“I‘M SORRY.”
“Where are you?” Doug’s voice came over the telephone line, deep, forceful, so totally Doug.
“At home. I came straight home.” She couldn’t believe it was only three hours since she’d left him. It felt more like three years.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Good. Well, thanks for calling.”
“Doug?” She couldn’t let him hang up. She might never work up the courage to do this again.
“Yeah?”
“I want to make love with you.” She said the words so quickly her tongue tripped over her teeth.
“Are you sure this time?”
“As sure as I’ll ever be.”
“I’m on my way.” The line crackled.
“Wait! I mean, that’s not all.”
“What’s not all? Oh. You need me to stop by the drugstore on my way?”
“No! I’m on the pill, but...”
“If you’re worried about my health, I was tested just a couple of months ago.”
“I’m not worried. And you don’t have to worry about mine, either.” She’d never thought this would be so difficult.
“Then what is it?”
“I want to make love with you, but only if it’s one time at a time.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Andrea stood at her living-room window, gazing out into the darkness. If he couldn’t give her this, she couldn’t give him anything. “No commitments, no future, no promises.”
The line hung with dead silence. “Is there any other way?” he finally asked.
“Don’t make it sound like that, Doug. What I feel for you, the way I want you, is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. But I’m no good at commitments. I don’t want to ruin things.”
“You can’t break promises that aren’t made, is that it?” His disappointment was barely concealed.
Andrea could feel tears burning the back of her eyes again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have called.”
He sighed. “Yeah, you should have. It’s okay, Andrea. The only promises I’m making are for today. I’m on my way, baby, and it’s going to be perfect—I give you my word on it.”
Andrea smiled, leaving her living room behind as she carried her cordless phone toward her bedroom. “How soon can you be here?”
* * *
DOUG KNOCKED ON HER DOOR, his hair still damp from the shower he’d taken, his face freshly shaved. His legs looked strong and firm in their form-fitting black jeans. His zipper was already bulging.
Andrea was glad she’d changed into the black silk teddy, even though she’d had to send up a quick prayer when she’d cut off the tags that Gloria’s radar was turned off for the night.
She fell against Doug, throwing her arms around his neck, sure that she was doing the right thing. There was no more denying the frightening hunger he’d woken within her.
“Let’s go to bed,” he growled against her ear. He kicked the door shut behind him and half led, half pulled her across the living room and down the hall.
He pulled off his black leather boots as soon as he reached her bedroom doorway, letting them fall behind him as he followed her to the bed. His jacket and T-shirt dropped to the floor halfway across the room. His impatient fingers went to the button on his jeans.
Andrea sat on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed demurely, watching him unzip his pants. She’d never felt such desire just from looking at a man, from thinking about what lay ahead. She’d never known anticipation could be so powerful. He kicked off his jeans, taking his briefs with them.
Liquid warmth flooded Andrea’s crotch as he stood, proudly jutting, in front of her. There was nothing shy or hesitant about Doug Avery. There never had been.
Doug had to force himself not to manhandle Andrea as she sat so temptingly on the bed, her beautiful body mostly revealed by the thin layer of black lace she was wearing. Her breasts were full and creamy, and falling out of their brief covering. Her nipples were already hard, puckering against their satiny confines.
Her waist was slim, the perfect complement to her rounded, womanly hips. And her thighs... Doug leaned forward, sliding his arms beneath hers, propelling her backward. He couldn’t even look at the sweet black curls peeking out from the juncture of her thighs. He knew the limits to his self-control. He knew he was already dangerously close to reaching them.
She fell back on her bed, reaching up to run her fingers through the hair on his chest. Her touch was electric. Doug felt a satisfaction broader, bigger, better than anything he’d ever known before because her passion was for all of him, scarred as he was.
He looked down at her, sprawled beneath him on her satiny white comforter. Her eyes were wide open. She was with him all the way.
“You’re not going to be sorry for this. I’ll make sure of it,” he said, his voice husky with need.
“I’m not sorry, Doug. It hurts too much to want you. I can’t stand it anymore.”
“That makes two of us, lady,” he said. He reached his hand down between their bodies, unsnapped her teddy and slid his fingers boldly between her legs.
“You’re ready already,” he said with satisfaction. He’d never had such an eager woman in his arms before. He gave up trying to fight what she did to him.
Andrea smiled, spreading her legs a little wider beneath his as she too reached down between them. “It seems I’m not the only one in that condition.”
Doug leaned on his elbows, taking a breast in each of his hands.
“Oh God, Andrea. This isn’t how I planned it,” he groaned, just before he plunged into her.
Andrea clutched Doug’s buttocks, riding the tense muscles while he rode her. She met him thrust for thrust, so filled with love, with need, with him, that she was losing all traces of coherent thought.
Her mouth was consumed by him, his tongue sending spirals of desire down her back and between her legs. Her breasts were possessed by him, tingling and heavy beneath his touch. Her body was one with him, giving a whole new meaning to the physical union between a man and a woman.
Their need was too great, their desire too long denied for them to have time for foreplay. Andrea’s hips accommodated Doug’s body, driving with him, pushing him harder and harder until she thought she’d go mad. She felt him stiffen, heard his gasp as his body exploded within hers, and then suddenly she was spiraling alone, up and away to a realm where only sensation existed. Everything she was, everything she had ever been, became centered in that space, pulsing around Doug’s body until she was weak and spent, and lay beneath him resplendent with peace.
Doug rolled off of her, lying flat on his back with his arm flung over his face. “God, lady, what’d you do to me? I’ve never embarrassed myself like that before. I swear it.”
Andrea laughed. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so good.
“Don’t laugh. My ego’s already small enough as it is.”
Andrea reached her hand down. “But you’re still plenty big where it counts....”
She leaned over and licked his nipple, needing to taste him, to feel him, to become as familiar with his body as she was her own, now that she could be patient enough to enjoy the journey.
“Andrea.” His voice held a note of warning.
“You wouldn’t want me to think it’s always ‘wham bam, thank you, ma’am’ with you, would you?”
Doug pulled her over on top of him, lifting his hips against her as he ran his fingers down her back and across her bottom. Andrea shivered.
“Let’s see how much you can take, shall we?” he said, catching her nipple between his teeth.
Andrea couldn’t believe herself. A wild woman had taken over her tense, controlled existence, lighting a fire within her that she wasn’t sure would ever be extinguished. She touched Doug, giving in to her heated flesh, hoping that neither one of them would get burned by her actions.
* * *
THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED were out of space, out of time. Andrea didn’t think about the past. She didn’t look to the future. She didn’t let herself make love to Doug nearly as often as she wanted to. And she never let him spend the night. She kept hoping that her desire for him would lessen, that her love would wane. It never did.
She knew Doug was still spending time with Jeremy. She’d stopped by Doug’s apartment Tuesday evening and found the boy there with him, making a pizza. They’d invited her to stay, but she’d refused. She was still convinced that Jeremy was only paying lip service to Doug. She was still scared silly that Doug was setting himself up for a major fall. She still thought Doug was wrong to have singled out the boy. She decided to spend Thanksgiving alone.
* * *
DOUG’S PHONE RANG early on Thanksgiving morning. He rolled over in his sofa bed, fighting the bitter taste of disappointment as reality intruded on his dreams and he realized that he was in bed alone. He reached for the receiver.
“Avery.” He sat up, leaning against the back of the couch. There was no evidence anywhere in the room that Andrea had been there the night before, loving him like he’d never been loved. The woman could pick up and leave more quickly than he’d ever done.
“Doug? It’s Gloria Parker.”
“Gloria? Has something happened to Andrea?”
“She’s the same as always, Doug, same as always. Which is why I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind doing me a favor—that is, if you’re still feeling about my daughter the way you felt last time we talked.”
“Depends on the favor.”
“Andrea’s planning to spend the day alone.”
“Some people like it that way.”
“Not Andrea. She hates it. She’s just too damn stubborn to admit it.”
That sounded a lot like Andrea. “And you think I can do something about it?”
“She wouldn’t turn you away if you showed up on her doorstep.”
He’d planned to spend the day on his couch, watching football and feeling sorry for himself. “Maybe I’ll give her a call.”
“No!” Doug pulled the phone away from his ear as Gloria’s panic resounded in his eardrum. “If you call her, she’ll say no. I know she will. But my daughter’s got a big heart. She won’t be able to turn you away if you show up on her doorstep all alone, looking for someplace to spend the day, especially if you have a turkey in your arms.”
The woman was something else. He pictured Andrea growing up with her mother, getting the best of her now and then. The vision made him smile.
“Cooked or uncooked?”
“Oh, uncooked, definitely.”
Doug swung his legs to the side of the bed, keeping the sheet across his naked hips. “I’ll think about it,” he said, unwilling to let the woman know how completely he could be manipulated.
And he did think about it. For the five seconds it took him to get from his bed to his bathroom. The thought of spending the whole day with Andrea, alone in her apartment, was too good to pass up. But he drew the line at the turkey.
* * *
“I‘M GLAD YOU CAME,” Andrea said late that evening. She and Doug were curled up in her bed, sated and replete. It wasn’t the first time they’d been there that day.
“Mmm. Me too,” he mumbled against her breast. And he was. But he wasn’t satisfied. For the first time in his life he wanted more, dared to allow himself to hope for more, wasn’t satisfied to take what he could get.
“I don’t know what possessed me to buy such a big turkey,” she said dreamily. “I’d have been eating leftovers till Christmas.”
“Mmm...”
“You hungry? We still have lots left.”
“We can have it for breakfast in the morning.” His words hung in the air between them.
“I, uh, don’t eat breakfast.”
“You could watch me eat it.”
“Doug. Don’t do this.”
Doug pushed away from her, getting up to slip into his jeans. He zipped them, but left them unbuttoned. He stalked back to the bed, leaning down to place one hand on either side of her, his face only inches from hers.
“What am I? Some kind of damn gigolo? Good enough to romp with, but nothing else? What? I might soil your sheets if I stay in them too long?”
Tears welled up in Andrea’s eyes. Doug tried not to see them. He couldn’t stay angry with her if she was going to cry.
“Don’t say that.” Her words were barely above a whisper. “You promised. No commitments.”
“As I recall, it was no promises, either. But that was then. Andrea, for the first time in my life I want more than good sex. I want what other guys have, what Stan Ingersoll has—a woman in his bed at night, the same woman every night. I want to hold you in my arms when I go to sleep, and find you there when I wake up. Why is that so much to ask?”
“Because you’re asking the wrong woman.”
“Why? You let me enter your body, but cringe at the thought of me holding you while you sleep?”
She met his gaze steadily, her eyes filled with resolution—and a hint of something more, something painful. “I cringe at the thought of you leaving my bed when it goes sour.”
“And how do you know it will?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t take that chance. I’m no good at loving, Doug. I lose perspective. I let people down.”
Doug swore, pushing away from the bed to stalk across the room. “That’s bullshit. Who have you let down? A man who didn’t love you enough to stand by you when you needed him? Who else?”
“It wasn’t like that, Doug. I let him down first. And it wasn’t just him.” She got out of bed, shrugging into the terry-cloth robe she’d worn earlier when they’d gone to the kitchen for dinner. “Look, what you’re asking for isn’t unreasonable. It isn’t even unfair. But I’m just not the one to give it to you. I told you that two weeks ago.”
“So this is where you kick me out of your life, is that it? All clean and neat. I’ve served my purpose and now I’m supposed to walk, like a good little boy?”
She leaned against the wall, tears pooling in her eyes again, this time falling slowly down her face. But she didn’t back down.
“I’m not ready to lose you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. But I can’t make promises I might not be able to keep. I tried that once and it didn’t work.”
Doug studied her, seeing her pain, her unhappiness, but her resolution as well. A part of him acknowledged the irony of the situation. Here he was, a man who usually could barely wait for his heartbeat to return to normal before he jumped out of a woman’s bed, finally ready to stay put—and the woman wasn’t offering.
“So where does that leave us?”
Andrea walked over to him, smoothing her slim hands up his chest. “We’re here together now. Can’t we just have this? Please, Doug. It’s been such a perfect day. Just hold me.”
She laid her head on his chest, cuddling up to him, and Doug felt his arms going around her, doing her bidding, even while he knew that he was heading for disaster. He was getting in too deep, and he feared that the lady wasn’t getting in at all.
* * *
THE DAYS SEEMED to fly by after that. Each one was precious to Andrea, because she feared her time with Doug was going to end. He wanted more from her than she was giving him. He deserved more from her. But she was just too damn scared to give it. She’d rather die than live through more broken promises, more expectations she couldn’t live up to. She’d rather die than believe in a future with Doug Avery, only to have it swept away by her own incompetence.
She was dusting her apartment the Saturday after Thanksgiving, wondering if Doug would be stopping by sometime that evening, when she heard his familiar knock at her door.
Andrea stopped for a quick glance in the mirror to be certain she didn’t have dirt smudged across her nose. She would have preferred to have changed out of her jeans and sweatshirt into something a little more provocative, and to have run a comb through her hair so it didn’t look as if she’d been running her fingers through it all afternoon. But knowing Doug, she figured she’d be out of her clothes soon enough anyway, and she hurried toward the door with the fierce heat of anticipation spreading throughout her body.
Doug looked awful. He stood in her doorway looking at her as if he were drowning and she were a piece of driftwood. His face was ashen, his lips tight, his eyes glassy with shock.
Andrea took hold of his arm, her heart pounding in her chest. She pulled him forward, trying to draw him into her arms, to hold him, to make whatever it was go away.
He brushed past her into her living room, standing by the couch, looking around as if he didn’t know how he’d gotten there. His nostrils were flaring with the obvious effort it took him to keep a hold on his emotions. Andrea’s heart filled with fear.
“It’s Jeremy.”
The two words were all he said, but they were all Andrea needed. She knew. In the space of two words she knew exactly what Doug was facing. She knew the disbelief, the recriminations he was putting himself through. And she knew about the guilt that lay ahead. She knew it, not because she could guess, but because she knew. She’d been there before, once. She’d never made it back.
“Where is he?”
Doug looked over at her, his eyes hard with self-loathing, his breathing heavy with guilt. “Children’s Hospital.”
So Jeremy was alive. She’d been afraid to ask.
“Let’s go.”
Andrea never hesitated as she picked up her purse, locked her apartment and followed Doug to his car. She knew she was walking into something she wasn’t ready to handle, something that could very well strip her of the little control she had left, but she went anyway. Doug needed her.
The hours in the empty waiting room were endless. Doug paced. He sipped the coffee Andrea brought him, and nagged the nursing staff until Andrea finally had to intercede on his behalf. Jeremy was still alive. That’s all anybody would tell them.
“Is there anybody we should contact?” Andrea asked when it seemed like their vigil was sure to continue on into the night. She needed something to do. She’d been on this floor before, waited in this very room for the same interminable hours. The memories were suffocating her.
Doug shook his head. He slouched back on the vinyl seat beside her, staring at the floor between his outstretched feet.
“Won’t his parents wonder where he is?”
He turned his head to look at her, his eyes bitter. “His old man quit wondering years ago, when he took off. And if his old lady ever bothered to wonder now and then, Jeremy wouldn’t be in there fighting for his life.”
Andrea swallowed hard, forcing her own demons aside. She couldn’t let herself think about another fight like this one, another young life hovering on the brink of death. She was too worried about the boy whose life hung by a thread right now, about the frightening coldness that was consuming Doug.
“Who found him?” She’d been afraid to ask, afraid to make him relive any part of the tragic day, but now she was afraid not to. She couldn’t just let Doug slip back to the lonely hell he’d inhabited before DARE had come into his life.
He didn’t answer her.
“Doug? Who found him?”
He didn’t look up. He didn’t even move, but finally he murmured, “A Rattler.” The next words came as an afterthought. “The kid had seen me around. He’d ragged on Jeremy once for hanging out with an old guy. Jeremy told him who I was. The guy’s been looking after Jeremy ever since.”
“Where’d he find him?”
“Relieving himself in a mailbox slot a couple of blocks from home. Apparently Jeremy’d been partying since six o’clock last night. God only knows what all he’s on. Someone said he fell off a wall while watching the sun rise six times. Both of his wrists were broken. Jeremy didn’t even know it.” Doug’s voice was a monotone.
“He’s hung on this long, so his chances are getting better every minute,” Andrea said, repeating words she’d been told four years ago, even though she had a feeling they were going to help Doug as little as they’d helped her.
“Yeah. He may pull through and have a wonderful life sitting in a chair, being fed from a spoon like a baby. Who the hell do you think’s going to take care of him? His old lady? Or maybe one of the strangers she brings home at night?”
Andrea reached over to run her hand along Doug’s forearm. His skin was icy.
“Don’t, Doug. Don’t do this to yourself. If it’s bad, there’ll be plenty enough time to deal with it when we know. He may pull through just fine.”
“He may.” Doug’s jaw clenched. Andrea could tell he wasn’t buying it. If Jeremy didn’t make it, she was afraid that Doug wasn’t going to make it, either. She knew exactly how he felt.
It was another two hours before the doctor finally appeared. He was an older man, tall, with gray hair and stooped shoulders. Or maybe his slumping shoulders were just a result of the day he’d had. Either way, Andrea’s stomach knotted with dread when she saw him heading toward them.
“Doug Avery?” he asked, looking at Doug’s bent head.
Doug shot out of his seat, grabbing Andrea’s hand on the way, pulling her up beside him. “That’s me,” he said.
Andrea wrapped her arms around his waist, hoping he could find some strength from her presence. There were no thoughts of tomorrow or yesterday, no worries about promises made or broken. There was only Doug’s need, and her compulsion to love him.
“I’m Dr. Sandborne. You know the boy’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been unable to reach them as yet. Perhaps you know where we might find them?”
“No. How is he?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say until I’ve met with the family. If we can’t locate them, we’ll need to call in the police.”
Andrea felt Doug’s muscles clench. Her nerves were shaking.
“We’re police officers, Dr. Sandborne. Officer Avery is responsible for the boy’s welfare. His father’s gone and his mother is most likely too drunk to be much good to him. We’d be most grateful if you’d let us see him.” Andrea spoke quickly, but as calmly as she could manage, inserting all the authority at her command. Her stomach was quaking.
The doctor looked both of them over, Andrea in her blue jeans and sweatshirt and Doug in his skintight jeans and leather jacket. She reached into her purse and pulled out her badge. Doug saw what she was doing and reached into his pocket for his wallet.
Dr. Sandborne looked at the photos briefly, and then at Doug. “Right this way,” he said, leading them back the way he’d come. Andrea took a quick glance at Doug, uneasy about the tightness of his jaw, his pursed lips, uneasy about the too-familiar smells and sounds that were assailing her.
“How is he, Doctor?” she asked, as much for her benefit as Doug’s.
“He’s a lucky young man. We pumped his stomach and his vital signs have stabilized, though he’ll probably suffer from flashback hallucinations for a while. As far as we can tell, his brain waves are normal. His right wrist is badly broken. It’s going to require surgery within the next day or so, so we’ll need his mother’s signature on the release form. I’ve already set the left wrist.”
The doctor paused outside a door that stood slightly ajar, his craggy eyebrows knit into a frown. Andrea wondered how many of his days were like the one he’d just had.
“It looks worse than it is,” he said. “We’re flushing his system and monitoring his oxygen intake, but the biggest danger has passed.”
With that, he pushed open the door and stood aside for Andrea and Doug to enter the private room. A nurse was busy beside Jeremy’s bed. She glanced over as they came in, but didn’t stop attending to her patient.
Andrea stood back by the door. Jeremy was going to be all right. She kept concentrating on that thought. The helpless, shockingly pale boy surrounded by beeping machines was Jeremy. And he was going to be all right. The tubes that were coming from all parts of his body were helping him. He was Jeremy. And he was going to be just fine.
The blackness came upon her so quickly she didn’t know what was happening. She only knew that the cool relief it offered was too strong for her to resist.
* * *
DOUG FORCED his concentration onto the road in front of him. Only a couple more blocks and he’d have Andrea home. She sat silently beside him. Doug wasn’t even sure she was aware of the tears that were falling slowly but steadily down her cheeks.
She let him help her from her car and into her apartment, as listless as a stunned animal. Dr. Sandborne had told him that she was suffering from emotional overload. He’d recommended that Andrea take the tranquilizers he’d prescribed. Doug wasn’t so sure that was such a good idea.
He didn’t think Andrea was simply reacting to the trauma of Jeremy’s overdose, as the doctor had assumed. Doug was pretty certain that she had been harboring whatever was bothering her for a long time. And he didn’t think she needed to hide from it with prescribed numbness. His instincts told him that if she was ever going to live again, to live wholly, she was going to have to face her pain and put it to rest. He wasn’t going to let her run away again.
He led her to her bed and took off her tennis shoes and socks. She flopped back against the pillows he stacked up for her, looking like she didn’t have the desire to ever move again. Doug settled beside her, taking her in his arms. She started to cry harder, until her sobs were shaking the bed. He handed her some tissues from the nightstand and held on. The pills Dr. Sandborne had prescribed were still in his pocket. He only hoped he was doing the right thing.
Doug lost track of time as he held her and listened to the pain racking her. He felt so lost, so damned helpless as he tried to absorb her pain without knowing what was causing it. He felt like his heart was breaking into as many fragments as hers.
He held her, he stroked her, he murmured to her. And finally her trembling quieted, her tears slowed to trickles, her sobs to an occasional hiccup. Doug had no idea what to do next, what was best for her, what she needed from him. Should he let her sleep? Suggest she take a shower? Fix her something to eat? He felt almost panicky as he realized he had no idea how to take care of another person.
“Scotty’s lips were bluer.”
Her soft words ripped into the night, searing Doug’s soul. Who the hell was Scotty? Was he supposed to ask? Or would his question silence her?
“He looked so little, so helpless lying in that bed. And all those tubes...”
Her voice trailed off as she gazed sightlessly across the room. Doug was frustrated by his inability to share whatever pictures were playing themselves out in her head. He didn’t even know who she was seeing. She could have been describing Jeremy. Maybe she had been.
But another possibility suddenly occurred to him. Had Andrea been through this before? Had there been another young child, another overdose? Had Andrea, as a young cop, been the one to find him, to bring him in? Had that been the time of need Gloria had referred to? The time when Andrea’s husband had walked out on her? Suddenly it all made horrifying sense.
Doug had a hard time sitting still on the bed. He needed to do something. To hit something. To kill the bastard who had locked Andrea up in this emotional hell.
“Jeremy’s going to be okay, Doug. The doctor said he was a lucky boy.”
“I know, sweetie. By tomorrow the tubes should be gone.”
“Scotty had the tubes for almost a week. He was so tiny, so innocent. He just lay there with the shadows getting darker and darker beneath his eyes.” Her voice was distant.
Doug’s dread increased. Had the boy lived? He was afraid to ask.
“No matter how long I sat there, how much I talked to him, how many times I prayed, he just wouldn’t wake up. I thought we were going to lose him for sure. And it was all my fault.”
“Wait a minute there, lady. You’re a cop, not God. You told me yourself you can’t help them all. Sometimes it’s just too late before you get to them.”
Doug hoped she bought the words better than he had. He was still reeling from his own self-disgust, tasting the bitterness of his own guilt. He understood only too well how she could have shouldered the blame for the little boy’s condition, and how her husband’s desertion would only have deepened the quagmire of destructive emotions.
“I was there before it was too late, Doug. I missed the signs. All of them. The new set of friends, lower grades, unusual requests for money, disappearing allowance, lost interest in basketball, truancy. I thought they were all a phase—you know, like the terrible twos. Even the nosebleeds didn’t clue me in.”
She laughed a humorless, shallow laugh. “He was nine years old and addicted to cocaine, and I thought it was the terrible twos.”
Doug was alarmed by the self-loathing he heard in Andrea’s usually sweet voice.
“You can’t expect yourself to see the symptoms in every child when you deal with hundreds every week,” he said, rubbing her arm gently, trying to work the circulation back into it.
“I wasn’t a DARE officer then, Doug.”
“Then you have even less reason to blame yourself. How many cops do you know who can keep track of the everyday lives of the people on their beat? What were you, a truant officer?”
Andrea took a deep, shuddering breath and shook her head, and then shook it again.
“I was a sister.” Her words, when they finally came, were barely audible, thick with tears, but they hit Doug with the impact of a bullet. Dear God, he’d never imagined anything like this. He hadn’t even known she had a brother.
And now he had to ask that question. He had to know.
“Did he make it, baby? Did Scotty get lucky, too?”
Andrea nodded, but her tears continued to fall relentlessly. Doug pulled her onto his lap, cradling her against his chest. He was prepared to shoulder as much as she would let him. She was his woman.
“Talk to me, Andrea. Tell me what happened.”
“It started as a dare out on the playground.” Her voice faltered. “Some bigger boys, sixth-graders, offered to let him lick some ‘sugar’ off a mirror. He was always such a shy little boy, small for his age and smart as a whip. Most of the kids teased him, called him ‘teacher’s pet,’ made fun of his thick glasses. But that day, the most popular boys in school were being nice to him. Scotty licked. And when he got into gym class that afternoon he was a star.” Andrea was calmer now, reciting facts. “He was making baskets he’d never made before. The teacher told him that if he kept shooting like that, he’d let him work out with the sixth-grade team. Scotty had always dreamed of making the team, but he’d never thought he had a chance because he was so short. But that afternoon he felt like he could do anything. The girls that had always made fun of him were fighting over who would walk with him back to class, and Scotty was able to talk to them without tripping over his tongue.
“The next day, when those same boys were out on the playground, he worked up the courage to ask them if they had any more of that sugar. They laughed and talked him into some ‘better’ stuff. They kept him supplied long enough to get him hooked.”
Doug felt Andrea shudder against his chest. He tightened his hold on her.
“Then they put it to him. Before anyone knew what was happening, he was addicted to crack.”
“How long before you knew?”
“He’d been using regularly for over a month. He was getting low on funds and I refused to give him any more. I thought he was blowing it on video games at the arcade.” Her words were bitter again, condemning. Doug had a terrible premonition that there was more to come.
“When it got to the point that he could no longer afford his usual stash, he settled for some cheaper stuff. It was bad. He had an allergic reaction to the stuff that afternoon at school. They had to rush him to Children’s Hospital by helicopter. They almost didn’t get him there in time.”
“What about your parents? I can just imagine how they felt, having missed all the symptoms when he was living in their home....”
Andrea slid off Doug’s lap and got up from the bed. She wrapped her arms around herself as she headed for the bathroom across the room. She turned to face Doug just before she shut herself inside.
“They were out of town, Doug. They’d been saving all their lives for a European cruise. That year was their thirtieth wedding anniversary and they celebrated with a month on the Atlantic. Scotty had been staying with me....”