Rapid Falls(3)

Fatigue had been weighing heavily on me for weeks, but I smiled at my husband and sister. I couldn’t let the two of them train alone.

“I’ll walk while you two run. You can loop back and pick me up on your way home.”

We decided that we would have a standing breakfast date together too, every Sunday. Several weeks into training, just as I started feeling sick in the mornings, I began to see a glow in my sister’s cheeks that I hadn’t seen since her track meets in high school. She ran every day, though Rick’s schedule required us to go out only five times a week. She kept going even when Rick’s old knee injury and my nausea forced us both to quit. I was relieved when Rick threw in the towel. I had been trying to figure out a way to say it, but the training had been taking a lot of time from our evenings together. Rick and I cheered her on from the sidelines during her first five-mile race. I didn’t say it out loud, but I wondered if Anna would celebrate her victory by drinking.

Instead she kept at it. The next month, Anna signed up for a half marathon and finished it. Then she committed to a marathon and finished that too. We invited her for a backyard barbecue to congratulate her. As she settled at the patio table on the back deck, she beamed. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so happy.

“Running has changed my life, you guys.”

I was huge by that point and couldn’t help casting a look over her lean body. I was glad that Rick didn’t seem to be paying attention. He seemed focused on the sizzling meat on the grill.

“That’s great,” I said.

“When I’m running, I don’t want to drink.”

I smiled, slightly surprised, and clinked her glass of cranberry and soda water against mine. It seemed like a good sign that Anna was finally acknowledging her dependence on alcohol. She was thirty-two. She still had time to turn things around.

“I knew it!” Rick crowed as he flipped the steak. He had been listening after all. “Endorphins beat booze every day of the week.”

I laughed.

“It’s kind of true, though,” Anna said. “Thank you, Rick. I really don’t think I could have done this without you.”

I felt something surge through me as my husband grinned at my sister, but I smiled too.

“We almost ready to eat?” I stepped between Rick and Anna to take a look at the grill. Rick turned to me with a proud expression on his face. I could see the triumph that came from rescuing Anna, and I knew how powerful the feeling could be. I hoped he was right, but I felt a little sick. I wasn’t sure that anything could save Anna from herself.

In the weeks that followed, she seemed determined to prove me wrong. We went crib shopping together. She bought books with women and moons on the covers to prepare for my baby’s birth. I didn’t have a lot of close friends, and Anna was sober and ready to help us for the first time in our entire adult lives. I almost felt like I could count on her. Then, days before my due date, Anna mentioned casually during Sunday brunch that she’d had a beer the night before, after she finished her shift at the bar. I pushed back my empty plate as she spoke, feeling Rick’s body stiffen beside me.

“Just one. A lot of guys who work there are former alcoholics, but they drink once in a while. They totally keep it together. I think I can too.” Anna rolled her shoulders. “It’s been hard to sleep lately. The beer really helped.”

“Seriously, Anna?” The edge in Rick’s voice made a woman at the next table turn in our direction. I signaled for the bill and sighed. I didn’t want to see Rick’s face when he realized that he couldn’t help my sister. No one could.

I turned to Anna, trying to stop Rick from speaking. I knew he was angry, but I was too tired for a scene. “That’s a big step for you.”

“Do you honestly think you can drink again?” Rick’s voice was even louder than it had been.

“Yes. I really think I can.” Anna was calm, as if she believed what she was saying. As if she couldn’t tell how angry Rick was.

“Be careful, Anna.” I touched Rick’s arm. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

“Cara!” Rick’s jaw was tight, but I patted my rounded abdomen pointedly.

“Please, Rick. Let’s talk about this another time.”

He breathed in sharply, then rose to pay the bill without saying goodbye. I kissed Anna on the cheek.

“Take care, Anna.”

“You too! Call me if you feel anything. At this point, any sign could be the real thing!” she said.

I smiled. This was my moment, and I wouldn’t let her ruin it. “I will.”

As we stepped outside into the sunshine, Rick spoke. “She’s making a mistake, you know.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely. It’s a joke. Why does she want to go back to the way she was living? She was a mess.”

“I don’t know, Rick. Maybe she can have a drink without losing it all again.”

Or maybe she needed to drink to stop herself from remembering all the awful things she had done.

“It’s a terrible decision, Cara. She’s making the wrong choice.”

I heard the betrayal in his voice. Rick hated people with no self-control, and he hated being deceived. It was something we had in common. As it turned out, Rick’s prediction about Anna had been correct, disastrously so. Anna’s first drink led her right back to where she had started and then dragged her down deeper than I ever thought she would go. A week after her announcement at the diner, Anna showed up at the hospital while I was in labor, so drunk that she tripped and fell onto my bed and nearly pulled out my IV. Security escorted her out. One of the happiest moments of my life was shadowed by shame. When my newborn daughter was placed in my arms, I promised her that she would never feel like trash.