“He begged me not to tell you.”
“He said, ‘She has enough on her plate.'”
“And you listened.”
“I listened.”
Her eyes filled.
“I’m not proud of it, Lauren.”
“I thought it was his story to tell.”
“It stopped being his story when it became my daughter’s college fund.”
She nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Yeah, it did.”
She reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
“Go see Owen.”
“And Lauren?”
“Take the long way.”
“Give yourself time to decide what you’ll do when he answers.”
Owen lived on Maple Ridge Court.
Blue house.
Porch swing.
I’d helped Jess pick the paint color.
Jess answered the door with a baby on her shoulder.
Wyatt.
Three months old.
Born in July.
I’d planned their baby shower for free.
“Lauren!” she said.
Then she saw my face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Is Owen home?”
“He’s in the garage.”
“He’s been out there since he got home yesterday.”
“Lauren, what’s going on?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Alone?”
I looked at her.
At the baby.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
The garage door was halfway up.
Owen sat on an overturned bucket.
There was a workbench behind him.
On the workbench stood a bottle of bourbon.
Unopened.
Seal still on.
He was staring at it.
He looked up when my shadow crossed the floor.
He didn’t look surprised.
“Denise called you,” he said.
“No.”
“I called her.”
He nodded.
He looked back at the bottle.
“Seven months sober tomorrow,” he said.
“I bought this yesterday, right after you left the floor.”
“I’ve been sitting here trying to decide.”
“Decide what?”
“Whether I deserve to stay sober.”
I stood over him.
“Where were you the night before Thanksgiving, Owen?”
He closed his eyes.
“Right here.”
“In this garage.”
“On this bucket.”
“With a bottle a lot like this one.”
“Only that one was open.”
“And empty by midnight.”
My knees wanted to give out.
I didn’t let them.
“Jess was high-risk that whole pregnancy,” he said.
“She’d been in the ER twice that month.”
“I was scared out of my mind.”
“I’d been drinking every night since August.”
