Before I Let You Go(34)
I feel my face flushing, but I nod silently. I hate this, and I’m completely mortified that it’s happening. I hate that Sam is inconvenienced by Annie, just as I am—just as I always am. She’s my problem, she’s my burden to bear—my responsibility. Sam is still frustrated. I can see it in the way he’s holding himself, and even in the way he’s avoiding my gaze now as he processes what I’ve done. Just as I feel defensiveness rising, he glances at me and his tone is gentler as he says, “We’re going to figure all of this out, okay? Let’s talk some more over the weekend. The baby’s not going to come for weeks. There’s plenty of time to make a plan.”
I nod and take a step backward away from him.
“You should eat your lunch, and I need to get back to her.”
“I’ll come by her room when I’m done.”
“I’ll just meet you at home,” I say. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be here today.”
Sam’s brow furrows. As I register the lingering displeasure in his gaze, guilt sweeps over me and I just can’t face him any longer. I offer him a weak smile but then leave his office quickly to return to Annie.
Less than forty-eight hours have passed since Annie returned to my life, and even my relationship with Sam already feels offkilter.
Knowing I’ll be back at work on Monday, I decide to spend the weekend with Annie. I rise early and wander quietly through the house—packing a box with things that she and I can do to fill the time over the day, and then I stop off at a diner.
“Hey . . .” I greet Annie warmly when I finally step into her room. I have the box under one arm, with the milkshake and coffee I ordered at the diner balanced precariously on top, and in my other hand is a paper bag full of sweet treats for her. Annie has always had such a sweet tooth.
“Oh, hi.” She stabs at the remote control on her lap and the television she’d been watching powers down. “What are you doing here so early?”
“I’ll go back to work on Monday. I thought we could hang out.”
“Don’t you have a real weekend to look forward to? I’m sure that oh-so-together fiancé of yours has some plans I’m getting in the way of. Golf or polo perhaps, or a day at the country club?”
Her barb hits closer to the truth than she realizes. Sam loves to play golf, and we joined a country club together last year.
“All I’m doing this weekend is catching up with you,” I tell her firmly, and I awkwardly angle the box beneath my arm toward her. She removes the milkshake and the coffee and rests them both on the table over her bed. I walk to the corner of the room to dump the box onto the larger table, and as I release it, I immediately pick up the untouched bag of baby clothes I brought the previous morning. My intentions were good, but Annie was simply too upset to look through the clothes with me after the hearing. Maybe today will be a better time.
I return to sit at the end of her bed and watch as Annie’s face brightens when she opens the bakery bag, but then she hesitates.
“Is this stuff okay for me to eat? They said low sodium so . . .”
“It’s definitely not low sugar, but it should all be low sodium,” I assure her, and once again I’m surprised by the care she’s taking. Maybe I shouldn’t be—after all, it’s natural for a mother to want to do the best by her child. Then again, this particular mother has spent the first eight months of her pregnancy injecting illicit narcotics into her veins on a regular basis. And just like that, I’m judging her again. From admiration to condemnation in two simple thoughts. It never really goes away.
“You’re feeling okay?” I ask her, and she shrugs and tears open a cinnamon bun.
“I’m feeling . . . scared,” she murmurs after a while.
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“I never meant to get pregnant. The baby’s father . . . he’s not a great guy. He’s in prison now, but he was my dealer,” she says, and then she clears her throat. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant—not for a long time. I’ve been such a mess, the days and weeks and months meant nothing until I felt it moving. Then I knew, and I’ve felt bad in my life—guilty, I mean—but never like that.”
“How are the cravings, Annie?” I ask her gently, and she laughs bitterly and shakes her head.
“Which answer do you want, Lexie? The one where I tell you what I’m supposed to tell you, or the honest one?”
“The honest one.”
“How many times a minute does my heart beat?”
I glance at the monitor beside her bed, and I say, “At the moment, about eighty-two.”
“In that case, I probably only think about getting high five or ten times every heartbeat.”
“The methadone should be taking the edge off it.”
“Oh, yeah, the methadone,” she snorts, and then takes a long sip of the milkshake. “They’re split-dosing me, so I have it morning and night. I already figured out if I’m going to bust out of here and score, the best time to do it would be in the evening just before the night dose.”
“You wouldn’t feel it anyway, not like you normally do—the methadone is an antagonist, it stops the high,” I tell her, and I feel my face flushing, and I wish I hadn’t asked. I don’t know why I’m so embarrassed by this discussion—perhaps it’s because I wasn’t expecting her to answer me. Annie was never this open with me about her addiction—it was always something she juggled in the shadows. I’ve spent as much time trying to get her to speak openly about it as I have dealing with the fallout of her trying to keep it secret. “And it has a long half-life. Even on a split dose, the methadone would be in your system from the morning dose.”