Frank must have smelled the mushu from his trailer next door. He had his butt in my recliner before I got the sacks unloaded. I grabbed forks and plates from the dish drainer and we all dug into the food around the coffee table.
We tried to take stock, we really did. We kept saying that we were going to make a list of all the facts we knew, once we got some food in our bellies.
But as soon as the food hit my belly, it was as if every bit of energy got diverted into digestion or something.
Viv seemed to have the same problem.
“I think I've hit a wall,” she said, leaning back in my saggy sofa.
“Me, too.” I was having difficulty stringing two thoughts together. It was either sucking down the Chinese food too fast or a crash from the adrenaline rush.
Frank looked back and forth between the two of us. For the most part, Frank didn't speak unless spoken to, and even then his answers were mostly one word and were as likely to be in Spanish as in English.
He stood and walked to the door, then back.
“Where's your car?” he asked Viv.
“Oh, blast,” she said. She lolled her head in my direction. “We left it at Flo's.”
“Ugh,” I said. I shifted to rise. I would have to take her to Flo's to get her car so she could get back to Belle Court.
“I'll take you.”
Viv and I both looked at Frank.
“What?”
“I'll take you back to your place,” he said.
I was too tired to hide my shock. “You're volunteering?” I immediately felt guilty, but if Frank was easily offended, he would have not been my friend.
“You're in no shape to drive,” he said. “Neither one of you.”
Viv looked touched. “No one's said that to me since I got sober.”
For some reason, this struck me as hilarious. They left me cackling on the sofa, with Frank looking not entirely sure I was sober at all.
––––––––
Stump and I made it to bed, and I fell asleep almost immediately. Unfortunately, I woke up way too early the next morning and couldn't go back to sleep.
I decided to make up for lost time from the night before and jotted down a list of all the facts I knew. It added up to precious little.
I thought about Trisha's insistence that I watch Peter's interview with David Baucum, so I decided to pull that up. Again, I wasn't able to find the links she'd sent us, but I kept searching until I found some stuff on Donald Baucum, the grandfather war hero who had started Baucum Engineering. I turned on the lamp beside my bed and jotted down notes on the back of an envelope my utility bill had come in.
Donald Baucum was, indeed, a World War II hero. I read an entire scholarly paper on his mission to gather soil samples at Sword Beach, and I could understand almost all of it. On the face of it, it doesn't sound like it would be that scary to swim to a beach, stick a thing in the sand and then swim back out, but when you factor in German soldiers who would have been quite happy to shoot first and ask questions later, it made the danger a bit more apparent. Add that to the fact that just the two of them went ashore, and they couldn't carry any weapons for defense in their wetsuits, and I became sure that I wouldn't have been able to do it.
Baucum came home from the war and went to college and said he chose the major he did because he had begun to see what an interesting field it would be. He liked the world of building, but he didn't necessarily want to work in construction. He married and had a son and a daughter.
Donald Junior, or DJ, followed in his father's footsteps. He worked in the firm and helped make it even more successful. He married and had a son, David. (Apparently, he was loyal enough to keep the same letter, but not enough to carry through to Donald the Third.) Unfortunately, DJ also smoked a lot, and liked his bourbon. He was playing golf on a beautiful March afternoon and dropped dead of a heart attack.
His wife remarried and had another son, and soon after that David followed granddad—who was still alive for a few more years—into the fold of Baucum Engineering and grew the firm with jobs from the highway department, major shopping centers, and, of course, schools. David never married and had no off-spring, so there was no other D. Baucum to take over. Which I supposed was just as well, since there appeared to be nothing left to take over now.
Once the story broke about the soil report, he lost a couple of big jobs. That was news, but only because of the earthquake school connection. I checked the comments on that story. In typical Internet comment style, they were horrible. “Good,” people said. “They deserve it after what they did to that little girl.” As if the entire Baucum firm stood there and shook that building until it fell on her.
More jobs were lost, and a civil lawsuit was filed. More clients fled. Before the suit even went to trial, Baucum closed the company. Within a week, he was dead of an overdose of alcohol and Ambien. The speculation is that it wasn't an accident, but no one really knew for sure.
I checked the clock. Still an hour before I needed to get in the shower. I clicked another link for a story about the family who’d been injured when the building failed.
Peter began by holding up a framed family portrait of a young family – Mom and Dad, two boys and a girl between them. The scene switched to the family in the backyard, with Dad at the grill, Mom and little sister sitting at the picnic table, laughing at the boys who ran around the back yard throwing a ball and chasing the dog.
Matthew Logan was the head of construction, and the building of the school was a family event. He had three kids who would attend NorthStar Elementary the day it opened. His son was in fifth grade, his only daughter going into third, and another son who would begin kindergarten there.
The scene switched to Peter sitting across from Matthew Logan and his wife in their living room.
“Macon has been hounding me every day for the past six months. He wants to make sure the school is going to be ready in time. He doesn't want these other two to go there and him not have his chance. He was real upset with me when we didn’t meet the original deadline.”
Every time dad had come home with a story about a delay or a problem on the site, all three kids were up in arms.
“Macon and Meredith knew that if it wasn't finished in time, they'd be doing school in the portable buildings, but Marcus was under the impression that we were just going to make him go to school on a working construction site. And he was okay with that.”
The Logan family are used to construction sites. Mr. Logan has worked construction all his life. He often took the family onto job sites.
“If we could do it safely,” he said. “After the crew was gone and I knew we wouldn't be in anybody's way. When I knew the site was stable enough for them to walk around. So, they learned early on the environment, got to see firsthand everything that goes into a project, everything that's behind the walls you see and under the floors you walk on.”
“They have a perspective a lot of kids don't have,” Peter said.
“They do. I'd slap a hard hat on them and we'd take a look.”
“It wouldn't bother you any if your kids decided to follow you into the business?”
“Wouldn't bother me a bit.” He grinned.
“I want to go back to what you said before. You said, 'If we could do it safely.' March 11 was a day when, by all indications, you could let your kids visit the school safely.”
“March 11 was definitely a day when we should have been able to do it safely. It was finished. All the inspections had been done. It was done.”
“A brand new building, ready to go.”
“Ready to go. The next day, the teachers were going to come in and tour their rooms. They had hired people to move stuff in over Spring break, and when the kids came back from Spring break, it was going to be all new stuff. The kids were excited. Everyone was excited.”
“So, you took them all up there. Just the five of you?”
“No, it was the five of us—my wife and I, and the three kids, along with the principal and a couple of the teachers.”
“The ribbon cutting was scheduled for the next day.”
“That's right. The superintendent and school board were all going to be there, news cameras and everything. This was just a sneak preview.”
“And then...”
“And then.” He shifted in his chair, his mouth set grimly.
“Describe what happened.”
“Meredith wanted to see the cafeteria, and Macon wanted to see the gym. They're side by side, so we were down there. I'd just opened the cafeteria door and Meredith ran inside, when we felt the first rumbling.”
“Did you know immediately what it was?”
“No. The first thought that went through my mind was that a pipe had blown somewhere. A small explosion. Meredith turned to me—she was scared and shocked, it was all over her face—but then it stopped. Got real quiet. I thought, “Was that an earthquake?” I couldn't believe it. I had been hearing, of course, about earthquakes around the area, but I'd never felt one before. And I thought, “Well, that wasn't so bad.” I started walking toward her to reassure her.”
“And then it hit.”
“And then it hit.”
The screen switched to a shot of the graph that showed the quake's intensity. The first tremor they'd felt was a small red hump. Then the red line spiked.
The wall in the cafeteria collapsed on Logan and his daughter. Out in the hallway, the rest of the family was okay. But under that wall, Matthew and Meredith Logan were trapped and hurt.
“What do you remember from that time under the rubble?”
“Oh, I remember all of it. I never did pass out. I had a blow to my head, my legs were stuck, and my right arm was trapped. But I could hear everything and still see some things.”
“Could you hear Meredith?”
“I—” He stopped. Breathed deep through his nose. His face contorted. He looked at the floor in front of him, biting his lower lip. He shifted in his chair. “I could hear her. She was calling me. “Daddy, Daddy.” I called back to her, told her it was okay, I would get her out. She said she was stuck. She was scared. “I want to go home,” she said.”
“I want to go home.”
The scene switched to video of the rescue workers who pulled the Logans out of the rubble. Some walls of the school stood, but the gym and cafeteria were open to bright blue sky. Mrs. Logan and the boys stood at the side of the collapse, looking shocked.
A series of images followed. Meredith, dusty and unconscious, lying under the white sheet of a gurney, her left hand dangling off the edge. Matthew, beside her. A close-up of his hand, reaching out to take her much smaller one across the space between them, before they were loaded onto the ambulance.
“The doctors said pretty early on that Meredith wasn't going to walk again. The kind of injury she had, it just wasn't possible. With what they were able to do now, they said that she would never walk again.”
“Never walk again. Never dance again.”
“Never dance again.”
The screen filled with shots of Meredith Logan in her various dance outfits. White blonde hair, and pink, gap-toothed grin. Meredith in a pink tutu and white tights; Meredith in a spangly, fringy flapper dress, wearing a huge red lipsticked smile; Meredith in a black leotard, the background dark, her young face in somber profile, the light soft on her tender features.
“She lived to dance.”
“Always dancing. Always. We'd be walking down the aisle in the grocery store and she's waltzing along behind me, listening to the music in her head. All over the house. At the park. I mean, she would just tune everything out and dance wherever she was.”
“Does she understand what's happened? The permanence of it?”
The parents looked at each other. The mom ducked her head quickly. Her shoulders jerked slightly as she sniffed.
“We've been talking about that,” Matthew Logan said. “We've told her, of course. And sometimes it seems like she does understand it. When we first told her, she just...” He broke off.
“She acted like she just didn't hear it. She just—” The mom brought a hand down in front of her face. “Shut it completely out. No acknowledgment at all.” She sniffed and cleared her throat. “I felt like...she must have overheard some of the hospital staff or someone talking about it. Because she didn't seem shocked or upset, just...completely ignoring it.”
“So, we decided we had to give her time to process it.” He shrugged. “We didn't need to push it. She had plenty of time.”
“The rest of her life.”
That hung heavy in the air.
After a few painful moments, Peter went on. “So, tell us about those first days after the earthquake. There were things going through your mind as a father, of course. And as someone who'd also been injured. What about as a construction foreman? What was going through your head as the person who'd been in charge of constructing the very wall that had fallen on you?”
He shook his head slowly as he relived those days. “Lying in that hospital bed, I went over and over those plans in my mind. Had we followed them right? Had we screwed up somewhere? I mean, an earthquake is an act of God and you can't design for every disaster like that. You just can't. But we certainly try. We try to build things that will withstand what we know is a high risk. In this area, that's usually wind. Wind is the biggest threat to our structures. So we build with that in mind.”
“Everyone knows we're here in tornado alley. Lubbock has had devastating tornadoes before.”
“Right. The engineers and architects who design the plans—they design with the wind in mind. How deep do our foundations need to be to withstand 120 mile-per-hour winds? How thick do our supports have to be? What kind of connections do we use?”
“So, I'm going to go back to something you said earlier. You said you'd heard about earthquakes in the area.”
His mouth flattened and he nodded.
“This area has seen a fairly dramatic uptick in tremors over the past several years.”
“That's right.”
“So, it might be reasonable to assume that—” Peter shrugged, spreading his hands. “That it's time to work that into the calculations.”
“It would be reasonable to assume that. Because that's exactly what the professionals who work in this area have been talking about.”
“That they need to consider the possibility of earthquake now, along with the possibility of high wind?”
“Exactly.”
“So...did this plan include those considerations?”
Matthew Logan shook his head. “No.”
The scene cut to the front of Baucum Engineering, then shrank to the corner so that we now saw Peter at the news desk with Trisha and Tom Timmons.
“Patrice and Dan, I talked to the engineering firm that designed the NorthStar Elementary building, and tomorrow night we'll see that interview, right here on News Channel 11.”
“All right, Peter. Interesting stuff. We look forward to learning more. Switching gears now to weather...”
I clicked the link for the interview with David Baucum.
The story opened with Baucum sitting behind a large desk, and I realized this was the same office—even the same desk, I was fairly sure—that had been in the elder Baucum's interview, thirty-something years before.
“Yesterday we talked to the Logan family. As you remember, they're the ones who—”
“I know who they are, yes.” Baucum's mouth was a thin line.
“Good. One of the things we discussed—one of several things, in fact—was the design of the school. For the benefit of our viewers who might not be familiar with architecture or engineering and building design, could you give us a layman's idea of what goes into making a building safe?”
Baucum's expression didn't shift one iota. “No. I can't sum up years of education and experience in one pithy statement. What I can say is that there are very detailed, very considered guidelines and requirements in place, strict building codes dictated by years of experience in building design and usage, that we and every other engineering firm, architecture firm, every city government that enforces building codes, all go by. It all exists.”
“And it's all followed?”
Clearly holding back an eye roll, Baucum said, “Of course it's followed.”
Peter nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He took a breath. Then he said, “Let's get right to NorthStar Elementary.”
Baucum lifted a hand in a “Be my guest” gesture.
“In my conversation with Matthew Logan, he mentioned that buildings in this area are typically designed to stand up to heavy winds, because, well, that's what buildings in this area usually have to do. Stand up to heavy winds.”
He stopped and waited for a response.
“Was that a question?” Baucum asked.
“Well, is that correct? You're the engineer.”
“That is correct. The building code in this area stipulates that buildings such as NorthStar Elementary be reinforced to resist wind loads.”
“Okay,” Peter said. He took another breath.
I felt for the guy. Baucum wasn’t making it easy for him, that was for sure. I wondered if he would fold the way he had at Dorsett Oil.
“So, can we assume that NorthStar Elementary was built to withstand—what did you call them? Wind loads?”
“You don't need to assume anything. The school was designed to withstand wind loads of 120 miles per hour.”
Peter nodded. “That's kind of a worst-case scenario for this area?”
Baucum shrugged. “The most likely worst-case scenario, yes.”
“The most likely.”
“Sure. For instance, a worst-case scenario might be a 747 crashing into the building, but nobody designs for that, because that's not likely to happen.”
Peter nodded and smiled as if the guy wasn't being a complete jerk. “So you take whatever is the most-likely event to occur and design for the worst-case scenario for that event?”
“To a reasonable extent, yes. For instance, if that school was being built in Minnesota, we would have considered what kind of load a significant snowfall accumulation would put on the roof. We don't have to worry about that much here.”
“And if you were building a school in say, California?”
Baucum eyed Peter for a second. He knew a gotcha question when he saw it coming.
“We would design for seismic loads.”
“Seismic loads. Like earthquakes.”
“In layman's terms, yes.” His smile was chilly.
“But you didn't consider seismic loads in the design of this school?”
“No, because that's not the most-likely event to—”
“But isn't it true that seismic activity has become more common in this area, with the increase in fracking and injection wells?”
I had to admit, I felt pretty proud of myself for knowing what he was talking about.
“To an extent, yes. Seismic activity is more common, but it's not been of an intensity strong enough to take into consideration—”
“But isn't it true that we don't, in fact, know for sure that buildings in this area are designed to withstand this—this increased seismic activity, even if it isn't, as you say, of significant intensity?”
“No, that isn't necessarily true. We do know that structures built to the current code will withstand up to—”
“And isn't it true that architects and engineers were, quietly, out of the public eye, discussing amongst themselves the very real possibility that what happened at NorthStar Elementary could happen here, before it did happen?”
“You make it sound like we were skulking around in the shadows, with secret handshakes and—”
“But this wasn't public knowledge, was it?”
Baucum shook his head, his mouth growing even thinner. “That would depend on your definition of “public knowledge.” We formed a committee to study the issue. We invited people we thought could contribute.” His eyes flashed anger. “We did not invite investigative reporters because it wasn't immediately apparent what their contribution would be.”
Peter grinned, and I wondered how he would feel if he knew how apparent it was that he got a kick out of goading the guy. I mean, Baucum was a bit of a jerk, but Peter Browning suddenly looked like that horrible middle school boy who loved to torture you until you cried.
“Hey, no hard feelings,” Peter said. “And what did this committee find?”
“Nothing. At least nothing conclusive. We were still in the middle of it when the—when the building failed.”
“Isn't it true, Mr. Baucum, that you had concerns over the design of NorthStar before it failed?”
Baucum sighed. “Look, there are things you just don't know until they present themselves. We designed that building—”
“Isn't it true that you had concerns, specifically, about NorthStar Elementary?”
Baucum frowned again. “It's true that I thought the situation bore further investigation. The school was built on soils that are subject to—”
“Subject to liquefaction,” Peter interrupted. He pulled a white page off his lap and slid it across the desk toward Baucum, with the air of someone who had just dealt the death blow to a sworn enemy.
Baucum stared at the paper, then at Peter. “Where did you get that?”
“This is your email, isn't it?”
“Yes, it's my email. I wrote it—”
“You wrote it to another member of the committee regarding concerns you had about the increase in injection wells in the area. Here you say, and I'm quoting you directly, 'Some areas that weren't even red flags a few years ago could be ripe for a disaster now that we see the possibility of everything coming together the way it has—a kind of 'perfect storm' of conditions that weren't considered ten years ago or even two years ago, when the site was chosen for NorthStar. That whole neighborhood is built on land reclaimed from a dried riverbed. I would definitely consider that soil susceptible to liquefaction. Something that can be designed for, unless we're bringing seismic into the mix. Now that we are bringing seismic into the mix...”
Baucum opened his mouth to speak, but Peter held up a finger.
I paused the video.
“Liquefaction?” I asked Stump. She looked as clueless as I was.
I searched ‘soils subject to liquefaction’ and ended up losing half an hour looking at bizarre videos of water that seeped up through the earth and dirt that rippled like water when it was jumped on. It was pretty freaky stuff.
“Okay,” I said to Stump. “We learned something today.” I flipped back to Browning’s interview with Baucum.
“The person you were corresponding with here responds, 'Who's going to be the one to tell Daniels that his school is going to be delayed again? Because it sure as'—and here I'll just say blank— ‘it sure as blank isn't going to be me.' Then you respond, 'I don't want to do it, either. And I don't know that a delay—at least not a significant delay—is necessary. But I'm beginning to think we do need to hit the pause button and study the situation a little closer, especially with the school.’”
Peter laid the paper on the desk and looked at Baucum. “Did you hit the pause button?”
“No.” Subdued now, Baucum shook his head and stared at the desk. “No, we...” He trailed off.
“By Daniels, in that message, of course, you were referring to Michael Daniels, the LISD School Board President.”
Baucum gave a slight nod.
“Did you alert him?”
Baucum took a deep breath, then shook his head. “No, we hadn't really had time to—” Peter leaned forward. “This was written on December 28th. The earthquake happened on March 11. That’s...” He looked up like he was calculating in his head. “Nine weeks, give or take?”
Baucum didn't answer.
“No communication with the school board during that time? With the parents of the kids who would be attending the school?”
“Look,” Baucum said, clearly tired of feeling railroaded. “It's not responsible conduct to go around saying the sky is falling if you don't have clear evidence that the sky could be, in fact, falling. Obviously, we were looking into the matter. We were performing due diligence. We felt we had reason to look into the matter further, but not reason to bring—”
“Some people have asked if there could, possibly, be a conflict of interests here.”
Baucum drew his head back. “What? No. Why?”
“Well, your company was part of the design team on the building. And here you are, on the committee investigating whether the design of this building is adequate to the environment it's being placed in.”
“It wasn't just this building. We were looking at the entirety of the area, whether we need to change actual building codes and specifications to match this—this new reality.”
“And yet you mentioned NorthStar Elementary by name.”
“Well, yes. Because that's the one I was most familiar with, since it was recent and I had been directly involved in it. But we weren't—”
“You mentioned NorthStar Elementary by name,” Peter said again.
Baucum stopped. He ran a hand over his mouth. “It takes time to conduct a thorough investigation like this. I thought...we needed more time to...”
Peter let him sit in silence for a moment. Then he laid a picture of Meredith on the table. She held her hand up in a weak wave from her hospital bed, her leg raised in a plaster cast. It was the picture shown on her GoFundMe page.
“Meredith Logan has time. She's facing a future full of nothing but time. A future when she's not able to do the one thing she loves most—dancing.”
Music kicked in, and I hit the pause button. They were about to show little Meredith dancing before the accident, and I wasn’t sure I could handle that.
I checked the clock again and decided I would just go to work early.
My early morning caught up with me around 11:00 am. Unfortunately, I still had dogs to finish and then a biting Scotty came in and put me in a foul mood. By the time I got off work at 4:00 pm, I was in an even fouler mood and decided I needed some TLC.
I texted Tony before I left Flo's. “Warning: grumpy wife headed your way.”
“There,” I said to Stump as I lowered her onto the seat. “He can't say he hasn't been warned.”
My phone began playing the siren as soon as I walked through Tony's door.
Tony looked at me, brow raised, and then at my pants pocket. “Where's the fire?” He waggled his brows.
I laughed. “That's my mom's ring tone. I'll check it later.” I had to be emotionally prepared to talk to my mother, and right now I did not have the reserves to pull it off.
He let me put my lunch box on the counter and toe off my shoes by the sofa, then he gathered me in his arms.
He'd kissed me once when his own phone buzzed.
He groaned, pulled it from his pocket and looked at the screen, then gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. “No problem. I will put the time to good use by going into a near-vegetative state on your sofa.”
He kissed me and headed back to his office.
I stretched out on the sofa, but my mind was in that frenzied, exhausted state where it refuses to stop running. I picked up my phone and found the interview with Baucum again.
Trisha had said he was unbelievably cold, but he hadn't seemed cold to me. He'd seemed defensive and rude, but by the end of the interview, he'd seemed beaten.
I rose and paced, waiting for Tony to finish. To be honest, I'd expected him to drop everything and tend to me once he knew I was having a bad day.
It was childish to assume he would be able to do that, though. Tony had built a successful building services business through hard work and long hours, and I loved that about him. If it meant I had to be a big girl and let him put it before me once in a while, that seemed a small price to pay.
Or it would have if I hadn't been in such a mood. As things stood at the moment, I had to lecture myself not to be a big baby, but even then it was a struggle not to feel sorry for myself.
I sighed and ordered myself to really put the time to good use. I thought about Peter and the string of interviews I'd watched. What did they have in common?
I stood and walked slowly through Tony's living room, dining room, and kitchen, then back again. The truth was, there didn't seem to be a shortage of people who could have had it in for him. We needed to get a list of Baucum Engineering employees who had been laid off. Maybe I could cross-reference those names with anyone who had recently filed for bankruptcy or for divorce. How did one go about cross-referencing things, I wondered.
I tripped over something and stumbled. I looked down. My tennis shoes.
I cringed and picked them up, carrying them to the bedroom to tuck into the closet. I didn't have much at Tony's house, so the least I could do was keep my stuff picked up.
I went back to the living room and noticed my lunch box on the counter, ready to be cleaned out. My keys on the hallway table, not on the key rack by the back door where Tony kept his. My magazine on his coffee table.
I looked around. It was as if my stuff were the artfully placed items meant to make a model home look “lived in.”
I picked up my magazine and carried it to the rack beside the sofa. I was sliding it in beside Tony's books and magazines, when the spine of a book caught my eye.
Alcoholic.
I tugged the book out from where it was wedged between two other paperbacks and a stack of folded newspaper.
Living With An Alcoholic.
I stared at the title.
Surviving and Thriving with a Loved One Who Drinks read the subtitle.
I stared at the book for a long time. Eventually, I became aware of a buzzing in my ears.
This was good, I told myself. Tony wanted to know how to help. I needed help. We all needed to be on the same page.
This was good.
So why did I suddenly burn with shame?
I stood and paced a bit. There was no legitimate reason that I should feel so suddenly exposed. I knew I was an alcoholic. Tony knew I was an alcoholic. It was all out there. What's more, I knew—Jeez-O-Peet , how could I not know?—that addiction of any kind made life complicated. For everyone.
I sat on the edge of the sofa, then with a quick shove, put the book back where I'd found it.
I stood and paced some more.
I told myself to calm down. After all, it was silly to feel resentment or shame or even panic—all emotions that had been running through me, one after another.
Surviving a loved one who drinks.
I felt like a live grenade. Like a walking open-sore highly infectious disease.
I felt like an EF-5 tornado. Like the earthquake that had taken Meredith Logan’s ability to dance.
I picked the book up again, thumbed it open, then slapped it closed.
No. This wasn't going to help me, not right now. Tony was facing truth. He was seeking knowledge on how to live with that truth. I, as well as anyone, should be able to appreciate the value of that.
Facts were facts. I needed to focus on them and get my focus off my feelings. My feelings were obviously leading me to a bottomless swirly that could only result in something disastrous.
I took a deep breath. I started to list facts.
I was an alcoholic.
I was in recovery.
I had not had a drink in 421 days.
I was experiencing an uncomfortable feeling, but I was familiar with this feeling. This feeling said I wanted something, desperately needed something, in fact. It said that something fundamental was hanging out there, needful and unsatisfied, awkward and uncomfortable and screaming for something to be done. There was a hole that had to be filled.
It was just feeling. I had gotten through it before.
This feeling wasn't an indication that I did, in fact, have to fill the hole. I could, instead, just sit with that hole for a moment. Feel the edges. Gauge the depth.
Tony had to figure out how to survive me.
I made myself re-read the entire subtitle.
Surviving and Thriving with a Loved One Who Drinks.
I made myself focus on the good words. Thrive. Loved One. With.
I tucked the book back in the rack and stood, taking more deep breaths.
I had asked Tony if he could really appreciate what he was getting into, staying married to me. He'd said he did. He made the choice. He was a grownup, he knew what he was doing, we were both adults and were going through this with eyes wide open.
Okay. So if Tony could do this, so could I.
I walked into the hallway and looked at the closed office door. It was quiet in there.
I made the circuit of the living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway again.
We were grownups. We did what grownups do.
Grownups call their parents back, I remembered.
That was one thing I could do that would be simple enough. Mom was so excited now about her wedding, phone calls with her were mostly one sided and simple. I usually just kept up a revolving commentary of the words, “Wow,” “Cool,” and “That sounds great,” until she got ready to hang up. It cost me nothing and seemed to make her happy.
I called her.
“Salem!” she said when she answered. “I'm glad you called me back. I need to talk about wedding plans.”
For the next few minutes, I “wowed” and “cooled” my way through the call, but I had to make myself focus when her tone shifted just slightly.
“Because this is Gerry's fourth wedding, we can't have it at a church, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. No mention that their tally of previous marriages was equal. Or was Mom's number higher? I couldn't remember. There had been a number of false starts for a couple of the fiancés (What was the plural of fiancé? my frazzled brain wondered. Fianci?) and I had a hard time remembering which ones made it all the way to signing on the dotted line. At least four, though.
She went on about the backyard wedding they were planning at Gerry's parents' house. They were incorporating a fall theme, of course, using orange and teal for colors (which sounded hideous, but I held my tongue on that) and pumpkins, mums. The cake was a big horn of plenty.
“Neely describes it as rustic, but not country.”
I had been in Neely Bates’s backyard, and her house. She could pull off a classy version of “rustic” if anyone could.
“And we've decided not to have any attendants,” she said, a little rushed. In fact, it was almost with the air of someone ripping off a Band-Aid.
Jeez-O-Peet . I hadn't even considered that she might have asked me to be her bridesmaid or anything. Now I wouldn't have to make up an excuse. Whew.
“But I do get to be your flower girl, right?” I had been her flower girl three times. The last time I'd been fifteen, sulky and resentful in what I considered a baby dress, and already assuming this was just another man I would have to fight off.
Awkward silence.
“Just kidding,” I said. “No worries from me, I'll be happy to take my place on the bride's side.” Then, to change the subject, I said, “Okay, I know you and Neely have this well in hand, but I have to ask—aren't you concerned about rain? Even if it doesn't rain, it will surely be chilly.”
“Neely has it all figured out. They have fifteen of those outdoor patio heaters, plus they're renting a big tent that will be heated. We'll have the ceremony out by the fountain if it doesn't rain and inside the tent if it does. They're providing throws and heated gloves for the guests, just in case. And there will be plenty of alcohol flowing, of course. It's going to be fun!”
Actually, it did sound fun, in a very loud, obnoxious kind of way. For some reason the “fun with alcohol” attitude when she knew I was in recovery, coupled with the lack of a role for me in the event, had become extremely annoying to me.
Definitely time to take the high road. “I know I'm not in the wedding, but I'd love some suggestions on what to wear,” I said.
“I'll email you some ideas,” she said. “Or you could come up here and we could shop together. Girls weekend!”
She actually squealed. My mom. Squealing. I developed an instant migraine. And by migraine, I mean an even crummier attitude.
“Sure,” I said. “If I can get the time. But send me some suggestions, just in case.” Because nope.
I hung up and promised myself that if Viv ended up marrying Nigel, she was going to let me be her bridesmaid. If I had to threaten her with her own gun, I would.
I curled up on the sofa and stared into nothingness. Stump, ever sensing my moods, crawled into my lap and rooted at my hand until I petted her. This morphed into a full-out belly rub.
Tony came in and looked at the two of us on the sofa.
“She looks ecstatic and you look miserable.”
I told you I was grumpy, I thought. Instead of complaining, though, I raised my head. “Do I?”
He sat beside me. “The phone call go badly?”
I shrugged. “Not really. She's all excited. She's going to send me some suggestions for what to wear.”
“Excellent. We'll go shopping.”
“You want to go shopping with me?” I shifted until I could lay my head on his shoulder.
“Maybe just once.” He kissed the top of my head. “Why do you look sad?”
“I'm not sad.” Was I? I did a gut check. I wasn't happy, that was for sure. The thing about no attendants was bugging me, but I didn't want it to. I didn't want to be her bridesmaid.
I want her to want me to be a bridesmaid, so I can tell her no.
I groaned and rubbed my face. Did I want to admit that to Tony? No. No, I did not. I didn't even want to admit it to myself.
“I'm being silly,” I finally said. “I forgave my mother weeks ago, but the silly, childish part of me wants to hold a grudge. That's all.”
I tried to remember what Les had told me. Forgiveness is an over and over kind of thing.
Then a new thought occurred to me. Weeks back, when Mom and I had a huge argument, I had told her that she should warn her friend Susan not to talk to me at the wedding. Susan, who had been Mom's drinking buddy throughout my unstable childhood. Susan, whose teenage son had molested me when I was seven years old.
She couldn't have both me and Susan as attendants—I’d pretty much guaranteed to wreck the whole thing if she did. So, rather than tell Susan that she'd chosen me as a bridesmaid over her, she'd chosen to have no attendants at all.
I didn't know why this caught me off guard. Mom had chosen Susan over me a million times. She'd chosen Susan over me, men over me, any good time that presented itself over me. This one time when she could have chosen me over Susan, she elected to choose no one at all.
It all added up much better than the “no attendants just because” line had. She was making a big deal about this wedding. She had never once failed to expect everyone around her to jump on whatever drama train she was conducting. It didn't make sense that she wouldn't want attendants. Unless she couldn't bring herself to tell Susan no.
I stood so suddenly I startled Tony and Stump grumbled.
“What?”
I shook my head, suddenly antsy. “Nothing. I'm just...” I looked around, searching for the term. Antsy was the only way to describe it. “I'm just antsy.”
“Talking with your mom?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Wedding plans. Mom.” I rubbed hands palms together in fast, frantic circles. “Bringing up stuff I don't really want to think about.”
“Let's talk about it.”
I shook my head. “No. Not now.” I walked to the edge of the room and back.
“Yes. Come on, Salem.” He patted the sofa beside him. “Sit down. Let's talk it out.”
I felt a spurt of impatience with him. I had warned him I was grumpy, and half an hour ago I would have been glad to have his attention. He'd gone off to work instead. Now it was too late.
I paced in front of the coffee table. “No. Not now.”
He took a breath and picked up my phone, I think just to have something for his hands to do. He scooted forward on the sofa, his elbows on his knees. “Salem, you're getting yourself worked up. Calm down.”
I stopped and stared at him. “Has anyone in the history of the world ever calmed down because someone told them to calm down?”
I had spoken more sharply than I meant to. I began to pace again, the urge to move too strong to resist. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I just...I feel anxious and I think I need to get out for a while.”
“I think you need to sit down and just talk it out. I think that will help.”
“I can't.”
“Of course you can. Don't be afraid of me, Salem. You can trust—”
“I'm not afraid of you!” I snapped. I gritted my teeth. “I just feel anxious and I feel like I need to get out. Get some air.”
He stood and tried to gather me in his arms. “Come here.”
I just couldn't do it. I pulled away. “I'm sorry, but I need some space.”
“Look.” He frowned and dipped his head to meet my eyes. “I don't think you should go.”
“I'm just going back to my place. I'm sorry, but I can't think.”
“Salem, I don't think you should go.”
“I have to get out of here!” I shouted. I didn't mean to shout. But for some reason I felt panicked, trapped, desperate. “I'm just going back to my place for a breather.”
The look on his face told me all I needed to know.
He thought I was going to drink.
“Don't look at me like that,” I said through clenched teeth. I pointed at him. “You do not look at me like that.”
He held his hands out in the universal symbol for 'simmer down.' “I think you should stay here while you're upset. I can stay in my office or something. I don't mean to crowd you. But I think you should stay here.”
“And I think you should trust me! But you don't, do you?”
A fleeting look crossed his face. A kind of seriously?! look that he managed to smother almost immediately.
But I saw it. And something inside me burst into flame. It was here—the moment I had known was coming—the moment when I couldn't push it down anymore. The moment I knew I would explode and ruin absolutely everything. That look. That look that told me he had been waiting for this moment, too.
This was the moment he needed to survive.
I lost it. I narrowed my eyes at him and said, “Don't give me that look! Don't give me the look that says you would have to be crazy to trust me! Despite everything I've said and done over the last year, you're still waiting for me to run off at the slightest provocation and guzzle down a bottle of rum!”
I bent and ripped the book from the magazine rack. “Here!” I held it out to him, then jerked it back. “No, let me look. Where's the chapter on keeping your alcoholic at home where you can keep an eye on her? Let's see how this works.”
I slapped the book shut again and shoved it at him.
My anger made him mad. He threw the book on the sofa and crossed his arms over his chest. “How stupid would I have to be to think that a recovering alcoholic is not going to want to drink after talking to the person who always triggered her the most?”
“And here you are, Sir Galla-Freaking-Had riding in on your white horse to save the day! Oh, you love being the hero, don't you, Tony?” I sneered at him. In the back of my mind, I thought, See, Serena, you strip mall psychic! This is what happens when I open the floodgates.
But it was too late now - the gates were open and all kinds of awful was pouring out. “You know what this is called, don't you? Codependency! You're codependent and just waiting for me to screw up so you can rescue me again. So you can lord your superior coping skills over me. So you can prove how patient and forgiving you are! So you can be perfect, again! Saint Anthony!”
I grabbed my purse off the sofa and tossed my phone into it before I slung it over my shoulder. I stooped to pick up Stump, who grunted as I lifted her onto my hip.
“Does it ever get old, Tony? Being everyone's knight in shining armor? Of course not. You get to be adored by your entire family, your staff, everyone you know. You know what I think? I think that's why you never divorced me! So everyone could see what a pious saint you are. I mean, what tops staying married to a slutty alcoholic? You win, Tony!”
He looked like I'd slapped him.
I felt like an elephant had stepped on my chest. I wished the words back.
At the same time, I was a little relieved. I had been delusional to ever hope this moment wasn't inevitable, and so had Tony. It served us both right for living in such a dream world.
I slammed out the door.
Fury raged through me as I jerked open the door to the Monster Carlo, dumped Stump and my purse inside, and then slammed into the seat. I was so furious that my mind was hyper-focused.
He expected me to drink. Fine. I would drink.
Chapter Nine