Before I Let You Go(88)

When I hang up, I walk around the house in some kind of shocked daze, carrying my half-dressed niece beneath her blanket. I stare out the window, over the guesthouse and the backyard. I straighten the cushions on the sofa and I turn the television on and off several times before I realize that I’m caught in a loop.

Annie has left the rehab clinic. Annie is going to be arrested.

At this thought, I finally shake myself out of my daze and call Bernie. After I explain the situation, her take on things is grim.

“They’ll issue a warrant for her arrest. Like I told you in the hospital, if she’d gone through with the mandated treatment she might have been able to avoid the chemical endangerment charge—but there’s no chance of that now. If and when she surfaces—they’ll probably take her straight into custody and I doubt she’d get bail.”

“Surely there’s something we can do. Surely.” I guess I’m up to the bargaining step of the grief process, because I’m already talking money. “I don’t care what it costs. Are there other lawyers we could bring in? Specialists, maybe.” At Bernie’s silence, I up the volume on my plea. “Bernie, there has to be something we can do.”

“We’ve done what we can do Alexis, I’m so sorry.” Bernie sighs gently. “Annie had a second chance, and when she walked out of that rehab clinic, she blew it.”

She blew it. I’m sick again as I let myself consider what this means. There are no loopholes, no more second chances to make good. Annie is at the end of the road, and the next step in her journey is inevitably jail.

I’m still holding Daisy, but she starts to cry, and I realize I’m crushing her against my chest. I force my locked muscles to soften around her, and stare down at her perfect little face. What does this mean for Daisy? Nothing, in a practical sense today—I’ll still finish dressing her eventually, give her the bottle when she cries for it, change her diapers.

But this means everything for this little girl longer term. Her entire world has just been rocked, and she doesn’t even know it yet.

“Lexie, I have court soon, so I have to go. Is there anything else I can do for you at this point?” Bernie says very carefully.

“What do I tell her? If she contacts me?”

“If she contacts you, tell her to turn herself in immediately. And the second you hang up the phone, call me. There’s probably not a lot we can do, but if she does it quickly, we can say that it was a wild impulse and she’s very regretful and desperate to try again.”

Now I’m on autopilot—pretending I’m functioning because I can’t yet think through all of the implications of this development. When I try to cast myself forward, to make a plan for how I’ll deal with all of the ways this can play out, my mind just . . . stops. It’s too much. It’s too final. So I don’t think, and I don’t plan—instead, I tend to Daisy and I put a roast on for dinner for Sam and I don’t even call him to tell him what’s happened because I’m not yet ready to hear his sympathy or face his questions about what next?

This means that when he walks in the door at 6:00 p.m., Sam is smiling and he’s chatting about his day. I nod and sometimes I smile but now I’ve avoided it for so long and I don’t know how to tell him. It’s only when we sit down to dinner that he says, “Honey, you look so pale. Are you okay?”

I tilt my head at him, and I feel like I’m trying to reach him through a pea-soup-thick fog of shock. How do I say the words?

“Lex?” Sam is on his feet, and he approaches me and crouches beside me. His gaze searches mine. “Did something happen?”

“Annie,” I say, and I turn to him and I say through numb lips, “Annie left.”

And the walls all crash down around me, and if I really ever was a “fixer” and a “coper,” then maybe I’m not anything at all now, because things are broken so badly that I can’t do a single thing to sort out this mess.





38


ANNIE


This entry is not for Luke. I don’t even know who I’m writing to anymore. I’m just writing out of habit now.

I left the rehab clinic. I’m sitting under a bus stop halfway back to Montgomery. I hitchhiked here, but the truck driver had to turn off. I was going to flag down another car, but then I thought that maybe I should go back and now I just don’t know what to do so I’m sitting here, and I’m lost in the truest sense of the word.

I know that all I had to do was tell Luke that the thought of sitting in the big group therapy sessions made me so anxious that I couldn’t sleep at night. Those words would be liberating, like so many of the others that I’ve never managed to say. Luke would have given me that kindly, patronizing look and proposed some overtly simple solution. Medication, perhaps, or maybe just some compromise where we could talk about my anxiety before he forced me to go.

But instead, I did what I always do. I was ashamed of my failure, and the shame spawned the monster, and I let it loose. Now I’m in the deepest hole of my life.

I’m going to jail. I keep saying those words to myself, trying to wrap my mind around what it means. I gather all of the facts I know about prison and try to piece together a picture of what my future looks like. I’m not actually scared of losing my freedom. I mean . . . maybe I would be, if my life wasn’t already such a disaster zone. No, I’m only scared of the distance from Daisy, and the permanence of a conviction. One day my sentence will end, but I’ll be a felon. For all of the mess of my existence until now, I’ve managed to avoid labels that would hinder me from rebuilding a life worth keeping. How will I get a house for Daisy? How will I get a job? Those problems are far in my future, I know, but they loom large in my mind now because a conviction is almost like the final straw for me. Things are already awful, but once I’m convicted, the hope is fading that things would someday, somehow be better.