moments her grandmother answered the phone.
“Auweni?”
“It’s Fawn, Grandmother.”
“Mamalis!” Grandmother exclaimed, using Fawn’s Lenape name. “I am happy to hear from you. I have prayed to Jesus for your safe trip. How is Jackie?”
“She is tired and weak, Grandmother, and her son is not what I expected. Your prayers are appreciated.”
“He is kikape?”
“Yes, he is single,” Fawn confirmed. It had been one of their fears. Unattached men did not respond well to illness. Or infants. Or anything that hampered their freedom. A married man who had given up his freedom willingly would have been more inclined to open his heart and home. He would also have had help.
“But that’s not the problem,” she continued. “Things are worse between him and his mother than I realized. He’s very resentful.”
“I remember two girls with much resentment toward a parent.”
“A drunkard who kills himself and your mother is a little different from a woman who deadens her pain with drugs,” Fawn pointed out.
“Is it?” Grandmother asked. “Seems to me the only real difference is an accidental house fire.”
Fawn bit her lip. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“My daughter’s husband was a habitual drunk,” Grandmother said calmly, “but he meant no harm, Mamalis.”
“He meant no harm,” Fawn pointed out softly, “but they are both dead. Besides, it’s been years since Jackie used illicit drugs.”
“But does her son know this?”
“I’m not sure,” Fawn admitted. “Apparently, they’ve been estranged for a long time.”
“Patience,” Grandmother counseled. “Patience—”
“And prayer,” Fawn said for her, smiling. It was Grandmother’s prescription for every situation.
Her kmis, or elder sister, was not so sanguine. Though older by only sixteen minutes, Dawn took her position as kmis very seriously. Those slim sixteen minutes might as well have been sixteen years, given how protective Dawn could be with her twin. She had not been in favor of Fawn undertaking this mission before Christmas.
Both Fawn and Grandmother had argued that putting it off until after the first of the year would be unwise, given the precarious state of Jackie’s health. They thought it best to settle the matter and hopefully give Jackie a peaceful, happy Christmas, especially considering that it could be her last.
Dawn got on the phone as soon as Grandmother and Fawn ended their conversation. Obviously she’d been near their grandmother, listening in on every word.
“You knew Dixon Lyons could be single,” Dawn pointed out, skipping right over the greeting, “so what’s the real problem?”
Fawn mentally sighed. “Like I told Grandmother, he’s more resentful than I expected.”
“No. I don’t buy it. You were prepared to deal with a single man. There’s something more.” Fawn could almost feel the thoughts churning in her twin’s mind. “He’s hunky, isn’t he?”
Fawn plopped back onto the bed. “He’s gorgeous,” she admitted. “But he can see that Jackie is ill, and it makes no difference to him.”
“Bring Bella and Jackie and come home,” Dawn ordered. “We’ll be her family. We—”
“Petapan,” Fawn interrupted, using Dawn’s Lenape name. “We should at least give him a chance to do the right thing, don’t you think?”
After a long silence, Dawn said softly, “Whatever happens, remember our mother.” Then she ended the call.
As if I could forget, Fawn thought. As if a daughter could ever forget her mother’s mistakes.
How dare she? Dixon fumed, letting the wind suck the door closed behind him. Pretty little Fawn Whoever obviously didn’t know his mother very well or she wouldn’t have lectured him like that.
Giving birth to you ought to be enough.
He mimicked the words in his head as he skirted between the front end of the pickup and the storage room at the end of the carport.
What did this Fawn person know about it? She’d never seen his mother sleep around the clock after one of her benders or heard the whispers at the grocery store. Fawn had never watched some strange man literally drop her loopy mother in the front yard and drive away while she reeled toward the house. He’d always wondered what was so wrong with him that she couldn’t stay home and sober—until he’d realized that his grandmother was right. What was so wrong was Jackie.
So why was she here now? After all those years when all he’d wanted was for her to come home and settle down, now all he wanted was for her to go away before she ruined everything good in his life. He finally had a healthy relationship with his dad, worked for the family business, a plan for the future, a family, and that hadn’t been easy, given the animosity toward his father from his maternal grandparents, who had raised Dixon.
His grandparents and his dad had tiptoed around each other for years after Gregory Lyons had returned to town following an eight-year stint in the army. At twelve, Dixon had barely even remembered his father, despite many letters and photographs and a few visits. Greg had a new family by then, a wife, Lucinda, and a baby son. Jackie had gone into a tailspin upon Greg’s return, partying for days at a time. Dixon’s grandparents had feared that Greg would sue for custody, so they’d kept him at arm’s length. Greg and Lucinda had soon enlarged their family with a second son, but Dixon’s time with his dad and his dad’s family had remained limited until Grandma Crane died in a fall when Dixon was twelve.
With Jackie spending more time partying than with her son, Grandpa could no longer find excuses to keep Dixon away from his Lyons family, who had proved remarkably accepting of him. They’d even asked him to live with them, but he couldn’t leave his grandfather alone with Jackie, and that had caused some awkwardness on all sides until he’d turned sixteen and could drive himself over to his dad’s place whenever he’d wanted. He’d really gotten to know his brothers then, and he’d started to learn his dad’s trade, building. Dixon had turned out to be a more than fair carpenter.
Jackie had barely waited for Dixon to turn eighteen before she’d taken off with Harry Griffin. After his grandfather’s death a couple years later, Dixon worked for his dad, and they’d done well together.
Dixon had been surprised when Jackie had actually married Harry. Loud, stout and bald as a pool cue, Harry had stood a good head shorter than Jackie. Assuming that his mother was just using the affable trucker to get her teeth fixed, because her drug use had destroyed her once beautiful smile, Dixon had expected her to return to War Bonnet after she’d gotten what she’d needed from the man, but she’d claimed to be happy and had always described Harry as a “fine man.” Dixon had always privately supposed that Harry either had money
