Random Nonsense: Has anyone else ever noticed that sometimes the doc manager on FFnet goes wonky and you have to hit the spacebar twice? And then you get two breaks instead of one and you can't fix it. Or am I the only person this happens to? The first time it happened, I thought I'd broken my laptop, but it only happens when I use FFnet.

.

Chapter Twenty-One

{o}-{o}-{o}

.

Sefa was in the kitchen, about to head up to bed when the phone rang. He scowled at it, debating if he should just let it ring, but Lance and Roman were asleep, he didn't want them waking up.

"Hello?" He knew his voice was a little gruff, but with cell phones becoming more and more popular, and everyone in the family having one, it seemed that the only people who called on the house phone were salesmen or people asking for charitable donations. It was night time and he really wanted to go to bed and get some sleep. When nobody said anything, he repeated his greeting, in an even gruffer voice, "Hello?"

"Dad?" It was Mox, "I wanna come home. Please let me come home."

Sefa could hear the pain in Mox's voice, heard the tremble he was known to get when things were upsetting, but this was worse than anything he'd heard the entire time Mox had been living with them. This was a Mox who was at the breaking point, or maybe a little beyond it. "Mox?" He tried to keep his voice steady, "What's going on?"

The instant he said Mox's name, Jen, who had been heading up the stairs, hurried over to him. Sefa knew Jen wanted to start asking questions, she might even want to take the phone away from him and talk to him herself, but he held up his hand, motioning her to stop before she could start.

"Everything's wrong," Sefa heard not just the tremor in Mox's voice, he heard the tears and the cracking. "Please, Dad, I know I'm supposed to stay here longer a little longer, or forever, but I want to come home! You told me if it didn't work, I could come home, and it's not working, it's not working so badly, please let me come home."

"Mox, what happened?" Sefa said, trying to think of what could be so horrible that it turned Mox into this shattered soul trying to hold himself together. God, he sounds as bad as he did, the day he found the disposable underwear. At least he's still with us, not caught in the past.

"Everything," Mox almost wailed, his voice cracking badly on the 'ing.' "I stabbed myself because I had bad thoughts,I threw a kid's keys in the grass and my sister painted my rock, now it's all stupid, and-"

"Whoa, slow down," Sefa said. The kid's words were coming so fast and furious that he couldn't make out what the kid was saying and the first part concerned him the most. "You stabbed yourself?"

"Yes," Mox said, and he sniffled and it was obvious the kid was crying. "With a letter opener, in the leg."

"Where are you?" Sefa wanted to jump into the phone and be by Mox's side right this second. "Are you bleeding? Mox, do we need to call an ambulance?"

Now Jen was looking terrified and she started to head towards the office and Sefa knew it was to pick up the extension. He reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her. She looked at him, ready to shake him off, but he shook his head. Mox didn't need two upset people.

"No, I got an infection and had to go to the hospital," Mox said, further confusing everything for Sefa. "But it's all just going wrong, Dad. Please, you promised me I could come home if I wanted, and all I want to do is come home. I can't be what they think I am!"

"Mox, we'll get you home," Sefa said, firmly. He was still holding on to Jen's arm, but not as hard, she wasn't trying to get away anymore, she was listening. Mox's voice was loud enough that she likely heard most of it. "I'm not breaking my promise. Are you home?"

"If I was home, I wouldn't have called you!" Mox said, "We wouldn't need to be having this talk, I'd be asleep or running ropes!"

"I meant Donna's place," Sefa said. "Are you with Donna and Jacob?"

"No," Mox said. "I'm next to a coffee house because Faulk kissed me and I kissed him back and I didn't want to, but I did, because it wasn't me in charge."

Sefa was confused and bewildered, but he knew one thing, that he had to get to Mox as soon as possible. "Can you go to Donna and Jacob?"

"No!" Mox said. "I don't want to see Amber, I don't want to pretend I like the the rock, I don't want to talk to Donna, I can't be that person they see me as, I can't do it. I'm not that person, I'm not a great person!" He was talking loud enough now that Jen could hear him.

"Jon, we love you!" Jen said, loud enough so he could hear. "You are a great person, we love you, and we want you home!"

"Tell Mom I'm not great," Mox almost demanded.

"She's your mom, you'll never convince her you're not perfect, even if you rob a bank," Sefa said. "She'd find a way to blame the bank. So, I'm not even going to try. Where are you now, Mox?"

"I'm at a coffee shop," Mox said. "I lost my cell phone, too. The girl who works here let me use hers. Please, just let me come home. I swear I'll do anything you want, anything. I'll work for free, I was willing to work for lessons anyway, you're the one that insisted on paying me, I don't need money, I just need to come home."

Everything Mox said came out fast and jumbled, as if all the words were heavy beads being strung on a long cord, each one smashing into the one before it, and Sefa knew he had to get Mox back home.

.

{o}-{o}-{o}

.

Mox was still outside, talking to his dad when Cinnamon came up to him. "It's okay," she said softly, "Talk as long as you need to, I just wanted to make sure you were all right."

Mox looked up at her, knowing how bad he must look, the tears, his sitting on the ground, all of it. "H-hang on," he said to his dad, then looked at Cinnamon. "I'm talking to my dad."

"Good," Cinnamon said, nodding, "I'll leave you to it, then. Just come back in when you're done."

"Mox!" He heard Sefa talking from the phone and turned his attention back to it. "If that's the owner of the phone you're borrowing, let me talk to her."

"Wait!" Mox called out, as Cinnamon was walking back towards the shop. She stopped and turned as he got to his feet, walking over and holding out the phone. "My dad wants to talk to you."

If Cinnamon thought anything strange was going on, she didn't let on, she nodded and took the phone. Mox didn't know if he was allowed to listen or not, so he stood there, figuring Cinnamon would motion to him somehow, if he should leave. Where do I go? he thought. I don't want to go back to Donna's house, I just want to go home.

"Hello?" Cinnamon said into the phone. There were introductions, and then it seemed that Sefa was asking questions and Cinnamon was giving answers. "It's called Java Joes, it's a coffee shop near the campus of Cincinnati University."

Pause. Mox could hear Sefa talking, but couldn't make out the words.

"We'll be open for another couple of hours. Then, I'll be closing, which will take me about half an hour." More talk from Sefa then Cinnamon spoke again. "He can stay while I'm closing, it's not a big deal.

More pausing, then Cinnamon paused too, and Mox knew Sefa had asked a question which Cinnamon wasn't sure how to answer. Finally she spoke. "I've seen him look better."

Now Sefa's muffled voice spoke again. This time, Cinnamon didn't hesitate. "No, that's fine. I don't mind." She followed that statement by giving two phone numbers, telling Sefa the second one was for the shop. Then she handed the phone back to Mox. "I'll be inside, come back in when you're done."

Before he could answer, she walked away and Mox put the phone to his ear. "Dad?"

"Yeah, I'm here. Look, I have to call Donna, -"

"No!" Mox interrupted. "I don't want to-"

"Mox," It was Sefa's turn to interrupt and his voice was calm, but it was clear he was not going to put up with any arguing about this. "I can't just teleport to where you are. You are going to have to go somewhere. At least if you go to Donna's place, you can start packing up your stuff. I'm going to do what I can to get there as soon as possible, but you can't wander the streets all night."

"I don't wanna," Mox said, his voice barely a whisper, "But I will."

"If you can't deal, when you get there, lock yourself in your room if you want to. But I want to know that you're safe. Now, go inside and have some more coffee. Spice Girl says you can stay there until Donna picks you up."

"Cinnamon," Mox said. "She's not Spice girl. I don't wanna hang up."

"I know," Sefa said, "But we're wasting the young lady's minutes, and I have to get off the phone so I can make arrangements. Your mother is checking flights on the computer, right now. So, we have to hang up. Just please, promise me you will stay in the coffee shop until Donna or Jacob picks you up. Do not run off."

"I won't," Mox said. "I just wanna come home."

"I know you do, and we're going to do everything we can to get you home."

.

{o}-{o}-{o}

.

When Sefa got off the phone, Jen was in his office, looking for information on flights. "I want to go get him," Sefa said. "I don't know how he'll do, alone on a plane. I have to call Donna and get her to pick him up and bring him to her place to wait."

Jen looked up from the computer and nodded. I'm trying to get you a round trip ticket and a one way ticket for Mox." Her eyes narrowed and she got that "mama bear" look to her. "It will be one way. He is not going back there."

"Not if we can do anything to stop it," Sefa said. "But Donna promised me that if it didn't work out, he could come back here and sign over all custody. I would call this a major case of not working out."

"What do you think happened?" Jen speculated, frowning.

"A lot of things happened," Sefa said, "And I'll untangle them as we go along, but the major thing is that we pushed Mox too fast. Our intentions might have been pure, but we all know about that road to hell."

"I never wanted him to go," Jen reminded him.

"I never wanted him to go either, not really," Sefa responded, "But, I thought Donna had a point and I understood. She never had a chance to be his mother, she deserved a chance. But I should have factored more of Mox into the equation and less of me as a parent. It doesn't matter." He sighed, running his fingers through his thinning, gray, hair. "You keep looking, I'll call Donna."

"Would you rather I call and you look?" Jen offered.

"Hell no," Sefa said. "I'm afraid you'll bite the woman's head off before she finishes saying hello." Before Jen could reply to his comment, he turned and left the room.

.

{o}-{o}-{o}

.

Donna Ambrose Miller felt she might be having the worst day of her life, since Dean had first disappeared. And damn it, I can think of him as being Dean back then, because he was! She'd had to have a talk with Amber about respecting personal property, while in her heart she understood her daughter's intentions, and hated that she might be crushing a little bit of her daughter's generous spirit.

Amber, as could be predicted, cried pitifully that her rock hadn't been a hit, and sobbed even louder when Donna explained that while her gesture was out of love, it still didn't give her the right to alter his property.

"But it was just an' ugly rock!" Amber wailed. She had brought Amber into the master bedroom to get some privacy, but Donna was sure Jacob and Zach could hear her carrying on.

"Not to Mox it wasn't," Donna said firmly. "He attached meaning to it. And he told you he liked the rock just the way it was. If you wanted to give him a lovely, decorated rock, you could have found another rock."

She started sobbing to the point where Jacob came in and started asking Donna if maybe she wasn't being too harsh, which did nothing to improve Donna's mood. She ended up telling Amber she should go and watch TV with Zach, even though she wanted to tell her to go to her room.

When Amber was gone, Donna turned on Jacob. When he defended his position saying it was just a rock, Donna asked him coldly if he'd feel the same way if Amber and Britney decided to paint the van with sparkles and flowers. When Jacob shrugged and said he'd be upset, but in the long run, he could make Amber wash it off, Donna almost screamed at him, as loudly as Amber had been wailing and carrying on. If the kids hadn't been in the house, she probably would have screamed. "Remember those painted rocks we had, surrounding the trees in the backyard?" She reminded him. "We didn't like that they were white, so I tried to remove the paint. It was impossible, remember? No matter what I tried, you could still see they had been painted white. We can't just restore Mox's rock. And again, it doesn't matter. She defaced his property without his permission, she can't do that."

She wasn't sure who had won or lost on that argument, but Amber coldly refused to let Donna tuck her into bed. "I want Daddy to do it," she said. Which told Donna that Amber thought she had an ally in Jacob.

Donna knew it would blow over. Tomorrow, when it was time for breakfast, Amber would be over her snit, but it still infuriated her that Amber felt she could be in a snit at all. She had painted the rock. It wasn't like Donna wanted her to wear a hair shirt and flog herself, but was it wrong for her to at least understand that what she'd done had been wrong? That no matter how ugly she thought the rock was, that didn't give her the right to just take it and paint it?

Donna tried later to remove the paint from the rock, deciding it sure couldn't hurt. She was able to get the shellac off, using a lot of paint stripper, and she got it down to being faded, but it was still obvious the rock had been painted and said "Mox" on it. She poured some paint stripper into a plastic bucket and put the rock in that to let it soak.

While she was doing that, Jacob went to "work on his novel" and when she finished, he was still working on it, so Donna sat in the kitchen feeling torn. Part of her wanted to try again to talk to Amber, to get her to understand. Another part wanted to fix things up with Jacob, and yet another wanted to call Faulk and make sure Mox was all right. If Mox isn't home by midnight, I will call Faulk. It will be okay then, I can pretend I'm just worried about getting the bandages on Mox's wound fixed.

Then, her cellphone rang. She looked at it and saw it was Mox's number, so she answered it quickly. "Mox?"

"No, Mrs. Miller, it's not Mox, it's Faulk."

Donna heard hesitation and fear in Faulk's voice. "Is Mox okay?" She sat up straighter in her chair, as if ready to leap from it.

"I-I don't know," Faulk admitted. "He-he ran off. I drove around looking for him, but I couldn't find him. When I got home, I saw he'd dropped his phone."

"So Mox is walking around out there, alone at night?" Donna's voice began rising and she was glad the twins were upstairs. "With no phone?"

"Yes, Ma'm," Faulk said, and his voice sounded so miserable that if it wasn't Mox they were discussing, Donna might have felt sorry for him. "And it's all my fault and I'm sorry."

"What happened?" Donna asked, starting to look around for her purse, ready to leap into the van and start looking for him. The terror she had felt all those years came flooding back. It didn't matter that Dean was sixteen and looked strong enough to take care of himself, her boy had gone missing, again.

"I-I kissed him," Faulk confessed. "It wasn't a passionate kiss, or at least it wasn't supposed to be. I-I think I got the wrong signals-"

The house phone rang, and Donna pounced on it, answering it "Hello?"

"Donna, it's Sefa, Mox is okay."

A huge breath of relief escaped her and suddenly she didn't care at all what Faulk had to say. "Hang on a sec, Sefa, please don't hang up." She pushed the mute on the house phone and then went back to her cell phone. "Faulk, Mox's father is on the landline and he says Mox all right," she would realize later she had called Sefa Mox's father. "I'm going to talk to him. If you want to be useful, bring Mox's phone over here."

"I-I'll do that, Ma'm," Faulk said.

She hung up her cell phone and turned her attention back to Sefa. "Where is he? Faulk has his phone, so how did Mox talk to you?"

"Ah okay, a least we know where the phone is," Sefa said. "He called me on a borrowed phone."

"Faulk is going to bring Mox's phone here," Donna said.

"Good." Sefa drew in a breath. "Donna, you promised me when we talked about letting him come out there, that if it didn't work out, if being with you wasn't what was best for Mox, you'd understand. I'm heading out to get Mox and I'm bringing him home. I'm not going to try to keep him out of your life, but I'm taking him back to Florida and I think the next time you see him, it should be you coming to visit him, not the other way around."

Donna heard the determination in Sefa's voice. He was being as civil as he could, but he wasn't going to debate this, and he was more than willing to get a lot more aggressive about it if he had to. And if Donna was going to be honest with herself, she knew he was right. She'd made a proper botch of everything. It was too late for her and Mox to be mother and son. He had bonded with the Reigns family, and she should have realized that. "I won't fight," she said, sighing deeply. "I was wrong. He belongs with you."

"I don't think sending him to you was a good idea," Sefa admitted, "but I don't think we thought this through. You wanted your boy back and we thought, as parents ourselves, that he did deserve to give living with you and your family a try. But we weren't thinking about Mox. The kid has been through a lot. Not just from the moment he was away from you until he came to us, but after that too. When his kidnappers came back into his life, as brief as it was. I think we all were thinking Mox was in a better state of mind than he really was. The kid is tough, he'll take so much, but we pushed way too much on him. He needs to come home. He needs to work in the camp. I know he was involved in HWA, but I don't think that was enough. I think he needs to be here, where he can run the ropes whenever he wants, where… I hate to say this, but I'm not going to mince words, he needs to be with us. We all love him, we all told him we'd always do what was best for him, and I don't think we did. I think we all handled this as what was best for parents, not the child."

"I know," Donna whispered. "I-I promised. I wanted a chance to… be his mother again, but I can't be. He's never called me anything but Donna. I haven't really tried to be his mother, either. He calls Jen, Mom. Not me."

"The two of you will work something out," Sefa said. "And, I think until your little girl painted his rock, he was getting fond of the twins. He will again, once he's calmed down and healed spiritually a bit. You and your family can come down to Florida any time you want, and we can work things out a lot slower and where Mox feels the most comfortable."

"Yes," Donna said, nodding too, even though Sefa couldn't see it. "But he's safe now?"

"He's at a coffee shop," Sefa said. "A place called Java Joe's. The girl who works there, she has a spice name… like Sage or Parsley… uhm… Cinnamon, that's it. She's keeping an eye on him. You need to pick him up and bring him back so he can pack. My wife is looking at flights right now. When I know more information, I'll let you know. But he's expecting you to pick him up. He might lock himself in the room he's using when he gets home, and let him if he wants to. He just needs some alone time. I'll keep in touch with the details."

"All right," Donna said, sounding like a robot. She was on autopilot right now. I failed him. Twice. "I'll go get him. Anything else I can do?"

"Yeah, do you know Faulk's number? I want to ask him what happened."

Donna did have Faulk's number, from the note he'd left her at the emergency room. She had tossed it into her purse while they had been at the wound clinic. She fetched it and gave Sefa the number. "Faulk told me he kissed Mox and that upset him," she said.

"What?" Sefa's voice took on a tone of anger.

"I-I think it was an accident, or signals got crossed," Donna said. "Faulk's been really good to him. I don't think he'd attack Mox. But, I think Faulk is gay. And I think he didn't know Mox wasn't."

"Mox considers himself asexual," Sefa said, sounding weary again. "All right, I'll take care of this. You go and get Mox."

"I will," Donna said, grateful that she would at least get to spend a little time alone with him, even though she was pretty sure there would be little talking between the two of them.

.

{o}-{o}-{o}

.

As Sefa hung up the phone, Jen came into the kitchen, looking upset. "There aren't any flights until six tomorrow morning. There are no direct flights, all have at least one connector. It's going to take you about five to six hours to get there."

Sefa drew in a sigh. "Maybe I should drive," he considered. "If I don't stop for breaks, I can be up there in about the same time, maybe less. And I won't have to contend with renting a car. If Mox has stuff to bring back, we can do it easily in the SUV."

"I don't know," Jen said, biting her lip. "I don't like the idea of you driving that long, alone."

"Jesh, I'm not a kid and I'm not an old man, either. I'll be fine," Sefa scowled. "And it's not like you have to worry about the the car. The new SUV is in great condition." The family's ancient SUV was still around, but Sefa had finally broken down and gotten another one for camp use, only a couple years old and with low mileage.

"How about if you take Marc along?" Jen suggested. "Then he could spell you if you needed rest."

"No!" Sefa insisted. "Marc has to run the school until I get back. Besides, the way he drives when it's dark, we won't even be out of Florida by daylight!"

"I don't want you going alone!" Jen insisted.

"He doesn't have to," a voice said from the entryway. It was Roman, and from the look on his face, it was easy to see he'd been listening in for a bit. He might not know exactly what was going on, but he knew it involved getting Mox back. "I can go with him. I have my license, so I can help with the driving when Dad gets tired."

Sefa and Jen exchanged looks then Sefa nodded. "Go, pack an overnight bag. Do not, under any circumstances, wake your brother, or he will never shut up about coming along. Wake him and neither of you gets to go."

"I won't wake him," Roman said, and before his parents could offer any other rules or objections, he left the room.

Jen looked at Sefa, "While you pack a bag for yourself, I'll make some coffee and sandwiches for the trip."

Author's Notes: One more chapter. I am working on another story for this series that will tie things up. I am hoping that I will be able to start posting the new one the week after this one is finished.