IT WASN’T SO AWFUL, David thought to himself. Ashley’s sister seemed much nicer than he had imagined. She looked like a more sharply cast version of Ashley. The same dark hair, the same nose and the mouth, but the eyes were a study in contrasts. David had seen eyes like Val’s—the hard-boiled cynics’ on Wall Street for instance.
Their mother was another story. Completely different from what his own mother had been like when she was alive. And as he watched Ashley’s mother peering out at the dark streets, her hands clamping nervously on Brianna’s shoulders, he could see exactly where Ashley got it from.
As for Ashley, she looked exhausted. There were shadows under her eyes that weren’t usually there, and strands were starting to escape from the bun. All he wanted to do was get her home, tuck her in bed, not even needing to jump her, which was testament to how tired she looked. He walked over to her, running a hand over her neck, feeling the tense muscles there. “How much do you have to do tonight?”
Her gaze moved across the store. “That’s enough. I think I want to celebrate.”
Val stood. “Great idea. You deserve it. I didn’t think you could do it, Ash, but hell, you did. I’m proud of you, sis. We can hit Paradise Pup. Brianna loves the burgers, don’t you, sweetie?”
Brianna, hearing her name, broke into the conversation. “I’m all for that plan.”
It wasn’t exactly what David had planned, but okay, he was the guest. Ashley needed to decide this one.
She stared at him, and he wished she wouldn’t stare at him like that—as if she didn’t want to go to dinner with her family because she knew that he knew she was going to cave, and then he’d be disappointed with her, and today of all days, he didn’t want to be disappointed with her, and then…
“I don’t think I want to go,” she was saying. “You take Mom and Brianna if you want to eat there. I’m going to go with David.”
Hell had just frozen over. He knew it. David was so shocked that he forgot to smile, and he wanted to smile. Val frowned ominously. “I thought you wanted to celebrate.”
Immediately, Ashley realized her mistake. It was there in the wariness in her eyes. “Actually, you know, I don’t want to celebrate. I want to go…somewhere quiet.”
Val’s heavy sigh could be heard in Wisconsin, and her gaze cut to David, death in her sights. “You know, Ash, you’re always there to celebrate my special days—the anniversaries, the birthdays, and tonight, I wanted to return the favor because you’ve done a great thing, but okay, if you feel that way…go away, do your little thing.”
Carefully, David studied the pink necklaces in the display case because as much as he wanted to open his mouth, he knew that’d be a mistake.
“Thanks for understanding, Val.”
“No problem. Listen, I got this letter from the district attorney this afternoon, and it made me nervous. Can you take a look tonight when you get home?”
Ah, so the battle wasn’t over yet. Val was much more effective than he gave her credit for.
“I won’t be home tonight, Val.”
Holy shit. David’s hands nearly drove through the glass. Not only was Ashley holding her own in the ring, she was going for the knockout. Ashley was turning into a fighter. He’d never been more proud.
“Where’ll you be, Aunt Ash?”
Ah, the voice of innocence.
“You’re too young to know about this,” answered Val. “Mom, can you take Brianna out to the car. There’s one other thing that I need to talk to Ash about, and then we’ll take off. And yes, Brianna, we’ll get the burgers.”
After they left, David gave Ashley a weak, yet hopefully encouraging smile. She was doing great, just one more round, and then victory was hers. Immediately Ashley took the offensive. “Leave it alone, Val.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“I know exactly what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me how I’m making a mistake, and this is a time for family, and how the only people you can depend on are your family, and then you’re going to remind me how Jacob was such a mistake, and you think David is a mistake, too, because he lives in New York, and you can’t see me in New York, and why even waste my time and his, and now that you’ve met his ex-wife and seen what a total bitch she is, you can’t think he’s that smart, and he’s probably just using me, or even worse, he’s got some squeeze back in New York, and how would I know since I live in another town, because honestly, how can I trust any man. Did I get it all?”
“Very good. Although you missed the important part. Do you love him, Ash?”
“Yes.”
“Are you moving? Are you leaving this town and haven’t said a word?”
The room got dangerously quiet. David perked up his head, watching Ashley with interest.
“Maybe.”
Val looked at David, then looked at Ashley. “I’m wasting my time here, aren’t I? Do what you need to do, Ash. Have a nice life.” Then she stalked out the room, the bell at the door jingling behind her.
Ashley turned to David, and her face crumpled a bit. “I think that went well.”
David gathered her close, but Ashley not only looked exhausted, now she looked beaten. “One day at a time, Ashley. She’ll come around.”
He hoped.
IT TOOK EXACTLY seven hours for the full effects of the crisis to be known. David and Ashley were both fast asleep in the hotel room when Ashley’s cell rang.
Ashley opened one eye, stared at the clock. 4:37 a.m. She didn’t want to answer the phone. For the first time in her life she actually considered letting the goddamned phone ring, but she didn’t.
“Ash, I need you to come get me.” It was Val, stumbling through her words without a care in the world.
“Where are you at, Val?” The words came out of her mouth by rote. She knew the routine. She knew her part.
“How the hell should I know?”
“O’Malleys on Addison?”
“No.”
Ashley rubbed her eyes, praying this was a bad dream, but she knew it wasn’t a bad dream. Or if it was, she was stuck in it—the same bad dream, over and over and over and over. “Ask the bartender for an address.”
Val started to laugh. Vodka did that to people. Made everything funny.
“He’s not the bartender, he’s the police.”
16
DAVID KNEW the answer to his question before he asked it. “I have to go,” she told him, already sliding out of bed, turning on the light, pushing her hair from her face. All the excitement of yesterday was gone.
“You don’t have to leave.”
Mechanically she pulled on clothes—a yellow skirt, a red-flowered shirt and a beaded blue necklace because apparently bright happy apparel was the best way to pretend you weren’t dying inside. The dark hollows in her eyes gave proof of the lies.
Those hollow eyes shot him a desperate glance. “Don’t do this now,” she pleaded.
“I’m sorry, but look at you, Ashley. What are you going to do? What are you supposed to do to help?”
“My sister is drunk at the Cook County jail. I’m going to go, post bail, take her home, throw her in the shower, try and keep the shit from Brianna and Mom, and carry on. That’s what I’m going to do.”
David rubbed his eyes, feeling the helpless anger burn inside him. He’d never liked helpless. “Do you want me to go?”
This time, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and didn’t even bother to answer, instead she focused on packing to leave.
David grabbed his jeans and shoved his legs into them. While she stuffed her toiletries in the case, he pulled her clothes out of the closet, realized what he was doing, and shoved them back on the hangers that jingled like bells. No.
He had tried to stay silent, tried to let her do this, but he couldn’t. He could not sit this one out. “When will you stop? When is she going to call, and you say, ‘not today?’”
“Not today.” Her smile was sad, and David swore, and then
her smile got a little more sad. “Do you know what I love about you, David? We have known each other for a few months, but you encourage me to do things, encourage me to take risks, and I do it. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“I feel safe with you. I know that if I’m with you, no matter what I do, you’ll always be there to catch me if I fall. Is that true?”
David didn’t like having his motives twisted, his emotions twisted, his heart twisted, and he wanted to lie to her, but in the end, he couldn’t. “Yes.”
“And I love my sister,” she told him, shutting her suitcase, zipping it firmly closed, “and I want her to feel safe with me, David. I want her to know that as long as I’m alive, I will always be there to catch her if she falls. Is that wrong of me? Is it wrong of you?”
“It’s not the same thing. What you’re doing…with your business and all, that’s the good stuff. That’s positive. With Val, it’s not healthy, Ashley. Sometimes you have to let people make their own mistakes and learn from them.”
“You think that if I bail out Val, I’m making a mistake?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do, David?” she asked him, as if she was absolutely sure she was right. As if there was only one way to deal with the people you love.
There it was. Put up or shut up time.
Furiously David began grabbing his clothes from the closet, not caring how he did it because he wanted the world the way he wanted it. He wanted Ashley to be harder. But it seemed it didn’t matter what he wanted. In the end, it was Ashley who got the 4:00 a.m. wake-up calls, Ashley who patiently paid the fees for NSF checks, Ashley who did it all. There was a pattern here, and she didn’t mind the pattern. David did. She had worked so hard, and it was all for nothing because she would never get anything she wanted, and he’d have to stand there with his thumb up his ass, seeing her sad smile, and seeing the glow fade from her eyes.
No.
“I can’t watch this, Ashley. I can’t watch you handing her your heart and watching it burn. You sound like you’re going out to pick up her laundry, but it’s four-thirty in the morning after one of the best days of your life, and you’re going to a police station. Doesn’t this hurt you? What about you, Ashley?”
“I can handle it. I can help her.”
“This is not help.”
She pulled her shoes from the closet, then sat down in the chair, seeming oddly composed. She was going to go. Oh, man, she would need a cab. David picked up the phone and dialed the front desk, ready to get her a cab.
There was a knowing smile on her face as she watched.
Before the operator answered, David hung up.
Ashley slid her feet into her yellow heels. It wasn’t even 5:00 a.m., and she was wearing yellow heels. The world was not a nice place. “Do you know what pushed her off the ledge, David?” she asked, and deep in his soul he had known that they were going to reach this point eventually.
His hands flexed, then fisted until the knuckles glowed white. “Oh, no. She might want you to believe that our relationship killed her sobriety, but the only person who pushed her off the ledge was Val.”
“Action, reaction. Thirteen months she’s been sober, David.” She stood, smoothed her skirt. Then she met his eyes. “Are you going to be here when I get back?”
She wanted to know what he was going to do. This moment was more than calling her a cab, more than packing her clothes. Of course I’ll be here, he thought to himself. I could never leave you.
His breathing stopped, his lungs not sure what they were supposed to do. He hated this. He hated his goddamned principles. He hated that he couldn’t be like her. His eyes drifted shut because he didn’t like that sad, knowing smile. When had Ashley gotten so very smart?
Carefully he exhaled, opened his eyes.
“I don’t think I should stay. I think I would get very mad, and I would yell at you, and you don’t need me to yell at you. You need me to be supportive and say you’re doing the right thing, and that’s not even close to who I am.”
She nodded once, a tiny jerk of the head, and that was the end.
A MAN DIDN’T NEED to be in an empty hotel room. He found the shirt she had left behind and he neatly packed it into his carry-on because he couldn’t stay here, and he couldn’t simply leave her stuff out there for the maid.
It was five in the morning, the planes were just starting to take off, and David sat on the bed. He had never imagined this moment. He’d never even contemplated it. From the first second on that airplane ride to nowhere, he’d known he’d never met someone that he felt so comfortable with—someone that made him lust, someone that made him laugh.
No point in laughing now.
His case sat on the bed, staring at him, telling him to go home, but David wasn’t ready to go home. There wasn’t anyone there, and he didn’t want to be alone. He picked up his cell and made a call.
CHRIS DIDN’T ACT surprised or weird. He acted as if this were no big deal, and for that, David loved his brother even more.
They ended up sitting on the back deck, drinking a beer and watching the sun come up. As he looked out over the fenced yard, the old picnic table, the flowers beneath the kitchen window, it occurred to David that his brother had created the house their father had always wanted.
“What did you expect her to do, David? You know it’s so easy for you to cut people off and never speak to them again, but most of us aren’t like that.” Chris rested in the lounge chair because this was his home turf. This was his domain, his castle. Here, David was the outsider.
“You picked love over family, why couldn’t she do it?”
That was the hard part. David expected the ultimate sacrifice. There was pride involved here. Ashley had a choice. Once again, David had lost.
“I didn’t pick love over family.”
David drained the last of his beer. Reached for another. “You want to make it sound prettier, Chris? You fucked my wife.”
“I loved your wife,” Chris answered, sounding hurt that David was mad.
“Geez.”
“Don’t do that. I loved her more than you ever did. Christine was an ornament to you. You never talked with her, you never even knew what she wanted.”
David thought over some of the conversations he’d had with Christine. “She wanted matching clothes and a maid.”
Chris shook his head. “She wanted a home. She wanted a kid. She wanted a husband who came home at five and listened to her whine about the day.”
It all sounded neat and domestic, and not a thing like the marriage that David and Christine had had. “And that’s you?”
“It is. It was never you.” His brother looked at him as if David were the alien. As if he were the one who was being a fool, as if the world had swapped sides, and somehow he was stuck alone.
“What am I supposed to do, Chris? Do I have to start going to see a therapist to figure out how I’m supposed to be a man? Do I stock up on self-help books?”
“I don’t think so, David. I don’t think Ashley thinks so, either.”
“She’s wrong about this, Chris. I know I think I’m right all the time, and a lot of the time—but not all the time—I’m right. But this time, I’m right.”
Thankfully, his brother nodded. “I think so, too.”
“Do you really? You’re not just saying that because my life sucks at the moment?”
“No, I think you’re right. Maybe she’ll realize it, too.”
David remembered Ashley’s smile. She knew David was right. She knew she was doing the wrong thing, but she couldn’t help herself. “I don’t think so.” He stood, tossed the beer can in the garbage that was right behind the grill. Their father had a grill exactly like that. “Why don’t you take all the money on the old apartment, Chris. I don’t need it.”
Chris’s jaw shifted into a hard line. “No. We go half. You keep thinking there’s something wrong with my financial choices, David, but there’s not. I don’t need
what you need.”
At that, David sighed. He’d tried, he failed. “Fifty-fifty it is. I should go.”
“You could stay. Christine could make pancakes.”
“That’s too much. Maybe you could come out to New York some time and we could be brothers for the weekend. I think I’d like that. That, I think I can do.”
Chris nodded. “I could do that, too.”
17
“HELLO, MY NAME is Valerie, and I’m an alcoholic.”
The room was half full. It was an old Lithuanian church with long wooden pews, and the October sunlight pooling in through stained glass. The scent of pine cleaner filled the air, nearly obscuring the scent of humility. This was where people came to wipe out the darkest stains inside themselves.
At this meeting, there were no businessmen in well-cut suits, or women with two-thousand-dollar bags. That was Lincoln Park or Lakeview, not here.
Here was what families left behind, what the nightly news left behind, what the world left behind. Ashley had never liked sitting in these meetings. When Val was outside this place, she was hard and tough and ready to face the world on her own terms. Inside her group’s circle, Val’s eyes lost the hard edge. Here they were filled with fear. Seeing that fear always reminded Ashley of her own weaknesses.
After everyone had gotten up to speak, after the last of the stale coffee was gone, Ashley waited for the room to empty, because this was the perfect place to talk.
“I’m proud of you, Val.” And she was. She knew her sister battled dragons that she would never understand, and she also knew this wasn’t easy.
“Thanks. Thirty days isn’t long.” Nervously Val’s hands slid up and down her jeans, her nails short, bitten to the quick.
Ashley smoothly folded her arms, covering her own polished nails in the process. “Thirty days is a step. A good step. And every day, you take another step.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” her sister said, and the hand-sliding stilled.
“I am, too, but this is it, Val. I won’t do this again.”
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