Before I Let You Go(93)
“I can’t see you. Bernie told me not to—she said to tell you to go straight to the police department. You have to turn yourself in.”
“I don’t know what to do, Lexie. I’m so scared.”
I can hear the terror and confusion in her voice. She’s alone, and she’s frightened, and there is nothing I can do to help her.
“Honey, you have to go to the police,” I whisper, my throat tightening. “I have to take Daisy to her doctor’s appointment now, and I have to hang up the phone. I can’t talk to you—if I’m in contact with you while that arrest warrant is out, I can get in trouble, too.”
“Lexie, this is one last favor—then I promise you I’ll stay out of your hair until I have my shit sorted out. I just need to say goodbye to her.” Her voice breaks, and then she’s pleading, her dignity gone. “I need to h-hold her one last time. I’m begging you, Lexie. Please don’t let me down.”
Annie is distraught and it tears at me, but I’m worn down by the drama and the endless take-take-take of my sister and her addiction. As hard as it is, I know I simply have to hang up on her and I have to do it again, and again—for as long as she keeps calling me, until she’s ready to accept responsibility for her situation and take herself to the police.
“No,” I say quietly, and then I lift the phone away from my ear and move to hang it up.
“Lexie!” she screams my name between sobs. And I choke back tears of my own. I hesitate one last moment, just long enough to hear her choke, “Please, Lexie. Please, I need this so much—”
And then I hang up and I take Daisy for her checkup.
I miss the appointment, and Daisy and I sit in the waiting room for over an hour until her doctor finds another window to squeeze us in. This gives me plenty of time to reflect on the fact that Annie actually contacted me at last, and I hung up on her.
I’ve done exactly what I was supposed to do, so why do I feel so sick about it? I relive the conversation in my mind, and I’m sure that I missed something. Was there some opportunity that I didn’t take, some magic phrase I could have said to convince her to go to the police? Not that I’m convinced that would make her situation any better, but surely the sooner she accepts her fate, the more leniency the judge will give her at sentencing.
I think back again—what else did I say? What else did she say? Were there clues about her location, hints of her state of mind? She was clearly desperate; did I offer her any comfort at all? Then it hits me, and there’s sudden ice in my veins.
Did I tell her I love her? There wasn’t time. I was in a panic, adrenaline was surging through me and I was so conscious of Daisy’s appointment. I said a lot of words to her, but I missed the only ones that really mattered.
I love you, Annie.
Why didn’t I tell her? That no matter what mistakes she makes, she’s still my Annie—my baby sister, and all of my other thoughts and feelings about our present situations are only noise around that fact. I could have said it so easily. I could have said it casually, a rushed love you, Annie before I hung up on her, or I could have cut off some of her ramblings and said it slowly, carefully. I hope you know that I love you, Annie, and I always will.
Instead, I shut her down, and I hung up the phone.
By the time Daisy’s pediatrician calls us in, I’ve worked myself up into knots. When he asks me what happened, I stare at him blankly and he prompts me, “With Daisy, Alexis. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I say, and I shake myself and explain Daisy’s irritability and the fever and my cluelessness. When I’m done, her doctor confirms Sam’s diagnosis.
Daisy simply has her first cold, and we just need to ride it out.
“You’d think that I’d have noticed it a bit quicker,” I mutter, and her doctor laughs at me.
“Playing mom requires a whole other skill set than playing doctor. You’ll figure it out.”
Once we’re back in the car, I sit behind the steering wheel and I make a plan for the afternoon. We’ll go back home, I’ll keep giving Daisy her medication, put a vaporizer on in her room and try to take a nap in the rocking chair beside her cot.
I start the car and drive to the parking lot exit, and then I ignore every single decision I just made and turn toward Annie’s trailer.
Daisy is in the car seat, hooked under my arm as I walk toward the door of the trailer. I’m well aware that the right thing to do is to go home. I should call Bernie, and ask her if I should call the police.
But I’m not going to do either one of those things. Instead, I’m going to let Annie see Daisy, and then I’m going to beg her to willingly go to the police; but even if she refuses, I’ll leave the decision in her hands. Any alternative course of action would be a betrayal of her trust, and a message that I have given up on her.
Perhaps her life is already completely out of control, but I need to show her that I still believe in her. I have to believe she is still capable of doing the right thing, even now, when the right thing is accepting the extent of her mess and turning herself in. For all of the complexities of our relationship and my frustration with her, even for all of the times when I have resented her and despaired for her, I could never give up on Annie. Until my last breath, I’ll be waiting for her to turn things around.
Now, I approach the door of her trailer and my palms are sweaty because this is one of those pivotal moments in our relationship. It’s me reaching out, and I’m doing it because I need to, and maybe because she needs me to, as well. I just want to see Annie, and I want her to see Daisy. I don’t even know if she will be here, but I know that I had to try. I’m out of solutions. I’m out of ideas. My mind keeps flashing back to that night just two months earlier when I made this trip with Sam in the small hours. It’s funny how so much has happened, but nothing has really changed.