was exactly how things were supposed to be.
Maybe we got off track because we were young, stubborn, and impulsive, yet fate was doing its damnedest to get us back to where we were supposed to be. Or maybe this was where we were meant to be all along. Perhaps there was an unknown reason for everything that happened.
I didn’t think we’d ever know the truth of that.
Either way, I didn’t want to lose this feeling.
We walked through the door at Ryian’s mom’s place and Mrs. Buchanan was watching a movie. She immediately paused it and shot to her feet. “Well, holy….” She trailed off without finishing her thought.
“Hello, Mrs. Buchanan,” I greeted as I held Anson to my chest where he was out like a light.
“Isn’t that a sight for sore eyes,” she whispered.
“We’ll be right back out Mom,” Ryian said as she pulled on my arm.
I followed her through the living room down the hall to her old bedroom. Sure enough, on the top shelf, next to a beat-up Stitch doll, was the Mr. Bingle she was talking about. I smiled.
She pulled back the covers and I gently settled Anson on the bed. Ryian made quick work of his shoes and socks. Before I knew it, she had changed the sleeping toddler into a pair of pajamas with a blue cartoon dog on them. The entire time, he remained sleeping and I was in awe.
As she tucked him in and spoke in a whisper to him, I snuck back out to the living room. It seemed like I was intruding on her moment.
Mrs. Buchanan was in the attached kitchen, washing out her mug. She looked up as I entered. I took a seat at one of the stools that were at the breakfast bar in front of her.
“Mrs. Buchanan, I wanted to apologize.”
She cocked her head in question.
“For how things went back after Ry left. I was beside myself and I feel like I might’ve been hard on you back then. I shouldn’t have been like that with—”
She cut me off. “No. Don’t you apologize. I’ve already told Ryian—you can’t change how things happened. In my opinion, you’ve been given a second chance that most people don’t get.” She dropped her gaze to the sink and appeared sad for a moment, but it was quickly gone. When she lifted her eyes to mine again, she smiled. “Don’t squander this moment by dwelling on past mistakes that everyone made.”
I nodded. I’d said as much to Ryian the night before.
Ryian joined us. “Is everything okay?” she asked as she glanced back and forth at us.
“Everything is just fine,” her mom assured her. “But this old lady is going to bed.”
“Mom! Stop it! You’re not old and I refuse to consider that for a moment!” Ryian joked as she sat on the stool next to me, covered her ears, and then started repeating “la, la, la, la, la, la!”
Her mom laughed, we said our goodnights, then her mom went to bed.
“So, I went by the attorney’s office today,” I told her as I glanced over at her.
“What? You did? What did they say?” she excitedly demanded.
I filled her in on my conversation with Mr. Rushing and ended with the box.
“What was in it?”
“I didn’t get a chance to look at it. I went straight to work, then with you,” I replied with a shrug.
“Is it still in your truck?”
I nodded.
“Well, go get it!” she whisper-yelled with wide eyes.
It made me chuckle. She was more anxious to see what was in the box than I was. To make her happy, I did as she asked.
When I got back with it, we sat on the floor in the living room and I lifted the lid. There were loose pictures tossed in the top. We pulled them out and found picture after picture of my mom with a man I could only assume was my dad. There were several of them on a big Harley or with what I assumed were friends that were also on bikes.
“Looks like you got your love of bikes from your dad. Just took you a while to find it,” she teased as she bumped her shoulder to mine.
The contact sent warmth flooding through me.
There were more pictures of my mom with Dallas, a ton more with my father, then pictures of her with me as a baby. I sat still, holding one of the pictures of her holding me when I must’ve been about two. Though she looked like she really loved me, there was something missing. The light that I’d seen in her eyes and smile in the other images, was missing.
It hurt my heart.
“Dalton,” Ryian whispered.
I looked up to see her turning the page on a leather-bound notebook. “What is it?”
She lifted her gaze, and her eyes were shiny. “It’s your mom’s journal.” She lifted an old newspaper clipping from it.
In the news photograph there was a mangled Harley that I soon realized was the one from the other pictures. Pieces were scattered down the road and through the intersection. A draped form was off to one side and there were a bunch of law enforcement and emergency medical people all over the place. Each grainy face wore the same sober expression.
“Oh my God,” Ryian gasped from where she was reading over my shoulder. “Your father was killed on the way to the hospital to see you!”
She was correct. The article read that Mitchel Dixon was traveling southbound when a drunk driver ran the eastbound red light at sixty-seven miles per hour and they collided. My father was believed to have been killed on impact. The drunk driver succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.
Chills raced down my arms and legs. I’d never known what happened to my father. I’d only known he died before my mom.
“Jesus,” I murmured.
Small arms wrapped around me, and Ryian placed her head on my shoulder. I returned her hug with one arm. With the other, I picked up the journal Ryian had set down.
There were a few more newspaper clippings. My father’s obituary—with no mention of my great-grandmother. I noticed his last name was spelled like mine and I had to believe that Mr. Rushing was correct and that my grandfather must’ve changed the spelling of their last name for some reason.
Another mystery we’d probably never resolve.
I began reading the smooth, sloping entries of my mother. She wrote of the guilt she carried for falling in love with my father and leaving her husband for him only to lose them both.
The more I read, the more I realized she was slowly spiraling. Dallas’s father ended up taking him because she was deteriorating. The neighbors called CPS because they were concerned for me when they found me wandering around outside alone and underdressed several times. I was eventually removed from the home as well.
My mom wrote about all of this as if she was annotating facts of someone else’s life.
The last entry was essentially a suicide note.
To read it, utterly ripped my heart out and shredded it. I heard Ryian sniffle.
“I think she had postpartum depression,” Ryian observed as she gently rested a hand on my forearm.
“Maybe,” I muttered. In a way, even at twenty-nine, it hurt to know that I wasn’t reason enough for her to stay alive.
“I know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t about you, Dalton. From what she wrote, she loved you dearly. The problem is, untreated postpartum depression is so dangerous. It makes me sad that no one made her get help. Not even you getting removed from the home triggered a response from any medical professionals to maybe look into her well-being. That breaks my heart and makes me so angry.” She sniffled again and brushed away a tear.
“Maybe they did, but she just didn’t want the help,” I argued, my chest tight and my stomach heavy.
“I guess it’s hard to say,” she conceded as she tightened her grip around me.
Somehow, we found ourselves holding each other. I set everything back in the box and set it to the side. I could finish going through it at another time.
“I wonder what happened to your dad’s mom,” she finally mused.
“No clue. At the moment, I don’t care.”
“That’s understandable. What do you want to do with the house?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t really thought about it,” I admitted. She didn’t push, and we sat there in silence for a bit. “It might be a nice home for a family.”
She didn’t say anything, and I worried I upset her.
“For someone, I meant.”
“Mmm.”
Silence engulfed us again. The faint sounds of the city continued beyond our quiet cocoon, but I didn’t pay attention to them.
“Ryian?” I whispered.
“Yes?” she whispered back.
Gently, I pulled away and lifted her chin to have her look at me. “I know it’s been over four years, but I never stopped loving you.”
Her full lips parted, and she quickly inhaled. “What?”
“You heard me.” With my hand, I cradled her face. “And this isn’t just about Anson.”
Like always, we gravitated toward each other. Lost in her autumn gaze, I was surprised when I felt my lips connect with hers. Yet, instead of pulling away, we leaned in. The kiss swept me away and I found myself drowning in it.
It was like being home after a million years at sea.