Before I Let You Go(82)

“Hello?”

“Lex?” Of course it’s Annie, and I squeal with excitement.

“Guess what? Guess who’s here, in my house?”

“She’s out of the hospital?” Annie gasps.

“Oh, yes, she is, Annie.” I grin, and Sam winks at me as he walks into the house. I breathe deeply and say into the phone, “Don’t worry. I’ve got photos of everything.”

I hear Annie sniffle, and my smile fades just a little.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay,” she says, and there’s a weak laugh. “Enough about me. Tell me more about Daisy. Where is she now?”

“She’s sleeping in the cot in the room we set up for her. Don’t worry, there’s a baby monitor right next to her . . .”

It’s an odd conversation, not because of what Annie and I talk about—but what we don’t talk about. For ten entire minutes I fill her in on every single aspect of Daisy’s care arrangements in my home, and it’s only when we go to say goodbye that I ask again, “Why did you call, love? Is everything okay?”

“It was a tough day. But . . . hearing about Daisy has helped. I’m going to go now, okay? Take care of her for me.”

“Of course,” I say. “Always.”





34


ANNIE


Luke,

I know you are pissed off at me (again), and I know that you’re disappointed in me (again?). But I did try to warn you—I don’t do singing or big groups of people, and I sure as hell don’t do happy-clappy ceremonies. What about this is so difficult for you people to understand?

I can’t stand it, okay? I’m not being difficult—you are being difficult. I’m doing what you asked—I’m trying to work with you. But you have to meet me halfway—what possible good will come from forcing me into a stupid group ceremony? Will I come out of it more sober? Will it cure my addiction? Will it bring me closer to getting Daisy back?

Unless the answer to these questions is “yes,” then I’m not going.

Seriously, what are you going to do about it, drag me there?





35


LEXIE


The first time Daisy cries in the middle of the night, I think I’m dreaming. It escalates, but I ignore it for as long as I can, until eventually I shake Sam awake and ask, “Do you hear a baby crying?”

“Lex, it’s Daisy,” he mumbles, and I fly out of bed so fast I stumble over my own feet as I cross the hall. The next morning, I buy a bassinet so she can sleep in our room overnight.

It’s strange gaining a baby so suddenly. There’s an adjustment that needs to happen—and I spend that first weekend trying to figure out what it is because Sam and I don’t quite know what to do with ourselves.

We divide up the backlog of half-done housework—he takes the laundry, I tackle the vacuuming and sweeping—but Daisy starts bellowing as soon as I start the vacuum so I pick her up to soothe her. It then feels like only five minutes later that the whole day has disappeared and Sam is talking about what to have for dinner.

“But what did we do today?” I ask him blankly. “How can it be dinnertime?”

“There were diapers . . . and bottles . . .” Sam looks at me, equally confused.

“I think this is what they call the ‘newborn fog.’”

“I’m sure it’ll pass,” he says, and I laugh.

“Yeah, when she moves out.”

Sam helps a lot over the weekend, but Monday looms, and I’ll have a whole week alone with Daisy. I start to wonder when I should take Daisy to the rehab clinic—Annie hasn’t seen her daughter for six weeks. As I’m thinking about this, it occurs to me that I haven’t heard from Annie since I told her that Daisy was home with me, so I call Luke.

“Rehabilitation is sometimes about ups and downs,” he says, and I groan at the ominous declaration.

“What happened?”

“First, the good news. She’s really taken to that journal you sent up to us, so thanks for that.”

“Excellent . . . and?”

“Well, we started the journaling project with the goal that she’d let me read it, and we’re not quite there yet. Even so—it’s helping her to open up—she’s spoken to me about a few things already that were off-limits during our earlier chats.”

“There’s a but after all of this positive stuff, and the longer you prolong telling me what it is, the worse I’m expecting it to be.”

“I’ve given your sister a lot of leeway since she arrived. We don’t often get patients who are in the immediate post-partum period, and then of course, Annie chose to detox so quickly and that was very hard on her. So, she’s been keeping to herself a lot and I’ve let her as she settled in—but she’s a third of the way through her treatment now, and she’s still not engaging with the other patients and staff. I can’t let that persist—the community-building stuff we do is really very important for recovery. She told me she was going to come to this morning’s group therapy session, then she didn’t show up. So I had a discussion with her about it and she had some issues controlling her emotions around that.”