Until the Day I Die(14)

I toss my backpack behind the seat and slide into the tiny car, glancing over. As usual, Layton looks like she’s just come from the world’s most important conference meeting, impeccable in a navy sheath with a matching blazer and black stilettos, the charm bracelet on her arm jingling.

I feel like a rumpled mess next to her. It doesn’t help that I only slept a few hours last night. After I called Ben, and he came and collected me, Mom, and his truck, he dropped me off at my dorm. I don’t think he wanted me around Mom anymore. Didn’t want me to see her all groggy and weird. I don’t know where they went after that, but honestly, I kind of didn’t care. But then he texted me at six thirty this morning that Layton was picking me up. For the meeting, he’d said. The one I’d asked to be a part of.

As we pull onto 280 West, Layton points to the coffee in the cup holder. I sip it gratefully, and we exchange pleasantries. She’s quiet for a moment after that, then speaks.

“I should tell you—and I’m not trying to scare you—but I think your mom could really benefit from psychiatric help.” She glances at me. “Everybody has moments of crisis. Everybody could use someone to talk to. I see a therapist from time to time. It’s really not that big a deal, I promise. You could see one too, if you wanted. I could get you the name of a doctor who works with young people.”

“Thanks, but no.”

“I apologize, Shorie, I know sometimes I can be blunt.”

“It’s okay.”

She hesitates. “There is something else I wanted to mention. Something I wanted to ask you.”

“Okay.”

“Can you tell me how long the drinking has been a problem?”

“The drinking?” My voice squeaks in disbelief.

“At your going-away party, she had more than a few glasses of champagne.”

I hadn’t really noticed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I mean, maybe. But we were celebrating.”

She nods, but it feels like she’s placating me.

“It’s not a problem,” I add quickly. “It hasn’t been.”

I’m telling the truth—Mom doesn’t drink much around me—but the reality is, I don’t exactly watch her every move. This summer I haven’t been around a lot, at least not at night. I’ve been riding around town with Daisy or barricaded up in my room, playing video games. For all I know, she could have been spending those nights alone, getting smashed.

“Because a lot of people are very smart about hiding their alcohol consumption,” Layton says.

A current of annoyance ripples through me. Who is she to be tossing around opinions? Assuming Mom is hiding some addiction. It’s not like she’s a doctor. And being so . . . matter of fact about it all.

Then she hands over a slick trifold brochure. I unfold it.

“Hidden Sands,” I read. “Innovative. Individualistic. Intuitive.” I stare at the colorful shots of a tropical island resort, then glance over at her. “What is this place?”

“It’s a spa. But also kind of a low-key rehab.”

“Rehab?”

“They call it restoration. Kind of a mellower approach to recovery. Not everybody goes for drugs or alcohol. Some people—people like your mom—just need a space to rest. And to work some things out.”

I sigh.

“You’re going to need to trust us, Shorie,” she says. “We’ve been talking about this for a while.” She pats my knee a few times. The rest of the way, Layton takes work calls while I distractedly scroll through my phone, trying to find something that’ll take my mind off my mom and the impending intervention.

Another error message in today’s server report, identical to the previous one, does just that. I study it for a second, chewing my lip, then see Scotty’s email. The error’s probably nothing more than a glitch with one of our new functions, he’s written, which we’re NOT going to discuss because you have other things to do. Like college. Remember, Shorie, I agreed to “forget” to remove your email from the daily report list, but you need to focus on school or the deal’s off. Got it?

Shit.

As soon as we get to the house, I’ll slip into Dad’s office and have a look at his journals. If there’s some top-secret new Jax feature that he started testing before he died, he definitely would have written about it in one. And if the glitch happens to be more than that, if it turns out to be an actual problem—there’s a chance Dad could’ve noticed it before he died and written about it.

We’re the first ones to arrive at our house. Layton parks down the street so we don’t freak Mom out when she gets home, and I let us in the back door with my key. The house smells so familiar—cool and minty, with just a whiff of Foxy Cat’s litter. I kind of shiver with delight. It feels so right to be back here, but at the same time all wrong. I’m not back home the way I want to be, not really. I should probably be back in my dorm, sleeping off a hangover, like Dele probably is.

Layton, on another call, heads to the kitchen. I slip through the dining room and enter the tiny side porch that my parents remodeled for Dad’s office. Even though Mom’s taken a lot of his files back to the office, she hasn’t cleaned out any of his personal stuff. His brown leather journals are still lined up neatly on the small bookshelf beside his desk. Exactly thirty-nine of them, representing the thirty-nine months he’d helped run Jax.