She sat on the sofa in the dark, her hands pressed between her knees, rocking slightly. What she offered up at the meeting had taken all her reserves. Being inside that room, seeing a community that might be at odds yet still shared a bond of place, of history, brought home how outside the world she’d grown, how very alone she was. The way Daniel had looked at her: regret and disappointment mingled with confused desire—emotions that have been mirrored in her own expression, for it was what she felt in her soul.
Intense thirst grabbed her throat, set her fingers trembling and her skin crawling. The Addict who huddled inside her was in fact a deep, abiding loneliness. An ache for companionship. A fear of the quiet. Shame.
At Salish, there were meetings from dawn until bedtime. When she returned to her room each night, she could scarcely think to brush her teeth and wash her face before collapsing onto the hard twin mattress.
Now she longed for that structure. To wake up morning after morning and know that your day was planned to the minute, that you had little time to think or little room to wander on your own. After rehab, she’d filled her days with AA meetings and work. Getting through the day wore her out, which was exactly what she’d wanted—to be exhausted to the point of numbness; it seemed easier than facing the shadow of her marriage.
The loneliness washed over her in waves, and she let it come. Was this the part her therapist thought would be good for her? To listen to the blood beating in her ears, to feel the tightening of her chest as the panic pulled with icy fingers at her sanity? To feel the pull of alcohol so strongly that she pictured herself rising from the sofa and climbing into the car to follow the winding road into Ballycaróg, to the pub with the football pennants in the window and a mural on the outside wall depicting a pint glass filled with dark, rich beer, its creamy head dripping down the side? Once inside that pub, she’d opt for a Jameson’s with a splash, the mellow whiskey draining down her throat, coating her mouth with the taste of malt and toffee.
During the six weeks in rehab, as she moved from desperate detoxification into resistance, depression, and, finally, toward a slow, stuttered healing, Annie had encountered suffering she hadn’t known possible. She’d met alcoholics who drank rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, and cough syrup. The shower stall offered rare moments of privacy, and she compared her body—still a finely honed instrument of muscle and ligament, not yet destroyed by her addiction—to those whose very insides seemed rotted from years of heroin or meth, their teeth destroyed, skin ravaged. There but for the grace of God go I became her mantra during those exhausting weeks in the woods west of Port Townsend.
She rose from the sofa and stood with her hands clenched at her sides. Tilting her head back, she let forth a holler that began somewhere near her toes and smashed into her ribcage. It exited her throat as a bellow and ended as a screech. She nearly tipped over with the effort, her knees locked, her body rigid. She laughed, coughed, swallowed from the glass of water on the side table, and tried it again. She shouted because she could, because it was fighting back. Because it was better than drinking.
A face flashed past the window, a shock of white skin and pale eyes descending along the side of the house. She screamed again, this time in surprise. The sound of feet stomping up the outside stairs that led to the patio shook her into action. She ran for the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the wood block on the counter. Peering around the threshold into the sunroom, she saw Daniel tugging at the handle of the patio door.
“Annie!” He pounded on the frame support. “Are you in there? Annie?”
She stepped forward, the knife held out in front. Daniel bent and dropped his hands to his knees to catch his breath. He kept his eyes on her and shouted through the window. “Are you all right?”
“You scared me half to death!” she yelled back. “What are you doing?”
“I heard you screaming. I thought you were being attacked. Jaysus. You scared me half to death.”
“You could hear me at your place?”
“I wasn’t home. There’s a path that leads to the beach over there.” He waved his hand to some vague distance. “It cuts through the Moyles’ property. I passed the house on my way back, and that’s when I heard you.”
Annie pulled up the handle of the door to release the lock and opened it, still brandishing the knife in her other hand. She stepped aside to let him in. Daniel braced himself on the doorframe but didn’t cross the threshold.
“You heard it all then,” she said.
“I heard everything.”
“Ah.” She started to close her arms over her chest but realized she still gripped the chef’s knife. “Why don’t you come in? I need to put this away before I hurt someone. Myself, namely.”
She turned away and heard the door click shut. When she returned to the room, Daniel stood just inside.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“I was just letting off a little steam. Really, I’m fine.”
“I saw you in Bantry on Monday. The AA meeting.”
“Oh.” In one moment, the façade torn down. It was like being outed as a spy by another agent. A relief. At last she could drop the pretense and slip into a familiar language. “How long have you been sober?”
“Nine years, eight months, sixteen days.” He glanced at his watch. “Nearly seventeen.”
“Congratulations.” Annie wondered where she would be in ten years. If her sobriety would hold. It seemed an impossible distance from now to the end of a decade. But standing before her was proof—healthy, empathic proof—that it could be done.
“How about you?”
“Three months, thirteen days.”
“Were you close to not making three months, fourteen days?”
She sank onto the sofa and let her hands dangle between her knees. She was spent. Her throat hurt. “So, this is the part where you tell me it gets easier, right? Even if you don’t mean it.”
“Have you got a sponsor?” Daniel sat across from her in a rattan Papasan chair, and the alarm on his face as the giant moon swayed slightly under his large frame sent a ripple of giggles through Annie.
“Sorry. I’m tired. Yes. Bill. My sponsor. He says hi, by the way. I told him about you.”
Daniel shook his head but smiled. Annie curled her legs under her, tucking her hands between her knees, settling in. “You forgot to tell me that it gets easier.”
“Can’t tell you what you want to hear, Annie.” His words sounded like a shrug, but he didn’t brush her off. In that moment, he reminded her of Bill. No apologies. Just reality. “Do I feel like drinking? No, not really. I miss the idea of it, more than the actual memory of what alcohol tastes like. How it makes me feel. Maybe it’s like being an amputee. That pain of a ghost limb haunts me sometimes, but I understand what it is, and I get through it. For me, being an addict is wrapped up in all sorts of other pain. Pain I can’t imagine getting over. So, no. I can’t say it gets any easier.”
“Well, shit. That’s depressing. It sort of makes you want a drink, doesn’t it?” She meant this as a joke, but from the look on his face, her caustic humor sank.
“You’ll look back ten years from now and be so relieved that you’re out from under the burden of booze. Now, that much I can say is better. Time really does heal some things.”
“But not all of them?”
“Of course not all of them. Who’s Stephen?”
“What?”
“You sent up a string of curses directed to Stephen.”
“Did I? Yes, I suppose I would have. He’s my husband.”
“I see.”
“Things are a little complicated on that front.”
“So I gathered.”
“Your son is a dead ringer for you.”
“My what?”
“The boy standing next to you in the meeting. He’s even got your gestures, or at least he’s mimicking them. Though there’s no mistaking his mother, either. Fiana, right?”
Daniel dropped his head back in laughter.
“What? Sorry, I think it’s wonderful. You don’t see many kids so connected to their parents, certainly not at that age. He’s what, thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Thirteen. He’s not my son. Liam’s my nephew. But you’re right about one thing—Fiana’s his mother. My older sister.”
“Your sister.” Relief prickled her face, and she allowed a soft chuckle. “Right. Now I feel like an ass.”
“Liam is like a son to me. His dad is mostly out of the picture—lives in London—so I’m the best male figure he’s got, for what that’s worth.”
“Considering how closely he watches you, how much he tries to act like you, I’d say it’s worth a lot to him.”
Daniel’s silence told her she’d struck a chord. “That’s quite a lot to put together about people you don’t know.”
“My job is to see what connects people and what separates them. Obviously, I’m a little off my game for not catching that you and Fiana are siblings. I’ll blame it on jet lag. And your funny accents.” At last, she crossed the space between them and was rewarded with a smile. “But mostly, I’m good at what I do.”
“I see that. You put on quite a show tonight.”
“Hey. That wasn’t just a performance. I meant what I said. That moment on the hill, something inside me clicked. I can’t explain what happened, but it was powerful. I’d like to go back there again.”
“The offer of my sister’s boots still stands.”
“Are you sure about that? After tonight, I can’t imagine your sister would let me in the house.”
“Fiana’s a good soul. She’s just fighting for her piece of earth.”
“I don’t blame her. What about you? Is this your fight, too?”
“These questions.” He exaggerated an exhale. “Why does it feel like I’m consorting with the enemy?”
“We’re not the enemy, Daniel. At least I’m not. Don’t you want to see this region grow, these families stay together because they can earn a living right here in Ballycaróg? I think you want to do right by the town.”
“See, there you go again. Being good at your job.”
She raised her hands in a gesture of supplication and laughed. “Okay, I’ll lay off.” A moment of silence shifted the energy between them. “So, you live with your sister and nephew then. Fiana and Liam, right?”
“And my niece, Catriona.”
“Was she there tonight?”
“Catriona? Nah. The last place a sixteen-year-old girl wants to be is at a community meeting with her mom and uncle. She’s a good girl, but—”
“But she’s sixteen. I know. I was once, too. A long time ago.”
This made him smile. “With Liam, it’s easy,” he said. “He’s so hungry for approval, and he’s still just a kid. He’ll listen. But Cat. I’ve been with them for four years, and it seems she changed overnight from a sweet child into a whining brat. She fits her nickname—contented purrs one moment and all claws the next.”
“I’ll bet she’s just as hungry as Liam for approval. Despite what her body might show and what her mouth might say, she’s still just a kid.”
“Perceptive.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“They probably do, too.”
“If I mess this up, they won’t,” she said, and then pressed a palm over her mouth and winced. “Did I say that out loud?” she asked.
“You did.”
“I seem to have lost my filter in this place. I swear my thoughts are only in my head, but my mouth has other ideas. I’m hearing things, too. Maybe I’m possessed by a leprechaun.”
“There haven’t been leprechauns here since the nineties. The Celtic Tiger ate them all.”
“And that Celtic Tiger died when the economy tanked, didn’t he?”
“You could say that.”
“So, maybe I brought a little Irish magic with me. What was it that man, Noah, said? Nine of out ten Irish youth in rural areas are leaving the country to find work abroad? Seems you could use a leprechaun or two around here.”
Daniel sat forward, bracing his hands on his thighs. “We could use a little truth around here. The promises of a mining company will mean as much as little men in green suits if those jobs destroy this peninsula.”
That look of disappointment she’d seen in the community center made her long to come clean. Admit to her ambivalence. Confess it was more act than conviction. The same need for acceptance by someone who understood the struggle was what put her into the arms of someone other than her husband. The need that had led to so many mistakes.
Perhaps mistaking her silence for exasperation, Daniel slapped his palms on his knees and rose awkwardly from the curved valley of the chair cushion. “I should go. Will you be all right?”
“I think that tonight, I’ll be fine.” She walked him to the front door. “Thank you for making certain I was okay. It was very chivalrous of you,” she said, trying to toss her embarrassment into the safety of a joke.
“If you feel like screaming, or drinking, or doing anything else you might regret, I’m just on the other side of the hill, not even a five-minute walk.”
“I rather liked the screaming, though. It’s very cathartic.”
“Well, I’ve got some good yelling spots near the water, if you don’t want to terrify the neighbors.”
They said good night, Annie not daring to meet his eyes. She closed the door and rested her cheek against it, waiting to hear his boots crunch on the gravel. But nothing stirred on the other side. The shadow of his head was visible through the window mounted high in the door frame. Perhaps he was waiting for her to flip the dead bolt and extinguish the hall light. She thought she could feel his steady breath, his rough, warm hand resting on the wood, just where her cheek lay. She could open the door, lace her fingers around his neck, curl her shoulders into his chest and be lifted up, cradled, held. That was all she wanted. Simply to be held.
Her hand slipped down to the door handle, and she pressed gently until she felt it catch.
Then she heard the scrape of footsteps across the gravel. She released the handle, flipped the dead bolt, and pushed off the light switch. The hallway went dark, and the sound of footsteps faded.