“Right.”
“So if you take anything I say and go after us, my lawyer will eat you for lunch. You got that, mister?”
As Adam stared into Rivers’s bulgy eyes, he tried not to let his face know what his brain thought.
“My wife has prescription OxyContin. For pain. Totally legal. Jeremy got started on the Oxy. Then, when he couldn’t get any more and he found out what it cost, he panicked. They told him he could get the equivalent amount of meth or cocaine for half the price.”
“You seem pretty calm about it.”
Mr. Rivers shrugged. “He’ll grow out of it.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I did. I mean, I don’t do real drugs anymore. Just booze and a little grass once in a while.” His eyes widened. “We’re off the record—you promised.”
Adam sighed. “Have you talked to Jeremy about it?”
“I told him don’t buy drugs, okay, but if you do, don’t be a moron and do it at Pearly’s. Might as well rob a donut shop and not expect cops to notice.”
“Did you tell him drugs will ruin his life?”
“I turned out okay, didn’t I?”
“So you’ve given up on him?”
“It’s not my job to interfere in my son’s life.”
“Isn’t that exactly what your job is?”
He rolled his eyes like Adam clearly didn’t understand what dads were for.
“Okay, he bought meth and powder cocaine. What about crack?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you asked him? Have you looked in his room?”
“I respect his space, Mitchell. Right to privacy. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“Don’t take the moral high ground when you’re neglecting your son.”
“Instead of arresting my boy, how about going after thieves and lowlifes, Barney? Thanks to you, we’ll waste our time with the courts. I got a lawyer. We’ll get my son off. It’ll cost us, but hey, what are cops for? Never there when you need ’em, always there when you don’t. I can get pizza delivered faster than I can get a cop to show up.”
“Will you get drug counseling for Jeremy?”
“Like I said, he’ll grow out of it.”
“Lots of people never outgrow it. It can become a five-hundred-dollar-a-day habit.”
“He can’t afford that.”
“Which is why he’ll have to steal or sell to sustain it.”
“You saying my boy’s a thief?”
“He could become one. Especially if you don’t get involved!” Adam’s indignation at Sam Rivers embodied his thoughts toward all the out-of-touch fathers who had waved a white flag to the culture and given up their children as hostages.
“The lawyer will take care of everything.”
“Jeremy doesn’t need a lawyer. He needs a dad.”
“Instead of passing judgment on me and my family, why don’t you take a closer look at yours?”
“What do you mean? Dylan?”
“Yeah, Superdad. Have you talked to your son? Have you checked his room?”
Adam drove home. Dylan was at track practice and wouldn’t be home for an hour. Adam went into his room and looked in the obvious places where he knew nobody with brains would hide something. And Dylan had brains. He thought of the dresser, but Victoria put away laundry.
He assessed the bookcase with more video games than books. He looked at the closet shelf filled with old shoes, old video games, and some boxes. Under the mattress? No, Dylan knew his mom stripped the bed to wash the sheets.
Adam looked around the room. If he were Dylan, where would he hide something? He remembered where he’d hidden things from his parents. At the bottom of a box of comic books at the top of his closet. It was out of his mom’s reach. And she was indifferent to comic books; a perfect combination—she wouldn’t throw them out, and she wouldn’t look through them either.
So Adam reached for the thing Dylan knew he’d be least interested in—video games. He picked them up and opened them one by one. Finally he came to an old, worn Madden box, a video relic, and opened it. There it was. A baggie of marijuana with a few rolling papers and a roach clip.
He thought of Sam Rivers, the neglectful father, so out of touch with his son’s world. The man’s negligence as a father and ignorance of his son’s life had outraged Adam. In an instant, Adam realized he himself was the man he despised.
Chapter Twenty-four
When Victoria arrived home thirty minutes later, she found Adam on the living room sofa, head in hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Dylan. He’s been smoking marijuana.”
“What?” She nearly collapsed.
Starting with Pearly’s, the arrest, Jeremy Rivers, and the confrontation with Jeremy’s father, Adam told the whole story. She wanted to see the drugs. When she did, she cried.
“He’ll be home anytime,” she said.
“Because I confronted Jeremy and his dad and searched Dylan’s room, I think maybe this should start as a father-son conversation. Does that make sense?”
She nodded.
Adam hadn’t seen Victoria so frail since Emily’s death. He realized this too felt like a death, a smaller one, but a grave threat to her only remaining child.
He talked with her in the bedroom until he heard Dylan come in the front door.
“I’ll pray,” Victoria whispered.
Adam walked to the kitchen while Dylan raided the refrigerator.
“Dylan?”
A pitcher of orange juice in his hand, Dylan turned and looked at the Madden box his father held, with a baggie protruding. The pitcher crashed to the floor. Orange juice splattered over their shoes and pant legs.
“You searched my bedroom?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s my private stuff.”
“I’m not the one in trouble. You are.”
“I don’t go through your stuff. Maybe I will now.”
“Don’t mouth off to me, Dylan. I want some answers.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How long have you been using?”
“A party at Drew Thornton’s. When I was in eighth grade. Everyone was smoking weed. I didn’t want to be alone.”
“Last year? At the Thorntons’? I don’t believe it! They go to our church!”
“Believe what you want. You always do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
When Dylan looked away, Adam raised his hand to calm himself and Dylan. “Look, how about we clean up the juice and change? Then we can talk.”
For the next five minutes, they mopped the kitchen floor with wet hand towels. Without a word, Dylan got up and went to his room. Adam changed his pants and sat on Dylan’s floor.
“How much pot have you smoked?”
“Maybe a few times a month. I’m no teahead. It’s not every day.”
“I know what it smells like, Dylan. How come I’ve never caught a whiff of it?”
“I don’t smoke it in my room. I’m not that stupid.”
“What else have you used? Meth?”
“No.”
“Cocaine?”
“No!”
“Prescription stuff? Like OxyContin?”
Dylan looked down. No denial.
“Oxy?”
“No. That’s all over the place at school. Some kids just take it from their parents’ medicine cabinet and pass it around. I don’t use it.”
“Dylan, you hesitated. I think there’s something else, isn’t there?”
“It’s legal. It’s nothing bad.”
“What is it?”
He sighed. “The patch. I used it just once. After Emily died.”
“You mean a prescription painkiller?”
“Fentanyl. You just need a doctor to get it.”
Adam shook his head. “It’s only legal for the person the doctor prescribes it to. It’s against the law for you to use this.”
“It’s ju
st a painkiller, Dad. How bad can it be? Normal people use it; it’s not like being a crack addict on the street.”
“Dylan, these meds work for people who are really in pain. But if you’re not in pain, they mess you up. They’re mind-altering drugs.”
Dylan’s look said it all: That’s the point.
“You got the patch from Jeremy, didn’t you?”
Dylan didn’t answer. “Look, I’m not an addict! I mean . . . I don’t smoke weed that often. Just sometimes when I’m stressed out, I really want something to help me forget.”
Adam breathed deeply. If he lost his cool, the conversation would quickly go south.
“Give me names of people you smoke marijuana with.”
“You’ll just arrest them.”
“Not if they don’t deal it.”
“But then you’ll interrogate them. And tell their parents.”
“Not interrogate. But tell their parents? Probably. Have you ever bought from an adult?”
Dylan didn’t answer.
“That means you have. How many times?”
“Lots of kids buy from him.”
“I want his name.”
“No.”
“You’re in no position to hold out on me.”
Dylan squirmed. One moment he appeared embarrassed, the next angry.
“Did you know your sister’s dead because some guy took drugs?”
Dylan’s face changed in an instant. “What do you mean? They said he’d been drinking.”
“Yeah, but he also took cocaine.”
Dylan hung his head.
“Son, all of this stuff is really bad. You’ll have your driver’s license soon. Just one high and you could kill somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister.”
Dylan didn’t respond.
“You know how stupid it is to do drugs? It starts with marijuana, but it usually doesn’t stop there. I see the results all the time. I see kids shoplift to pay for their habit. They steal from their parents and their brothers and sisters.”
“I don’t have a brother or sister.”
Adam stopped. Tears found their way out. How had this happened? He looked up. Dylan was crying too.
“After she died, I smoked some more dope. Then Jeremy sold me the patch. I wanted to die. Didn’t want to hurt anymore. That’s why I used it.”
Adam got up and sat on the bed next to Dylan and hugged him.
“I felt like I wanted to die too, Son. I understand that part.” Adam moved back. “Buddy, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you I took drugs? Oh yeah, that would have gone over real well.”
“I would have helped you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You would have made me quit track. You’d have taken away my video games. And you would have locked me in my room while you played Yahtzee with Emily!”
Adam took deep breaths, deliberately keeping his temper in check. Though Dylan’s words stung, the last thing either of them needed was for Adam to lash out in his own defense. But after sifting through dozens of possible responses, none of them seemed adequate. Honestly, could he be sure he wouldn’t have responded the way Dylan described? “We need to talk more. But my relationship with you is more important to me than anything I have to say to you.”
They sat quietly. Finally Adam said, “Do you feel up to a run?”
Dylan considered his options. “Okay.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
After their run, Adam and Dylan sat in the driveway and talked for another thirty minutes. While Dylan headed for the shower, Adam came into the kitchen and was pleased Victoria’s color had returned.
“You and Dylan shouldn’t consider housecleaning as a business,” Victoria said, wiping sticky spots off the floor.
“Sorry. I told him he needs to tell you about the drugs. I’ll be there too.”
“I appreciate that.”
His mom’s tears moved Dylan. He apologized, then asked her forgiveness. The three of them hugged. Adam prayed.
Afterward Victoria leaned against the dresser in their bedroom. “How on earth did you know where to look?”
“I thought about where I used to hide things from my parents.”
“Same place you hide things from me?”
“What?” Adam’s face flushed.
Victoria opened the closet door and reached up on her tiptoes. She edged a box off the shelf. “So what’s in here?”
“It’s a gun box. You’re scared of guns, aren’t you?”
“Which is what made it the perfect hiding place.”
She opened the box and removed what Adam had thought was safe. She held it up and waved it in his face.
His eyes dropped. “How long have you known?”
“Maybe two years. I check it a few times a week, and I see the stuff that comes and goes. Guess I should have checked on my son like I did on my husband.”
He looked up.
She held it up in front of him again. “You had to hide this from me?” She took a bite of it.
“Hey, don’t,” Adam said.
“Not bad,” she said. “What is it?”
Adam shuffled his feet. “A raspberry cruller.”
“From the Donut Factory?” She took another big bite.
“From the office.”
“Where do they get them?”
“Krispy Kreme.”
She finished it, smacked her lips, and licked her fingers.
“You’re a mean woman,” Adam said.
“Is this all you’re hiding?”
“Yes.”
“Then I guess it’s okay.”
“It is?”
She grinned. “I’ve kept a stash of dark chocolate for years.”
“Where?”
“Why would I tell you?”
“I told you about mine!”
“No, you didn’t. I found it myself. And I never bother it either.” She hesitated. “Okay, one time I had a maple bar.”
“I knew I’d put it in there! I looked through three other boxes. Thief!”
“Then there was that bear claw, but I replaced it.”
Adam smiled. “Apparently Dylan came by his hiding habit honestly. Well, maybe I should say naturally.”
“Yeah, it’s just that his stuff is a lot more dangerous. Not to mention illegal.” She searched Adam’s eyes. “He seems to be a casual user, not an addict, right?”
“I think that’s true.”
“Do you think we got through to him?”
“After we ran, he told me it’s hard when so many other kids talk about experimenting with drugs.”
“That makes sense. It’s hard for kids to go against the flow.”
Adam breathed deeply. “This is tough. Tougher than I bargained for when I wrote the points of the Resolution. One thing for sure, I can’t do this without you.”
After a few minutes of silence she asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“That I’m trained in search and seizure. And I’m gonna take this place apart till I find your dark chocolate.”
“You’ll never find it.”
“If I don’t, I’m bringing home Chopper the drug dog. I’ll have his handler familiarize him with the scent of dark chocolate. Chopper will find it before you can say hot fudge.”
Victoria shook her head. “Not if I eat it first.”
Chapter Twenty-five
With the Flint River behind them, five men and their families mingled on a gorgeous manicured lawn, awaiting the Resolution ceremony. Everyone wore their best.
Adam approached his pastor. “Glad you came, Jon. If you hadn’t encouraged me to study what the Bible says about fatherhood, we wouldn’t be here today.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it. I love this Resolution! My kids are grown, but the principles apply to grandfathers and mentors of young men. This shouldn’t just stay with the five of you. It should be presented to fathers everywhere.”
“But
how would we do that? We’re in Albany, Georgia—not a likely place to reach dads around the world.”
“And David the shepherd boy wasn’t a likely choice for king either. But with God, nothing’s impossible. I have some ideas about the Resolution that I want to talk to you about. But first, let’s see what God does today.”
Across the lawn, Nathan Hayes talked and laughed with his mentor of twenty years, William Barrett. William silently recalled how he’d almost given up on Nathan. It was hard enough to raise his own family. And “that Hayes kid” hadn’t always looked like a great investment. In retrospect, his decision was one of the most strategic he’d ever made—already affecting future generations.
When the time came to begin, William Barrett solemnly took his place in front of the group, next to a table with a white cloth. On the table lay five documents, each with black frames under them.
“I can’t tell you what an honor this is for me,” William said. “To hear the stand that you men are taking for your faith and your families overwhelms me. May God bless the commitment you make today.
“Nathan Hayes, I’d like you to face me and for your wife and children to stand beside me.”
Nathan walked to the center of the semicircle of men and their families. He wondered how many of William Barrett’s white hairs he’d caused. He considered how different his life would be if this man had given up on him. Nathan knew William had prepared him to believe in God the Father by making the very word father seem welcome to him for the first time in his life.
“Nathan . . . my son in the faith,” William began. Nathan could see how close Mr. Barrett’s emotions were to the surface.
“I took joy in mentoring you as a young man. Today I take joy in blessing you as a godly father. Are you ready to make this commitment before God and your family?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Then I’d like you to repeat after me. . . .”
One by one, witnessed by their families and their God, the five men stood before William and repeated the words of their Resolution.
“I do solemnly resolve before God
To take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my children.
I will love them, protect them, and serve them
And teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home.”