A Light at Winter’s End

by Julia London

  Then what? That was the problem: Then what? If Hannah didn’t have her pills, she got sick. It was such a struggle to find them, but she had to do it to be well enough to take care of Mason. She drew a breath and slowly released it. Just eight hours ago she’d sworn off pills forever, and here she was, already on the hamster wheel again, counting pills, doling them out in her head, planning how to get more.

  I have to do something. I have to stop.

  It was the first time Hannah had ever admitted to herself that she needed to quit.

  She turned on her side so that she was facing the back of the couch, her head on a silk-covered pillow. Am I an addict? She’d never thought of herself as an addict. Abuser, okay, yes. A situational pain pill abuser who could quit right now if she wanted to. Not an addict. She wasn’t anything like those people on Intervention. Those people didn’t have jobs, but she did. She went to work every day. She was the office manager of a downtown law firm and she was damn good at her job. No one could do that job and be an addict.

  The memory of Rob’s phone call crept into her mind. You’ve been a little distracted lately.

  Hannah quickly pushed that away, and a dozen other little things like it. She was under a lot of stress, that was all. Her asshole of a husband had just left her, for Christ’s sake; her mother had died; her sister was in la-la land … Yes, but when did everything spiral out of control?

  It was a question she’d asked herself many times today after she’d come so close to disaster. If she was honest, she would admit that lately, she felt as if she were floundering in a pool, unable to swim and desperately trying to reach the side.

  She couldn’t really remember when it got out of hand. Hannah had always liked wine. After Loren’s first affair, she’d sort of leaned on it. She would wait up for him at night in this room, sipping wine until he came home smelling of liquor and women, and Hannah would drink some more. But the pills?

  Mom. It had started when her mother was diagnosed three years ago. At first, Hannah would take a couple of her mother’s pain pills just so she could cope. Her mother had always been a trial, but when she got sick, she was much harder to handle. Not that Hannah hadn’t understood her mother’s anger and anxiety; of course she had. It was hard to be any less than self-centered when one was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Nevertheless, Hannah had been caught off guard by her mother’s bitterness and, more accurately, how much of it was directed at her.

  She’d wanted to be a good daughter and give her mother everything she needed … but there had been no end to the help her mother needed. The woman suddenly couldn’t make a doctor’s appointment. Hannah had had to do it. And she had had to drive her. Her mother had refused to ask questions of her doctors, so Hannah had done all the questioning for her. She would wave her hand at all the pills she was to take and say things like “It’s all so confusing.” It had driven Hannah to drink. Literally. She would have thought her mother would be invested in her own survival, but she’d had no problem handing it over to Hannah.

  When the oncologist had explained the reasoning for a new round of chemotherapy, Peggy had sat stoically, glaring at him.

  “How long will one session take?” Hannah had asked.

  “Four to six hours.”

  “And recovery?”

  “That depends on the individual.”

  The doctor had gone on to explain the chemotherapy process, how the drugs would be administered, what Peggy could expect. Throughout the explanation, Hannah’s mother had not asked a single question. Hannah had driven her mother home and gone in with her to make sure she had the food Hannah had ordered. She’d done some research on chemo recovery diets and was trying to get her mother to change her eating habits.

  As Hannah had checked on the contents of the fridge, her mother had asked, “What pills do I have to take when I come home after chemo?”

  Admittedly, Hannah’s mind had been on something else—a half-eaten chocolate cream pie in the fridge—or she would have paused to take from her purse the little notebook in which she’d made meticulous notes. “I don’t know, Mom. I am sure they will explain it to you there.” She had extracted the pie from the fridge and turned around, placing it on the bar between her and her mother.

  “They explained it today,” her mother had said, ignoring the pie. “Why didn’t you ask what pills I would have to take when I got home? They throw so much information at you and expect you to remember it,” she’d complained. “I don’t know why you didn’t just ask that one question. There you were, asking everything else under the sun, and you didn’t ask what I thought was the most obvious question.”

  Hannah had paused in her perusal of the fridge contents, which was totally lacking in fiber, and looked at her mother. “Are you kidding?”

  “Kidding?” her mother had scoffed. “No, I am not kidding. You know I can’t keep up with everything. I’m trusting you to stay on top of it all.”

  “Mom, do you hear yourself? You are blaming me for not asking a question that you should have asked. You are expecting me to know what you want to ask. How can I do that? I can’t read your mind, and besides, you should take a more active role in your treatment.”

  “Oh, ooh!” her mother had cried, throwing up her hands. “Ain’t that a kick! Hannah Drake has to control everything, including how I handle my cancer!”

  Hannah had been stunned. And confused. All that she’d done for her mother—all the doctor trips, the prescription fills, the errands, the shopping, the drive out here day after day—swirled around her mind.

  Her mother had stalked to the pantry, thrown it open, had grabbed a bag of chips.

  “Wait—where did you get that?” Hannah had asked. “And this pie? Did you buy these?”

  “Holly takes me shopping,” her mother had said. “Holly lets me buy food I like to eat.”

  If Hannah had had an instrument of destruction—a grenade launcher would have done nicely—she would have used it. Of course Holly would take her mother shopping. Of course Holly would find some time in her oh-so-busy songwriting schedule to show up a few times a month and undo everything Hannah had worked so hard to do. It had made Hannah crazy then, and it made her crazy today. Holly made excuses for three years: she couldn’t pick up a couple of prescriptions and run them out. She couldn’t hold the tray under her mother’s head when she was violently ill from the chemo. She couldn’t manage to help with anything, but she sure could ruin the diet Hannah had worked so hard to put her mother on.

  “I can’t believe her,” Hannah had said, shaking her head, staring at the chips and the pie.

  “What?” her mother had asked as she munched on chips.

  Hannah took the bag from her hand. “I can’t believe she would buy you all that junk. Come on, Mom. You’ve been feeling so good. Why do you want to mess it up with this junk?”

  “It’s not junk! I like chips! I like pie.”

  “Holly should know better …” Hannah had started, but Peggy grabbed the bag from her hand.

  “Don’t talk about your sister like that,” she’d snapped. “I happen to like this food, and as I am the one dying around here, I guess I can have it if I want.”

  “I am trying to help you prolong your life!” Hannah had cried, frustrated.

  Her mother had suddenly softened, almost as if she’d set out to rile Hannah, and once she’d accomplished that, she could relax. “I know you are, honey, and I appreciate it. But I also appreciate that Holly wants to help me in her way too. You should let her. She doesn’t have the same capacity for this like you do.”

  Hannah had snorted at that. “You make her sound mentally challenged.”

  “Well, maybe in a way she is. God knows, she doesn’t have your brains or your skills. She’s writing songs, for Chrissakes.”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s dumb like a fox,” Hannah had said with a snort. “She’s dyslexic, Mom. She is not mentally handicapped. She’s actually very smart.”

  “You need to look out for
your little sister, instead of always finding fault,” her mother had said sternly, pointing a chip at her.

  Look out for Holly. All her life, Hannah had had to look out for Holly. All her life, she’d had to take care of everything else while Holly flitted from one thing to another. And in the end, Hannah’s mother had given everything to Holly, because Holly wasn’t Hannah, because Holly didn’t have the brains to make it big like Hannah.

  What a joke.

  Through the three years of having to deal with her mother’s increasingly dire illness and her general annoyance with her life, Hannah had found herself borrowing her mother’s pain pills. At first, it had been just a couple here and there to take the edge off, to help Hannah tune her mother out. And then a few more. Even when Hannah had hired a nurse to check on her mother each day, she took them. She’d just explain to the nurse that her mother was losing the pain pills, and the nurse would always get her more. And when the nurse hadn’t gotten more, Hannah had borrowed from her mother. Only she never had replaced what she took.

  How had she become this woman?

  Hannah had been valedictorian of her senior class. She had been Phi Beta Kappa when she graduated from college. She was a model citizen, an invaluable employee, a loving wife and excellent mother. How had she become this woman, this boozy, pill-popping nightmare?

  Moreover, how did she stop being this woman? How did she right a badly listing ship?

  Reflection made Hannah nauseous. She shouldn’t have taken the Ambien. Hannah got up from the couch and stumbled into the hall bath. She sank down on her knees before the toilet and threw up.

  She hated herself. Mason deserved so much better than this. Both of his parents were losers. As Hannah rested her head against the cool tiles of the bathroom floor, fighting down another wave of nausea, she thought that while she couldn’t do anything to change the fact that Loren was Mason’s father, she could make sure that at least she didn’t disappoint her son.

  That was something she’d have to think about, but right now her head was killing her. She needed some pills to take the pain away. But where was she going to get them? Hannah took the last few remaining pills she had, washed her face, brushed her teeth, then went in search of her wallet. She pulled out a slip of paper with Brian’s number.

  Chapter Four

  Wyatt decided his next project was a pergola.

  He’d taken a critical survey of his little red ranch house with the big picture windows and the wide front porch and decided, with an update, his house could be … nicer. It would never be on the Parade of Homes, that was certain, but he could at least make it a little more inviting.

  He hadn’t done much to it since he bought it over a year ago, other than to rip up carpet and put in hardwoods, because it didn’t seem very permanent to him. He still hadn’t decided if he was going to stay here. He didn’t like putting down roots these days, because if roots got too deep, the only way to move them was to cut them off completely. He’d had his roots whacked off once before and wasn’t looking to repeat the experience, and it seemed to him the best way to avoid it was not to commit to any place or thing for too long.

  Still, he needed to replace the windows with something more energy efficient. The kitchen needed a major overhaul; the cabinets, the appliances, the flooring—all needed to be replaced with something from the twenty-first century. He’d really like to rip out the guest bath back to studs and start over as well, and if he was ever made king, he’d have a rule that people who thought pink tile was a good color for a bathroom would be shot.

  But the flagstone patio he’d put in out back could use a pergola for shade on days like this. “Yeah, pergola first,” he said to no one.

  Milo lifted his head from his spot beneath a ceiling fan and stared at Wyatt a long moment before lowering his head again.

  Wyatt could put in a pergola in a day. Maybe two. He made a mental note to price lumber next time he was in town. Right now, he needed to get the mail. He wasn’t very good about staying on top of the mail.

  “Truck,” he said to Milo, and his dog leaped into action, racing out the open garage door to the truck and jumping up onto the tailgate. He bounced onto the bales of hay Wyatt had stacked in the bed. The dog’s tail was wagging enough to fan Wyatt, and he tried to lean down and lick Wyatt’s face. “Fool dog,” Wyatt said, and pushed the dog back into the bed of the truck so that he could shut the tailgate.

  When he had it secure, Wyatt climbed into the cab, lifting himself up and over the tear in the seat where the spring was sticking through. He really needed to put some duct tape on that; as it was, he had to sit a little off center behind the wheel. He gave the gas a couple of pumps and started the old truck. It cranked a few seconds before catching, but the next moment he was bouncing along the rutted road toward the mailbox.

  Wyatt turned on the radio. He lived far enough away that he couldn’t get much besides KASE 101, a country station. A song by the Court Yard Hounds was up, one that had been played into the ground on this station, and Wyatt sang along under his breath, drumming along on the cracked steering wheel. “‘What’d you think I was gonna dooooo / When you left you left all my loving toooo …’ Dumb lyrics,” he muttered. “One might even say nescient.” Yes! He’d squeezed in the word of the day. “Nescience,” he said aloud. “Lack of knowledge or awareness, as in: That songwriter’s nescience is downright embarrassing.” He grinned for a moment, but then the truck hit a hole and bounced hard. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Milo’s legs were spread-eagle across the hay bale, but his tongue was hanging out the side of his snout and his tail was still wagging.

  He drove down to the gate, opened it up, and walked out to the road to pick up his mail. There was nothing of interest to him: bills, flyers, and a big creamy envelope made of expensive paper that looked like a wedding invitation. The return address said Asher Price. Asher had been a client of his at one time, and Wyatt guessed he was going to marry the woman from Houston. Wyatt didn’t bother to open the invitation to find out. He wasn’t going.

  He threw the mail into the seat next to him and started back to the house with Milo still perched on the bales of hay. When he reached his house a few minutes later, Milo bounded out of the truck and went after something in the brush. Wyatt headed inside after something to eat.

  He tossed the mail on the counter and opened the fridge to stare at its meager offerings. He had a twelve-pack of beer, a pack of bologna, some bread, and some moldering hummus. He’d bought that on a whim when he was in Austin one day and had stopped by Whole Foods. Whole Foods had made him nostalgic for the lifetime he’d lived two years ago, when he’d been married and living in the gated community of Arbolago Hills in Cedar Springs, in a big damn house he’d built for Macy. Back when the most work he did was move papers from his secretary Linda Gail’s desk to his own.

  He picked up the hummus and tossed it into the trash, removed a beer from the fridge, and cracked it open as he walked outside to the back porch. He sat down in the rusting metal chair and propped his booted feet up on a planter. It was hot as Hades now, but in a month or so, the mornings would be nippy, the afternoons warm, and the evenings really pleasant, just right for a fire in the chiminea. Only Wyatt didn’t have a chiminea. He’d had one when he’d been married, and he didn’t want to be reminded of the nights he and Macy had sat around wrapped in a sarape they’d bought in Cabo San Lucas, sipping good wine and watching boats drift lazily on Lake Del Lago. That had all been before her first husband had come back from the dead. Literally. He’d been a soldier, reported killed by the Army. But the Army had gotten it all wrong, and he wasn’t dead, he was being held captive, and he escaped, and he came back for Macy, his wife. Only Macy was Wyatt’s wife at that point, and pregnant with Grace, and … Well, long story short, Macy had chosen Finn. That’s all there was to be said about that. She’d chosen Finn, and Wyatt’s happy little dream marriage and great life had crumbled like a cone of ash.

  So, no, he didn’t have a goddam
n chiminea.

  He was in the middle of taking a swig of his beer when his phone startled him by going off in his pocket. He sat forward, wiped the beer he’d spilled from his jeans, and fished the phone out of his pocket. “Yo,” he said.

  “Wyatt?”

  He settled back into his seat. “Afternoon, Linda Gail. What can I do for you?”

  “You can come in and sign these checks is what you can do for me,” Linda Gail said, sounding snippy. Wyatt supposed she had a right. Linda Gail was his right-hand man, and had been for years. She’d been after him for a few days to come in to his office in Cedar Springs and sign things. He knew it was bad when she called on a Sunday.

  Wyatt was the primary shareholder in the new Hill Country Resort and Spa. He’d put the deal together, had overseen the groundbreaking and construction … well, Linda Gail had, really, because Wyatt had sort of dropped off the map after the thing with Macy. But she needed his signature to keep things moving. “I’ll probably get that way next week,” he said.

  Linda Gail sighed. “All right, Wyatt. I asked you politely the first time. Hell, I asked you nicely the second and third time too. Now I am telling you if you don’t come in and sign this stuff, I will come out there. Do you want that? Do you really want me to drive twenty-five miles out of my way and maybe have to spend the night with you?”

  He had images of nightgowns and fuzzy slippers and hot cocoa, and no, he most certainly did not want that.

  “I didn’t think so,” Linda Gail said, before he could answer. “Why you have to hole up out there like an outlaw, I will never understand. It’s not healthy at all to live like you do, without people.”

  He really wished he didn’t have to have this ongoing conversation with her. Linda Gail seemed to think that if someone preferred his own society to her, there was something wrong with him. “I have people, Linda Gail,” he said gruffly. “But there is nothing wrong with a man preferring his own company.”