Missing Dixie(42)

A warning bell goes off in my head but I’m not sure why.

“I checked around and his name is Liam Andrews but I don’t know much about him. I think he lives near you and I’m hoping he’s not crossing the interstate by himself. Can’t seem to find out much about his family.”

“Andrews, you say?” There is only one Andrews near me.

No, please, please do not let her be even remotely associated with Carl f*cking Andrews.

“Yeah, why? You know him?”

My foot presses harder on the accelerator.

“Gavin!”

“Dixie,” I begin slowly, working hard to keep my voice even. “I am trying not to get worked up and or lose my temper while operating a motor vehicle. But you absolutely cannot have anything to do with Carl Andrews or his kid. Ever.”

“Um, well, I’m not sure Liam is his kid for certain. He’s just constantly angry. I was going to talk to you about him because he kind of reminds me of you.”

I’m mildy offended. “I’m not constantly angry.” She gives me a look that says she’s calling bullshit so I shrug. “Not constantly.”

“Okay, maybe I phrased that wrong.” She frowns and I can see from side-eying her that she’s thinking extremely hard and choosing her words carefully. “It’s like he’s struggling to . . . find . . . something. A reason to be afraid or upset or violent, or I don’t know. He’s just a really angry kid and he’s only seven years old. What is there to be angry about at seven?”

My grip tightens on the steering wheel and I watch my knuckles turn white.

“If Carl Andrews is his dad, trust me, kid has plenty to be angry about.”

Carl is the owner of the local crack house, the one my mom has been spending her time in lately. He was with her in the bar the other night and he and I are not on good terms at the moment. I know I am heading into something bad, I can feel it in my gut, but all I can think of is getting him away from Dixie and keeping him the hell away from her. And then the troubling thought tugging the edges of the blanket of rage currently covering my mind.

He got custody of that kid? How in the hell could anyone give that disgusting f*cking animal a kid?

“ . . . drum lessons?”

I only catch the last part of whatever she’s saying because that’s the thing about actual fits of rage, they sort of block out all your other senses.

“What?”

Dixie sighs and holds on to the dashboard as I take a curve a little faster than I should. “I was asking if you’d be willing to give Liam drum lessons. He has a lot of anger and it seems to help you, playing, so I thought it might help him.”

“It does help me. But I’m not exactly kid friendly. You know this.”

She scoffs at me. “How do you know? Have you ever hung out with any kids?”

I contemplate this, desperate to focus on something other than the thought of Carl alone with Dixie in her house. “No. I guess not.”

“Then you don’t know, do you? You could totally be kid friendly. But even if you aren’t, this kid doesn’t respond well to friendly anyways.”

“No?”

She looks so sad for a moment I almost pull the truck over.

“No. And all my other kids like me—they hug me and call me ‘Miss Dixie,’ which is really sweet. But he just averts his eyes and keeps his gaze on everything but me.”

Her mouth does the quirky turn-down thing it does when she’s about to cry. Hearing her call them “my kids” helps me to appreciate how important giving lessons is to her. It’s about more than filling her time. It’s her way of sharing her gift even though she’s not performing much right now.

“Maybe he just doesn’t want the lessons but he isn’t sure where else to go. Maybe you’re the first smiling face he’s ever seen.” The sad truth is, that’s pretty much how I ended up on her porch all those years ago. And why I kept coming back.

She appears only mildly comforted by my words. “I am pretty fun. We play games and I give out candy. I even made him cookies. Special ones, just for him. I even put his name on them in icing.”

She’s a persistent one, my Bluebird. She will make you love her one way or another if it’s the last thing she does. Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.

“Cookies, huh? You never made me cookies with my name on them.”

“Gav . . . I’m serious. I don’t get it. He’s like, I don’t know, afraid of me . . . or something. I don’t know why he keeps his shield up all the time but I can’t reach him no matter what I do and it breaks my heart.”

I break her heart, too. And I’m about to again because the very minute we pull up to her driveway I see the beat-up blue Ford pickup and beside the driver’s door Carl Andrews is slapping the shit out of his kid. I see red and then blinding white.

Somehow, I throw the truck in park. Somehow I get out and get to Carl before he can land another blow to the back of his kid’s head.

They always hit you in the back of the head because marking your face up will get social services called. It’s like they have a special seminar for child abusers.

One minute I’m there, in the moment, and the next thing I know I’m transported back in time to when one of the dealers my mom used to let crash with us used me as a punching bag and Carl’s face transforms into his.