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by redsox907 » 01 Jan 2026, 01:37
Chapter Nine: Return to Havre
For the first time in what seemed like a long line of unfortunate events, things weren’t as bad as they appeared.
Mom’s line was dead not because of any complication, but simply because she’d changed providers—a detail she’d told me on our last phone call that I had simply been too drunk to remember. I only found out after frantically calling Best Western, where she managed the kitchen staff now, and demanding to speak with her.
“Armando,” she said with enough worry to pierce my heart, “You never call me at work. What’s wrong, my son?”
The realization about how distant I had been with my Mom hit hard and fast, but I fought back the tears to reassure her I was fine, which wasn’t as much of a lie as it would have been previously. “Just checking in, I forgot you had gotten a new number. Call me when you get home? I’d love to catch up,” I said, trying my best to sound casual.
This time, it was her turn to fight back tears. “You sound clear Mando. Really clear. I’ll call you when I get home, promise.”
From there, we started to slowly rebuild our relationship. I wasn’t ready to tell her what I’d learned about my father, not yet. And not over the phone. I told her I wasn’t ready to broach that subject, not yet, and she didn’t pry, content to have her son back after so many years.
It was hard listening to her talk about the last four years, how she filled her time trying to stay occupied all while worrying about me daily. “I’m not trying to guilt you, Mando,” she’d say as I apologized repeatedly, but the guilt sat there. It was a necessary guilt, though.
Since being discharged from the hospital I’d begun taking classes at Peaks, true to my word. Part of the program was understanding how we process grief; it helped me realize that I’d never processed anything. I’d file it away, shut it out, but never process it. When I was younger, I did that with football and working out, but once I felt like that was stripped away with my exile from the Academy, alcohol became my solution. The problem, of course, is that it is a mask, not a solution. It covers the problem, but when the alcohol wears off, the problems haven’t gone away. If anything, they are exacerbated.
I never fully bought into the concept of Alcoholics Anonymous, at least not in the traditional sense. I never felt the need to attend weekly meetings, talk through my problems with a group of strangers who had the same core problems as myself, and expect some miraculous salvation from the process. As a result, once I finished the program at Peaks I never continued attending meetings or partaking in the traditional recovery rhetoric. What the program did for me was more fundamental, simply giving me a set of tools that could be used at my discretion to address a variety of problems.
The secret? They only work if you use them. I’d never been afraid of hard work before in my life and certainly wasn’t going to start now. I couldn’t change my past, only control how I let it affect my future. But what I could do is use my newfound knowledge to help repair the relationship with Mom, while also working on handling grief and loss in real time. But to do that, I had to face the past as well. And that meant finally confronting Mom about my father.
By August of 2017, five months removed from my ‘rock bottom’ moment, I finally felt stable enough to face the truth about Mom’s knowledge of my father.
“Remember, whatever you find out doesn’t change your future,” Jessica reminded me as I was packing my bags. “You know who you are regardless of how your father shaped you. And regardless of how much your Mom knew, or didn’t know, it doesn’t change how she supported you in his absence.”
I was reminded again of how thankful I was to have her in my corner throughout this journey. I wasn’t overtly religious, another sticking point with AA that left me on the outside looking in, but I did believe in destiny. I didn’t know what the future held for Jessica and myself, a subject we hadn’t broached since she began supporting my recovery, but I knew that the kindness she showed me at the hospital directly correlated with my newfound sense of self. Could I have pulled myself out of the pit of self-loathing on my own? Possibly. But without a reminder that someone cared for me, simply for being me, I’m not sure I would have found the resolve.
I hadn’t returned to Havre since packing up and shipping out to Colorado Springs after my senior season. I expected to finally return as an accomplished airman, maybe even a fighter pilot. Sometimes I had dreams that I’d excel on the football field enough to make the league and return as a football star. Instead, I returned simply as Armando James Leon. And maybe that was for the best.
Because this version of Armando was lightyears ahead of the version that started 2017 and certainly more prepared than the man who was hospitalized in March. This Armando was clearer, sturdier, more prepared for the world. But even so, I was still anxious about finally broaching Mom about my father. When we finally got back to Mom’s, the same apartment we had shared for so many years, the conversation was casual. She asked about how my PT was going, how my new job as a Fitness Instructor was going, when I was planning on finishing my BS in Sports Medicine so I could officially train as a licensed personal trainer—a subject my employer, Colorado Iron Gym, had already broached. But as the small talk dragged on, the elephant in the room only grew.
Finally, I couldn’t stretch the moment anymore.
“Mom, did you know Arturo was in the cartel?”
She didn’t deflect, nor did she attempt to change the subject. Instead, she took a deep breath as if to steady herself for a difficult task, then revealed her truth.
“No, at least not at first.”
Once Mom started talking, similar to my confession to Jessica at St. Francis, everything else just spilled out. She told me about making a pact with her friends in Gunlock about going to nursing school together, how she was the only one selected to the program, then her eventual excommunication when her father discovered her intent and kicked her out of the house and the community. Her loneliness while moving to Las Cruces alone, then her shame when she had to drop out once her small grant ran dry. “That was when I met your father, when I was alone and vulnerable,” she revealed. Mom was working as a secretary for a local real estate agent and my father came in inquiring about purchasing a home in the area. She said he was exotic, mysterious, but most importantly, stable. He wasn’t always present, even from the beginning, but he made sure she was taken care of. After spending two years on her own, alone, the relief of having someone else to rely on was more than enough to sweep her off her feet.
“When he proposed, I didn’t hesitate,” she sighed. They married quickly, and shortly after, I was born.
“I didn’t suspect anything for years,” she revealed. “He wasn’t always home, but he was always present. Other people always questioned how I’d been okay with that, but to be honest? It wasn’t much different from how I was raised. My father, Jacob Briggs, raised us in a traditional LDS lifestyle. He provided and my Mom, Heather, took care of everything else. The situation with Arturo wasn’t much different. He provided, I nurtured.”
It wasn’t until the Spaceship Incident that she began to suspect something was amiss. “The way his expression changed, it wasn’t just anger. It was cold, calculated. Like he was weighing all of his options and nothing was off the table,” she breathlessly told me.
From there everything slowly started unraveling, concluding with her confrontation with him on Christmas of 2004.
“That was when he finally told me,” she revealed. “He didn’t tell me the extent, just that he was involved, only after I threatened to leave.”
Then she added, starting to sob for the first time, “He threatened to kill us. And I knew he meant it. He’d quickly reframe it, always trying to be controlling, that he meant the cartel would kill us if we weren’t useful. But I knew he meant himself.”
“After that, I decided if I was going to be complacent I was going to be compensated, which is when I started getting bolder with handling Leslie in your father’s absence,” she noted. “That is until the break-in.
“They told me they were watching and if I knew what was best for myself, and you, that I wouldn’t tell anyone they were there. Not the police, not Arturo, not even Leslie.”
She revealed that once Leslie was gone, she assumed the worst. That Arturo had abandoned us and finally taken the last lifeline we had, Leslie.
I had remained quiet throughout her entire story as Mom quickly fell into her memories. Just like I had been at the hospital, she was expelling all of her former demons. And just like Jessica, I sat there content to be the grounding piece of the present. But now, it was my time to speak.
“He didn’t leave us Mom. Or at least, he hadn’t yet,” I stated. She looked at me with glassy, red-rimmed eyes that half said she wanted the truth, half that she would be content never knowing. But this wasn’t just about me, it was about us. And it had to all come out.
“He may have eventually. He was making plans to defect to a different cartel group” I continued, “I would assume Leslie was a part of it, but I don’t think we’ll ever know. Because he’s dead Mom. The Juarez cartel sawed his head off and displayed it in Ocotlan as a message.”
From there it was my turn to detail what the SSBI had revealed and what became of my life after.
By the end, we were both exhausted, both of us unloading a burden we carried for far too long. But the close relationship we had once had, that had been shattered by shame and distance, was restored. As I prepared to return to Colorado Springs three days later, I promised to make plans to visit soon. I wouldn’t admit it to her at the time, but I was worried. Mom looked like a shell of the woman I remembered, battered by years of heavy smoking, stress, and moving. The color had returned to her face at times during our conversation, but had slowly drained away over the course of the weekend. To make matters worse, she had a persistent cough that she could never shake. I’d lost nearly seven years with my Mom—I planned on taking advantage of whatever time I had left.
The cathartic confession between myself and Mom made me realize that life was too short to withhold secrets, to harbor feelings that went unspoken. On the plane ride back to Colorado Springs, I decided it was time to tell Jessica how I truly felt.
That night when Jessica stopped by to see how my trip went, I steeled myself to tell her.
“Jessica, I need to tell you something,” I declared. The seriousness in my tone was evident enough for her to turn and face me fully, reminding me of the last time I was this serious—I told her that my father was in the cartel.
“I just needed to tell you, I think you saved my life. I don’t know if I would have gotten back on track without your simple acts of kindness, that made me realize what I had to lose.”
“I didn’t save your life silly,” she said, with more sincerity than her playful tone garnered, “I just made you realize you were worth saving.”
With that, before weighing the risks, I leaned in and kissed her.
Later that night, wrapped together in the bedsheets, I jokingly asked if this meant I was finally her type.
“I wouldn’t have stuck around this long if you weren’t Flyboy,” she retorted.
And with that, suddenly the one that got away was the one who stuck around.
