by Claire Adams
“Of course, you can’t,” she said, sounding angry. “I thought I could trust you, Trethan. I was starting to believe that you really might have changed, just like you’d told me. But it was all lies, wasn’t it?”
I was silent because it wasn’t as though I could really say anything to that. Wasn’t this what I wanted, anyway? For her to know better than to hang around with me? I should be happy that this whole thing with Brent had somehow exploded whatever it was that I might have had with Vanessa.
“I don’t know how I could have been so stupid,” she said, sounding upset. “Here I was, thinking that you’d changed, thinking that maybe I could open my heart to you. But I don’t trust you, Trethan. I’m not going to tell my dad about this, but honestly, I wonder if maybe I should. He seems to believe that you’re so much better now, that you’re stable enough to be around the horses, that you’re stable enough for him to rely on you.
“But how do I know that you’re not just going to get drunk and flake on him like you did with me yesterday? And do you realize what that could cost the business if you were to do something stupid like that?”
I whirled toward her, fighting the urge to slam my shovel down in anger. “I wasn’t drunk yesterday,” I snapped.
“So what, you were stoned?” she asked, snorting derisively. “That hardly makes a difference.”
My grip tightened on the handle of the shovel, until my knuckles were white and the wood creaked beneath my palms. “I was a hundred percent sober,” I told her. “Not that I need to justify my actions to you, but I was one hundred percent sober.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “I heard you on the phone. It sounded like you were hardly there when you told me you couldn’t meet up.”
“Because I was busy helping Brent fill out the forms he needed to check into the rehab center,” I spat before I could really think about the words. Then, I winced, hating that I’d just admitted that to her after I promised Brent I would keep his secret.
There was no taking it back, though, as Vanessa’s eyes widened and her hand crept up to cover her mouth. “You were helping Brent get checked into a rehab center?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell whether she was feeling embarrassed at having slammed my behavior before or if she was more worried for Brent.
“Yeah,” I said simply, kicking at the dirty straw under my feet. My mouth twisted bitterly, and I decided I might as well tell her the whole story. She probably wasn’t going to let it go until I did.
“Brent’s apparently been addicted to heroin for a while. I probably should have noticed, but apparently I’m too much of a self-centered fuckhead that I didn’t even know until the other night when I saw the track marks. I mean, you would think that when someone’s your best friend and they start acting like that, you’d realize something was up. But I didn’t. I never thought anything about the way he acted. I never managed to put two and two together.”
“It’s not your fault,” Vanessa said quietly. “I’m sure he was doing his best to hide it from you.”
“Of course, he was,” I said. “But that doesn’t excuse the fact that I didn’t notice. I hit rock bottom a long time ago. I know how drugs work. I should have recognized the signs. I should have realized he was doing more than just weed, that weed and alcohol wouldn’t change his personality like that, but I never even questioned it.”
Vanessa was silent, but rather than feeling condemned by her lack of words, I could tell she was waiting for me to continue.
I swallowed hard. “I knew he was getting into fights,” I said. “And, I know the drug business gets rough sometimes, but if he was just dealing weed, things probably wouldn’t be like that. I should have started questioning it. Or questioning the other signs. But I didn’t.”
She finally held up a hand. “Brent wouldn’t want you to be beating yourself up like this, would he?” I paused, considering it, but Vanessa forged on. “You helped him get help,” she reminded me. “Maybe it took a while. Maybe you should have realized things sooner. But in the end, you helped Brent get checked into a clinic, didn’t you?”
She paused, and her next words made me flinch. “You’re not caught up in any of that stuff, though, are you?”
“Heroin?” I asked in disbelief.
She looked uncomfortable, her gaze shifting off to the side. “Heroin, or anything else. Any other drugs,” she said. “And, I’m not just asking about using. I’m asking about dealing, too. I could never get involved with you again if I knew that you were...” She trailed off, looking unhappy.
“I haven’t even smoked a joint in over three years now,” I told her flatly, hating that she had asked. “When anyone tells you that I’m drug-free, you can believe them.” I realized I wasn’t being fair to her. She didn’t know the full story. She didn’t know my reasons for cleaning up my act.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, suddenly needing to be out of the tight, claustrophobic feel of the barn.
“Okay,” she agreed, much more quickly than I’d expected her to. She trailed after me, out of the barn and across the dewy grass.
“I hit rock bottom,” I told her after a long moment. “It was about a year after you left. I was missing you pretty badly, and things with my father were difficult, to say the least.” I paused.
“I don’t really remember what happened, and that’s the part that still scares me the most about it. I don’t remember if there was a conscious decision to overdose or if it was a stupid accident, but I woke up in the hospital. I’d been out of it for a while already at that point. The doctors all had thought I wasn’t going to survive, and I had all of these cards and flowers and things, from what seemed like half the town.'”
I paused, taking a deep breath. It was a time in my life I rarely thought about anymore, let alone talked about. I could still feel those tendrils of fear, just thinking back to it. I was terrified I might end up there again.
“No one’s really sure how or why I pulled through,” I continued. “The doctors said I must have realized I had something to live for. I didn’t want to tell them, but they were wrong. Part of why I got that low in my spiral was that there wasn’t anything to live for at that point. I was just going through the motions, trying to pretend that everything was okay. But I had no prospects. I had nothing. That’s when your father came to visit me.”
“Why?” Vanessa asked, shaking her head. “I just don’t understand why he came to visit you. It’s not like you and I were still dating or anything.”
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” I admitted. “To be honest” — I paused and then shrugged — “I’ve always kind of been afraid to ask. My life was in such a tenuous place at that point, if he hadn’t come to visit me, I probably wouldn’t be alive today. And that is such a fine balance that I’ve always been terrified to know how close I’d actually come to dying.”
Vanessa frowned, looking over at me. “But how did he help you?”
I shook my head. “He just told me, in the simplest words, that none of it was my fault. That my father hadn’t been much of a man to me. That he hadn’t been much of a man in general.
“It was the first time someone tried to tell me that none of it was my fault. That meant a lot to me. And when he offered me the job here at the Lazy J, I couldn’t turn him down.” I paused again, taking a deep breath. “This job gives me a purpose. And your dad’s been ten times the dad my father ever was. He told me I’d have a place here and support here for as long as I could stay off the drugs. So I did.”
I grimaced. “The thing is, I know I could still be better. I quit drinking for a while, but that never really stuck. I started falling back into my old patterns, and I started fucking around with various women. But from the time I started working here, I’ve never gone too far.”
“That’s good,” Vanessa said faintly, and I could tell from the look on her face that she was thinking things over. Probably wondering if she could still be friends with me. I doubted that she’d ever agree to go on a date
with me after hearing my story. Of course, she’d known that I was involved in drugs back when we were teenagers, but it was one thing to deal and one thing to smoke weed sometimes. It was another thing entirely to admit that you’d overdosed and ended up in the hospital because of it.
She surprised me though, as she always seemed to do. “Well, I’m glad that someone was there to help you,” she said softly. “You’re not a bad guy, Trethan. You deserve to be helped.”
Chapter Eighteen
Vanessa
That evening, I found Dad curled up in the living room, well within the warmth of the woodstove, with the newspaper spread over his lap. He looked up as I entered the room and raised his eyebrow. “What, you youngsters aren’t up to anything in town this evening?”
I laughed. “Are you trying to get rid of me already?” I asked. “I was out all night yesterday.”
“I know,” he said, nodding sagely. “And, it’s good for you. I’m afraid I’m not the best company for you at this point. You should be socializing with people your own age.”
I laughed. “That’s a little difficult to do when Julie’s got Danny to look after,” I said.
Dad nodded to concede the point. “What about Trethan?” he asked after a moment. “I seem to recall the two of you being inseparable once upon a time.”
I fell silent and stared out the window into the darkening evening. “Dad, what do you think about Trethan?” I asked finally. “I’m not asking if you think I should marry him or anything like that. We’re not even dating. But I just mean, as a man. What do you think of him?”
“Well,” he said, frowning. “Of course, I think he’s a good man. Perhaps a little misguided at times, but then again, aren’t we all?”
“You really think he’s a good man?”
“Of course, I do,” he said. “I wouldn’t let him work here if I didn’t think so.”
“But what about his history?” I asked. “He told me that he overdosed and ended up in the hospital because of it. You still think he’s a good man?”
Dad was quiet for a long time. “We all have our sins to atone for,” he said finally. “No man is perfect. Trethan certainly has his faults, but he’s done a damned good job of pulling himself back from the brink.”
I shook my head. “Maybe he has, but that doesn’t mean that he’s a good man,” I said.
“What is a good man?” Dad asked philosophically. “We all try to do the best we can for our families. Whether that’s our flesh and blood families or the families we choose for ourselves.”
I thought about Trethan taking Brent to the rehab center, about how chewed up Trethan had been that he hadn’t realized his friend needed help. Maybe Brent was part of the family Trethan had chosen for himself. But if so, wasn’t that just as bad? Not only was Trethan potentially volatile himself, but he didn’t exactly surround himself with the most stable of individuals.
Before I could say anything about that, though, Dad continued. “You know, if it weren’t for that mother of yours, I might not have ended up as good as I am,” he said, laughing a little. “Now, I know I’m not perfect, but I’ve tried hard to be as good as I can be. Your mother was a big reason for that, though. When she met me… God. I can’t believe she ended up with me!”
“What were you like?” I asked curiously. I had never heard this story before.
“Put it this way: I probably would have been a drunken brawler like Trethan used to be,” Dad said, shrugging a little. “I was out at the bars every night. And, I’d drink heavily before I even went out. Hell, I drank while I was out working with the horses during the day. I think I spent two years there where I didn’t sober up once. That’s what your mother walked into.”
I stared incredulously at him, trying to imagine that. Dad hadn’t had a drop of alcohol for most of my life, so it was difficult to picture drinking all the time. “Why did Mom stick with you?” I asked.
Then, I winced. “Sorry, I know that you guys were in love and all, but I’m just trying to figure out how you got to that point of being in love with one another, when I know for a fact that Mom would never have tolerated someone who was, to put it frankly, a drunken asshole.”
Dad laughed heartily at that. “Call it whatever you like,” he told me. “That’s what I was. That’s actually a very good description, a drunken asshole.” He paused. “The thing is, men by themselves, they have strength. They have strength, but they haven’t got much sense. They need a woman, a strong woman, to support them. To show them what goodness is.”
He laughed again. “One night, I was over in the Roasted Bison having some drinks with some friends, and your mother marched right up to me.”
I snorted at the visual image since my father must have been a foot and a half taller than my mother.
“Oh yeah, go ahead and laugh,” he said. He was laughing, as well, although I could see tears gathering in the corners of his eyes as well. “Well, she marched right over to me, and she jabbed her finger in my chest, right here. And she told me, ‘John MacIntyre Thomas, now you listen to me: your mother didn’t raise you to be a drunkard like this, and if you don’t want her to find out about this, then you’d better quit drinking at once!’
“And me being the idiot that I was, I responded, ‘My mom’s dead, sweetheart.’ That gave the boys quite the laugh, but Margaret… Oh, Margaret, she wasn’t having any of that.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“Well, she told me that if I didn’t shape up, she was going to make sure that no girl from White Bluff would ever sleep with me. And the thing is, your mother really had that power, didn’t she? So when she said that, I listened. I’ve been sober ever since.”
I laughed, and Dad did as well. “Just like that?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Just like that,” he said solemnly. “She was quite the force of nature, wasn’t she?”
“She was,” I agreed.
“It’s like I said, a strong man needs a good, strong woman for support,” he repeated.
I hummed an agreement. Finally, I shook my head. “I should let you get back to the newspaper, I guess. It’s about time I went to bed anyway; I was up early this morning.”
“All right,” Dad said. “Sleep well.”
“You, too,” I told him warmly.
Up in my room, though, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking over what Dad had said, about a man needing the support of a woman. Of course, I wasn’t full of myself enough to think that I could be precisely what Trethan needed in his life, but was it possible that some sort of stable woman was just what he needed?
Was it possible that he really could shape up and quit being a brawling drunkard, just like Dad had done?
Feeling totally conflicted, I called Julie. “Hey, I’m sorry,” I told her. “I know it’s late. I hope I haven’t woken anyone up?”
“No, we just put Danny down to sleep not too long ago,” she said. “I’m getting caught up on a little reading, and Liam is watching the end of some sports game. What’s up?”
“I was just thinking about Trethan,” I told her.
“Again.”
I paused. “I just feel so uncertain about it. What if he really could change? What if he just needs some sort of stability in his life or a good friend? If I turned my back on that, I’d feel like the biggest asshole in the world.”
“You shouldn’t feel pressured to take care of him just because you guys used to be close,” Julie said, sounding disapproving. “Has he put you up to this?”
“No,” I said. “I just was thinking about it, that’s all.”
She sighed. “To be honest, I don’t really want to tell you that I think you should take your chances with him,” she said. “I remember how hurt you were last time when things didn’t work out. But I know that you’ve been thinking about him a lot lately, and I know that you’re not stupid. You’re not ignoring his faults.”
I laughed softly, remembering what Dad had said. “But every man has his faults
,” I reminded her. “Even Liam must have his faults, right?”
As though on cue, I could suddenly hear Liam cheering loudly in the background. And just as loudly, I heard Danny begin to cry. Julie swore. “There’s one of his major faults,” she griped. “He’s too into his sports. Look, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to put you on speaker so I can try and get Danny calmed down and back to sleep. Is that okay?”
“No problem,” I told her.
“Liam has his faults,” she continued after a moment where all I could hear on the other end of the line was rustling. “And I do as well. And this baby will have his faults as well.” She paused. “But those faults aren’t always life-threatening.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that he’d overdosed?” I asked because I was under no illusions that she hadn’t known.
“Because you were finally starting to sound okay about your breakup,” Julie told me. “It was right around the time you started getting interested in that TA of yours, whatever his name was. Josh? I wasn’t about to tell you ‘oh yeah, by the way, Trethan was in the hospital.’”
“But if he’d died, I would never have been able to forgive myself for not being there,” I told her, feeling the hurt bubble up to the surface.
Julie sighed. “I know,” she said. “I knew that, even then. But your father didn’t want you to know about it, either. He didn’t want you to be hurt, and he didn’t want anything to tear you away from your dream of becoming an art historian. He thought he could figure out some other way to honor the friendship you’d had with Trethan, without your ever having to know about the OD.”
“And that’s why he offered Trethan the job,” I said slowly, feeling things finally starting to click into place.
“I don’t think that’s the only reason,” she said. “You know how things are in a small town. Everyone knows someone who’s been in that position before, whether it’s them or a cousin or a friend or someone else.”
“True,” I agreed, remembering again what Dad had said about how he would have been a drunkard without Mom’s intervention. No doubt, he’d seen something of himself in Trethan. “But should I give Trethan another chance?” I asked Julie plaintively.