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The day after his hospital visit, Dad woke up at the same time I did. As the coffee was brewing, he lined up his new prescription bottles on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. He took his medicine with the first sip, then he went back to bed. He did the same thing the next morning and the day after that.

“Are you doing this to prove to me that you’re taking your medicine?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he admitted. “What’s-his-name is waiting in the driveway. Get going.”

I reached for my backpack. “What are you going to do today?”

“Thought I’d write some letters.”

“Letters? Like, on paper?”

“Old-school, that’s me.”

“You’re okay?”

“Get going. Stay out of detention for a change.”

* * *

Trish came to our house for Sunday dinner three weeks in a row. We ate, watched the late game, and then she’d go to work. When she got switched to the night shift, Dad switched, too, going to bed after I left in the morning and waking up in time for dinner. In those weeks, our house never smelled of greasy biker creep or weed. Daddy was down to one bottle of Jack every three days. He didn’t explode or cry. He spent his nights writing letters at the dining room table.

It was tempting to let my guard down, but I couldn’t, not until he started seeing that doctor.

The swimming lesson changed things with Finn and me, took us to a new level that was hidden from the rest of the world, one that made us laugh more and required a lot more kissing. Besotted: that was the word of the month. I went to class, did enough homework to keep me off the naughty list, counted the minutes until I saw him again (praying that he was doing the same thing). I learned to love the smell of chlorine because every day after school, I’d change into a T-shirt and shorts, sit in the visitor’s gallery that overlooked the pool, and read while Finnegan Braveheart Ramos valiantly guarded the lives of the Belmont Boys Swim Team.

When I was with Finn, the world spun properly on its axis, and gravity worked. At home, the planet tilted so far on its side it was hard to tell which way was up. Dad felt it, too. He shuffled like an old man, as if the carpet under his feet was really a slick sheet of black ice.