Best Kept Secret: A Novel

Some say there is a prescription written for a person in childhood determining whether or not they’ll develop a drinking problem. A family history of others who drink, a violent home environment, an angry father, or sexual abuse. One of these circumstances in your childhood? A good chance you’ll look to a substance as a way to numb it all out. Two circumstances or more? Pretty much guaranteed. I mean, really, who could blame you?

Serena, a woman in my treatment group, was raped by two of her cousins when she was nine. Her parents didn’t believe her when she told them; in fact, they beat her for lying. Those cousins raped her over and over again until her thirteenth birthday, when she shot one of them with her father’s gun. He lived and the police ended up ruling the shooting an accident. She snuck a bottle of rum from her parents’ liquor cabinet and got drunk that night. She pretty much stayed that way for thirty years until she landed in treatment on a court-ordered deferral after her fourth DUI. Now here’s a woman who has a reason to drink. Here’s a woman who people feel sympathy for. She was abused, of course she needed to find a way to cope. I’m disgusted with myself, really, how my story lacks the frightening qualifications that the other women in my group seem to share.

Looking back, I can’t find a reason for me to be in this nightmare. It doesn’t make any sense. This is not who I am. I made a mistake. I overdid it just like I overdo everything else in my life. I’m not an alcoholic. Alcoholics live under bridges and swig from bottles tucked in brown paper bags. They beg for change on street corners and make offers to wash windshields while you’re stopped at a traffic light. That’s not me. That’s not my life. I graduated from college. I own a home. I shower on a regular basis. I still have all my teeth. I had a problem with drinking for a little while there, but it was just the wrong way to deal with the stress of being on my own with a toddler. I’ll do my time in the treatment program, get my attendance slip signed at AA like I’m required to, and get the hell out. I’ll tell Andi what she needs to hear to stand up in family court and assure the judge I’m cured. And then, I’ll get Charlie back and get on with my life.

So here I am, this sunny Saturday morning, practicing doing just that. After picking Charlie up from Alice, I take him to get his hair cut. I choose one of those generic, “we take walk-ins” kind of joints. There is an uneasiness in me while I do this simple errand with my son, a too-bright feeling. I hate it. It causes me to make silly, idle motherly chatter with this hairdresser. She is a melancholy young woman with a pierced upper lip and a pink frosted, blond crew cut. She has more black tribal tattoos than plain, pale visible skin. I wonder if covering her body like this is her own strange way of trying to disappear. The bass-driven music in the salon is nightmarishly loud, but I don’t have the courage to ask her to turn it down. I somehow feel like I don’t have the right.

“Charlie just loves getting his hair cut, don’t you, Charlie?” I say. I hate the high, false pitch of my voice. I’m anxious to appear like his mother again. “He fell asleep in the chair the first time the stylist used the buzz cutters on him. He loved it. Totally relaxed him. It was like he was getting a massage.”

The punk girl nods, visibly unimpressed. “Huh. Weird. You want it a two or a three cut?”

I experience a brief moment of panic, not able to remember what length on the clippers I used to have my hairdresser use on my son. Shit. Mothers are supposed to know this kind of thing, like their son’s Social Security number or the exact time and date of his first successful stand-up pee. Unable to come up with it, I fake it.

“A three should work. We can always go shorter if we need to.” I say “we” like I’m somehow one and the same as my son. I suppose in some senses I am. I suppose this is why it’s excruciating to be forced to stay away from him.

It takes exactly twenty-two minutes to finish getting Charlie’s hair cut. It is 9:53 on a Saturday morning. Twenty-six hours to go, alone with my child. It looms frighteningly in front of me. I am alternately thrilled and terrified to have such a long stretch of time alone with him. Will I remember what to do? What I used to do was drink. Merlot, in a moss green coffee mug, the moment I staggered out of bed.

There is a wild, fluttery panic in my chest. I am not ready to take Charlie home. There’s no booze there, but there could be. It’s as easy as stopping at the corner grocery and picking up a bottle. “Drive a different way home,” Andi told all of us the first day of our group. “Grocery shop with a friend or shop online and have it delivered to your house. The only thing you’re going to have to change is everything.”

Her words alone exhausted me. Really? I have to what? You’ve got to be joking.

I don’t want to drink. I abhor the idea. The thought of even a sip of alcohol makes the gorge rise in my throat. But I have been at this point before—physically appalled by the thought of taking a drink, and then, something will happen. Or not happen. And suddenly there I’d be, in the line at the store, bottles of wine in my grasp. I’m smarter than this, I’d think, and then, gradually, the thoughts would lessen as the alcohol took effect, until they disappeared altogether. Which was the point, I suppose. I’ve got too much at stake here. Martin’s trying to take my son. I need to get my shit together.

We get into the car, Charlie successfully buckled in again. Now what? My pulse races, thumping in my throat. I put my hands on the steering wheel and glance in the rearview mirror.

“Hey, champ. What do you feel like doing?” I used a cheery tone in the hopes of concealing my hesitance.

He shrugs. “I don’t know.” He picks his nose.

“Digging for gold there?”

“No!” His voice is snuffled—his finger remains in his nose as he speaks. He laughs, a rolling, belly giggle that warms me, slows my pulse a bit. “Boogers.”

My turn to laugh. “Lovely. Any luck?”

“Yep.” He holds up his finger triumphantly, showing me his find.

“Uh, that’s gross.” I twist around in my seat, snag a tissue from the box I keep in the console. I cry all of the time, even driving down the road. It hits me at the strangest moments, for no reason. For years, I have cried only alone, only in the dark. Much like I chose to drink. I realize there’s likely an interesting connection here, but I’m not sure I want to explore it. Andi would. Andi would have a field day with this particular nugget of insight.

I hold out the tissue to my son. “Here, gimme that, you booger monster.”

He giggles again. “I’m not a booger monster.” He pushes his finger into the tissue; I wipe it clean and shove the tissue into my purse.

“You’re not? Are you sure?”

“Yep.” He’s silent for a minute, seemingly thoughtful. He’s five, Cadee, I say to myself. What does he have to be thoughtful about? The political climate of Sesame Street?

“Whatcha thinkin’?” I ask, hoping I sound lighthearted.

“Are you going to drink any more wine, again ever, Mama?”

Wham. There it is—the guilt, landing like a cannonball in my gut. I swallow twice before I’m able to respond, my voice hoarse. “No, baby, I’m not. Mama’s all done drinking wine.”

“Good!” is all he says, then kicks the back of my seat again.

I’ve asked myself a million times in the past two months if he could remember. I’ve wondered if he was aware, if he really knows what kind of person his mother is. Does he remember those last three days? Does he understand why his father came to take him away? His question is my answer.

“Did your daddy give you the cards I sent this week?” I’m anxious to say something to stem the tide of shame still pushing to overwhelm me. Since entering treatment, I’ve been mailing a note to my son at his father’s house a couple of times a week. Though Charlie will jabber my ear off in person, he’s not much of a telephone conversationalist. He listens silently as I chatter on about nothing and I hang up feeling worse than before I’d called. Self-loathing pounds through my blood after I set down the phone. What have I done to him? I worry that he doesn’t talk because he’s angry with me. He doesn’t talk because I’ve damaged our relationship beyond repair. He doesn’t talk because he hates me.

When I shared these thoughts with Andi, she assured me this was not the case and suggested I start sending the notes just to tell him how much I love him and to make sure he doesn’t believe his mother has simply disappeared.

“Yep, I got them!” Charlie says. “Daddy reads them to me and then I get to keep them in my room. He gave me a book and I get to use real grown-up tape to stick them in. It’s blue. With stars on it.” Something softens inside me toward Martin when I hear this. At least he’s not trying to erase me completely from my son’s life. I wonder if I should send a note directly to Martin, as well. Please, it would say. Please let me have my son back.

Charlie claps his hands together once, excited. “I know what we can do! Let’s go see Aunt Jess! I want to see Marley and Jake!”

I twist back around to face the steering wheel, turn the key in the ignition. I don’t look in the rearview mirror; I can’t look at him. I refuse to look at myself. The engine roars to life and I pick up my cell phone to call my sister and let her know we are on our way. “That’s a great idea, sweet boy. Aunt Jess is exactly what we need.”

From the day Jessica was born, our mother told us it was evident we would be close. I was barely a year older than my sister, so when Jess was no longer an infant and it was safe for us to sleep in the same crib, our mother said we curled up to each other like a pair of tiny, pink cooked shrimp. Even after we officially reached “big girl status,” and graduated to separate sleeping arrangements, Jess and I continued to sneak into one or the other’s bed until puberty rolled around and we learned there were certain activities better performed in private. We are reduced to hysterics still, every time we talk about this particular discovery, the summer night before I turned thirteen when she rolled toward me, twisted her head over her shoulder, and said, “What are you doing? Do you have a bug bite down there or something?” Obviously, I had thought she was already asleep.

Throughout our adolescence, whether we were in trouble with our mother or didn’t get asked to the dance by the boy we liked, one of us crept into the other’s bed when the house went dark. We whispered condolences, eventually giggling the disappointment away. Not that Jess missed out on too many dances; when we got to high school, she suddenly became the golden child, the adored popular girl. She was also genuinely nice, which made it impossible for me to really hate her, at least not consistently. Even when we fought, we loved each other fiercely. We still do. For a long time, we were all the other had.

I was in sixth grade when our mother decided she could no longer afford to pay someone to stay with Jess and me after school. Busy with work during the day and her dentistry classes three nights a week, there were times we saw our babysitters more than we saw our mother.

“You’re mature for your age,” she said to me as she sat on the edge of my bed to tuck me in. “You can watch out for your sister.” As with most of my mother’s statements, this was an edict, not an inquiry.

“But what if there’s a robber?” I asked.

“There won’t be, but Mrs. Stevens will be next door if you need her and you can always dial nine-one-one, right?” She hugged me. “You’ll be fine.”

Mrs. Stevens was in her seventies and I doubted she’d be of much assistance when it came to fending off a robber, but my mother was right. Over the next few years of spending most of our afternoons and evenings alone, Jess and I were fine. We called and checked in with our mom as soon as we were home safely, but after that, we were accountable to no one. We wasted hours watching reruns of Three’s Company and The Love Boat, though we always made sure we were finished with our homework before our mother walked through the front door. We couldn’t invite anyone over when she wasn’t there, so my sister and I didn’t have a lot of time to develop other friendships. A lot of the time we were bored.

“Maybe we should try to find our dad,” I said to Jess the summer before I started high school. I was almost fourteen and a little bitter about not being able to participate in debate club because my mother didn’t have time to transport me to and from events. The activity bus was reserved for the jocks, so academic students’ parents were expected to drive.

Jess screwed up her face, looking at me as though I were nuts. “Why would we want to do that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wonder how he’d feel if he knew she left us alone all of the time.”

“He left us completely,” Jess said. “What makes you think he’d care?”

Some part of me knew she was right, but I couldn’t get away from the idea of tracking him down. I just wanted to talk with him. I wanted to understand why he went away. Was I so horrible a baby that once he found out Jess was on the way, he couldn’t fathom another one like me? He was the only one who could answer my questions; my mother didn’t like to talk about him.

One afternoon while Jess was napping, I snuck into our mother’s room to look for any information I could find about the man who had fathered us. My mother’s room was strictly off-limits when she wasn’t home, so stepping inside was as thrilling as it was terrifying. I half expected flashing lights and a siren to sound when I passed over the threshold, but there was only the sun slicing through the Venetian blinds, casting thin shards of light onto her plush beige carpet. The walls were painted a dark red—conducive, she said, to good luck and restful sleep. Her dresser was tall and black with six wide drawers I was certain would contain some hint of my father’s existence.

I opened the bottom drawer where I knew my mother kept our birth certificates and report cards. Digging through a file marked “private,” it didn’t take long to find a yellowed scrap of paper with his name and a phone number. Why she had kept it, I wasn’t sure. Maybe she planned to wait until we were older to help us find him. I didn’t have that kind of patience.

“Jacob Miller,” I breathed, rubbing the piece of paper between my fingers. “Dad.”

I quickly copied the information into the notebook I’d brought with me and slipped the scrap back where it belonged. A glance at the clock told me I had two hours until my mom was due home—plenty of time to make the call.

I walked over to the side of my mom’s bed where the phone was. I sat down, careful not to disturb the perfect edges of her poppy red, silk-brocade comforter. I felt my heartbeat pounding in my head, so I took a few deep breaths to try to calm down before picking up the receiver and dialing. He might not be home, I told myself. He might not even be at this number.

I punched in the number slowly, holding each button down a tad longer than was necessary. It rang three times before a man picked up. “Hello?” he said. His voice was soft, quieter than I had imagined it would be.

I couldn’t speak. I swallowed once, then twice, trying to moisten the insides of my mouth.

“Hello?” he said again.

“Is this Jacob Miller?” I finally managed to creak. I cleared my throat.

“Yes, who’s this?”

“I . . . um, it’s Cadence. I live in Seattle. With Sharon Mitchell?”

He didn’t answer for a minute, and I didn’t know what else to say. I opened the single drawer on my mother’s nightstand, then slammed it shut. Her lamp wobbled.

“Can I help you with something?” he finally asked. His tone was guarded.

“No, no,” I said. “I just thought . . . well, you know. That I might get to know you a little.”

He exhaled softly. “Oh, Cadence. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Oh,” I said, probably a little too loudly. “Okay.”

“I’m just not set up for this kind of thing. You understand.”

What kind of “thing” was talking to your daughter? I wanted to ask. But instead, I coughed and said, “Sure. I understand.”

“Take care,” he said, and I heard the dial tone in my ear before I could say good-bye.

I stared at the receiver before setting it back in its cradle. My father wasn’t interested in knowing me. The muscles in my throat thickened, and tears pricked the back of my eyes. I smoothed my mother’s comforter and went back to the bedroom I shared with Jessica, tossing my notebook to the floor. She was awake then, and sitting on the edge of her bed. Her usually smooth, straight brown hair was mussed from sleep. “Are you okay?” she asked.

I threw myself onto my bed, facedown in my pillow, and didn’t answer. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d done. The ache I felt was like a boulder on my chest. Before the call I at least had the fantasy of my father. I could imagine him showing up unexpectedly, unable to stay away from me a moment longer. Now there was no doubt—I knew exactly what kind of man he was.

“Fine then, don’t talk to me,” Jess said, then went downstairs to watch TV. A while later, the bedroom door opened and my mother flipped on the light.

“What’s going on?” my mother asked. “Jess says you’re sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” I said to the wall. “I’m just tired.”

“She said you called your father today.”

“What?” I flipped over and looked at her. She was still in the light blue scrubs she wore to work and her long brown hair was as smooth as when she left the house that morning.

My mother nodded. “She said she listened at the door while you called him from my room.”

“She’s so nosy!” I said, spitting out the words. “She needs to learn to mind her own business.”

“Come on, now. Don’t be mad at her. I would have seen it on the phone bill anyway.”

I started to cry. “He didn’t want to talk to me.”

She came over and sat next to me on the bed. “And this surprises you? I’ve told you a hundred times he wasn’t cut out to be a father. Outside of giving me you two girls, he was the worst decision I ever made.” She pushed the hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ears.

“I just thought . . .” I blubbered. “I thought if he heard my voice . . .” I trailed off, unable to go on through my tears.

“You thought if he heard your voice he’d suddenly want to get to know you? An orchestra would swell in the background and he’d miraculously realize what he’s missing?”

I nodded, sobbing and wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

My mother sighed. “That’s not the way life works, Cadence. People are going to let you down. I’m sorry you’re hurt, but it’s an important lesson to learn. You’ll get over it. I did.” She patted my leg. “Now, why don’t you come downstairs and have dinner with us? I brought home Chinese.”

That was the end of the discussion. She didn’t want to know what he had said, or how it had made me feel. I heard countless versions of this same lecture from my mother over the years. Buck up, Cadence. Push forward. Don’t let anyone see you upset.

“If you’re unhappy,” my mother told me if I bemoaned the circumstances of my life, “it’s up to you to do something to change it. The only thing complaining will get you is an invitation to leave the room.”

“But Mom . . .” I’d begin. All I wanted was a little sympathy. I wanted the kind of mother who at least once in a while would pull me into her soft embrace, feed me homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and assure me everything would be okay. I didn’t think that was too much to ask.

What I had was the kind of mother who worked sixty hours a week and held up her hand to cut me off midwhine. “Uh-uh-uh,” she said. “No buts about it. If you want to succeed, you need to figure out what needs to change and change it. I’m happy to listen to whatever solutions you come up with.”

“Everything’s so easy for Jess,” I told her at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school. It was a Saturday and my mother and I were sitting together in our living room. “It’s not fair. She’s only a freshman and she’s already a cheerleader. Everyone just automatically likes her.”

“That’s because she makes an effort,” my mother said, looking up from the magazine in her lap. “She reaches out to people. It’s not her fault you have trouble making friends.”

“I didn’t say it was her fault.”

She cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, and gave me a pointed stare. “Please watch your tone with me, young lady. And jealousy doesn’t become you.”

“I’m not jealous.” I sighed, crossed my arms over my chest, and flopped back against the couch. That wasn’t true, and my mother knew it. Just the week before, I’d been grounded for mixing a dollop of Bengay into my sister’s moisturizer, wanting her to think she had some strange muscular disease that caused her pretty face to go numb.

“You can’t just sit back and wait for things to happen for you, Cadence,” my mother said. “You have to make them happen.”

I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t feel like I fit in with the other kids in my class; how every conversation I tried to start felt stilted and forced. It was as though everyone else had been given a handbook on how to be cool except for me.

“I don’t know what else I can do,” I said. “I’m not into sports and I’m too fat to be a cheerleader.”

“You are not fat. You’re voluptuous, like my mother.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then lifted a single finger into the air. “I know. You should join the school paper. You like to write. It would look great on your college applications, too.”

I did join the paper, and while at first it was only to get my mother off my back about taking charge of my life, I soon found I was good at writing profile pieces on the new biology teacher or articles exposing the astronomical calorie content in our cafeteria’s lunch menu. Becoming the editor of my high school paper didn’t help me win any popularity contests, but it did give me a reason to talk with people who used to ignore me. After a while, given an appropriate subject, I learned how to fake conversation despite any insecurity I felt. My mother was right about college, too—along with my 4.0 grade point average, my work on the paper won me a full-ride journalism scholarship to the University of Washington. And once I was there, I did what I always strove to do—I tried to make my mother proud.

*   *   *

Charlie is unbuckled and racing toward my sister’s front door before I manage to turn off the engine. He looks back at me and waves before disappearing through the entryway. I love how he pushes the door open, knowing he is welcome, knowing he is safe.

I step out of my car, and Jess pokes her dark head out of the kitchen window on the side of her house. She and her husband, Derek, chose this broken-down Craftsman-style home in the north Seattle Wallingford neighborhood for its early twentieth-century charm, figuring they could fix it up and flip it for a quick and painless profit. Two months into living there during renovations, Jess found out she was pregnant with the twins and fell permanently in love with the slightly sloping original hardwoods, the coved ceilings, and built-in, beveled-glass cabinets. Derek, her partner not only in life but in their successful real-estate brokerage firm, soon gave in to her desire to stay. Not that he had much of a choice in the matter. Saying no to Jess was like saying no to breathing. You really didn’t have the option.

“Hey!” she hollers. She may be a tiny thing, but the girl has got a set of lungs on her. They served her well in her cheerleading days.

“Hey,” I say, and wave back at her. “The munchkin has already invaded.”

“I know. He’s hugging my legs as we speak.”

I smile. Such an affectionate boy, my Charlie. Possibly having something to do with the amount of hugs and kisses I smothered him with from the moment he was born.

“Get your butt in here,” Jess commands. “Natalie is playing with the twins downstairs.” She pulls back inside. I smile again, thinking how lucky Jess is to have Natalie, a thirteen-year-old neighbor girl who is thrilled to be paid a mere six dollars an hour for her babysitting services.

Within minutes, Jess and I are sitting at her kitchen table. Two steaming mugs of coffee, creamy with half-and-half, sit before us. My sister is what I would look like if I lost fifty pounds and shrunk three inches: the dream of willowy and petite versus the reality of short and substantial. She is one of those sleek, Gap-ad-type mothers who appear to have a personal makeup artist dwelling in their bathrooms, who arrive at their children’s preschool in hip, chunky black boots and immaculate flat-front khakis, looking like they’ve just been to the spa for a massage. She is the kind of mother who always baffled me. The kind of mother I always wanted to be.

Natalie and all three boys are in the basement-turned-recreation-room, a space built specifically with well-padded surfaces and filled with countless toys. Charlie loves being the big boy, teaching, leading, and telling his younger cousins what to do. He’ll be busy for an hour, at least, especially with Natalie there to help sort out any conflict. Part of me wants to not let him leave me. I want to snatch him up, hold him in my lap, squeeze him, smell him, and kiss his soft cheeks. The other part is happy for this momentary reprieve; my encounter with Alice has drained me. Wrapping both my hands around the warmth of my coffee mug, I exhale deeply, lift my chin toward the ceiling, and close my eyes.

“That bad?” my sister inquires.

“Yes.” I hold my position. Avoiding eye contact with her is the best way to keep her from seeing what is going on with me.

“How’d it go with Alice?” She will not let it be.

I shrug, lower my chin, and open my eyes, only to see her take an enormous bite of the lemon-cream cheese Danish she set out with the coffee. She says something else, but it comes out muffled—along with a few crumbs of pastry—as she tries to chew.

“Nice manners. Mom would be proud.”

Her mouth still full, she widens her blue eyes, purses her lips, then flips me off.

“Ooo, nice manicure, too!”

Jess finishes chewing, takes a sip of her coffee, and admires her nails. “Thanks. I just got them done last night.” She holds up the Danish. “You should have one of these.”

I eye one—the biggest, of course—thick and gooey with bright yellow and creamy white sweetness. I sigh. “No, I shouldn’t. My ass is spreading like butter just looking at them.”

She pushes the plate toward me. “You had to give up booze, for Christ’s sake. Have a damn Danish.”

She has a point. I grab the one I want and take a small bite, letting it melt on my tongue. I fully intend to eat only half of it. Two minutes later, I’ve devoured the entire thing. “Mmm. God, I hate you,” I say.

Jess pulls her chin into her neck, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised. “What did I do?”

“You won the genetic lottery. You never exercise, eat like a horse, and don’t gain an ounce. You suck.”

“Whatever. You have multiple orgasms.”

I snort. My stories of four, five, even eight orgasms one night with Martin—back before we went all to hell—drove her mad with envy. It’s the one area I can one-up my sister and though I know I shouldn’t, I revel in it.

“Okay,” I consent, “I suppose that makes us even. Sort of.” I sip my coffee. “Where’s Derek?”

“Showing property. He’s trying to get some horrible couple to buy a condo downtown. He bet me ten bucks he could have them writing an offer by the end of the day.”

“Huh.” I don’t pretend to understand the real-estate industry, though I do attempt sympathetic and interested noises when my sister begins to talk about her job. Since the boys were born almost three years ago, Derek carries the weight of the upfront selling and Jess works behind the scenes to run the business from home. She picks up clients where she can to help make ends meet, especially since the market took a nosedive. Luckily, their brokerage was strong enough to weather the economic downturn, but even so, most months they’ve been forced to dip into the savings they’d each built up during the late 1990s housing boom. According to Jess, those funds are quickly depleting, so each sale they make today takes on greater significance for their financial survival.

“How’s work going for you?” Jess asks.

I shrug. “Okay, I guess. I’m having a hard time getting back into it.” For too many months, pulling the words from my brain to write has felt like trying to squeeze fluid from stone. It made sense when I was actively drinking, I suppose, since my thoughts were muddied by alcohol, but Andi says this is normal even now; for up to two years my brain cells will be in the process of rebuilding. Post-acute withdrawal symptoms, she calls it. Memory loss and the lack of ability to focus are only the tip of the dysfunctional iceberg. I already went through Baby Brain; apparently, Booze Brain is a similar experience.

“I did get a call from Peter the other day,” I say. “My old editor at the Herald?”

“Oh, right,” Jess says, taking another sip of her coffee. “What did he want?”

“I guess he was in Chicago a few weeks ago and ended up meeting an editor from O.”

She looks confused.

“Oprah’s magazine?” I say.

“Oh, right, right.”

“He said he thought our personalities would click. She’s expecting me to get in contact and pitch her a few ideas.”

“That’s amazing, ” Jess says, then crinkles up her forehead and lifts a single, perfectly plucked eyebrow when I don’t look as enthused. “Isn’t it?”

“It would be if I had any ideas. I’m not even sure I should be freelancing right now. I sort of let things slide over the past year.” More like I let them disappear. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sold an article. “I’m starting to think I might need to find a new career. One that actually pays my bills.”

“Are you okay? Do you need to borrow a little bit to get you through? If Derek makes this sale today—”

“That’s very sweet of you,” I say, cutting her off, “but I can manage. I still have some of the divorce settlement left. But it won’t last much longer.” I figure if I really cut corners, I can survive about six more months on what’s left in my account. After that, I may have to practice inquiring whether customers would like to supersize their meals.

“You’ll figure it out,” my sister says. “You could always sell the house, right? Maybe move into something more affordable?”

“I suppose so, but I’d hate to move Charlie.” The divorce left me with two main assets: the house and my cashed-out half of Martin’s 401(k) account, the latter of which I’ve been using to pay my bills. With the account already so diminished, I didn’t want to lose the house. Not yet.

“Well, at least you know a good agent if you need one,” she says with a grin.

“Really? Who?” I tease.

“Funny,” she says, rolling her eyes, then pauses for a moment to sip her coffee. “So, do any of the editors you usually work with know about your problem?”

“No.” I realize I’m gripping my mug tightly enough to make my fingers ache. I relax them. “I was pretty good at keeping it under wraps.”

She shifts her shoulders almost imperceptibly. It’s suddenly her turn to not make eye contact.

“What?” I push. “I know that look.”

“What look?” She moves her gaze to meet mine.

“That one.” I put a finger in her face. “You’re trying not to say something. Give it up.”

“This coming from Little Miss Not Forthcoming.” She bats my finger away and points hers back at me. “You’re not quite as sneaky as you think you are.”

I sit back in my chair. “What does that mean?”

“It means, Cadee,” she sighs, “that it’s not like people didn’t suspect what was going on with you.”

There is no condescension in her tone, only a factual edge, and it cuts deep. A panicky feeling grips my belly, the kind where it seems that the jig is up on something you thought you had gotten away with free and clear, and suddenly, there you stand, caught, your emotional pants down around your ankles.

She leans forward and takes one of my hands in hers. “We knew. We might not have said anything, but we did know.”

I pull my hand back, tuck my fingers in between my thighs, and squeeze them. Tears threaten to roll and I hate them. She hasn’t said this to me before now, not once in the last eight weeks.

Jess sighs, pushes back into her chair. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I keep my tone neutral. Hysteria claws at the edges, just below the surface of my words. Only I can feel this. I will not show it to her. I will not show it to anyone.

“For bringing it up, I guess.”

“It’s okay.” It’s not okay. It is very, very far from okay.

“Yeah, you sound like you mean that.” We are silent for a moment. And then she continues. “I should have said something. I should have tried to help.”

“I wouldn’t have let you.” I swallow hard and clear my throat. “I didn’t know anything was wrong.” This is not entirely true. A person can’t drink the way I did and not suspect she might be completely screwed in the head. Crazy, even. Like the grandmother I didn’t want to tell Martin about on our first date.

Jess takes a deep breath, registers the expression on my face, then asks, “Should we talk about something else?”

“Yes, please,” I say with a faltering smile.

And just like that, we do. We talk about the twins, her latest deal, the lack of intelligence she perceives in the Mommy and Me pool. We talk about our mother, who has a new boyfriend with a funny-looking mustache. The sense of normalcy around our conversation calms me, distracts me from the whirling tornadoes in my mind. I am exhausted of thinking, of examining every tiny scrap of information and emotion that flows through me. I long for a shutoff switch for my brain, a way to halt the never-ending supply of synaptic chatter.

Natalie goes home around noon, and Jess and I make lunch for the boys: toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, and for us, mandarin grilled chicken salad. Jess gets Charlie’s jeans washed while the twins take a nap, and Charlie and I walk to a nearby park so we don’t disturb their rest. Charlie wears a pair of sweats he left at his aunt’s house the last time he slept over; the elastic hems hit just above his ankles now. Watching him play, it strikes me just how quickly he has grown.

After we return from the park and the boys wake up, Jess and I decide to get out of the house for a few hours. We take the boys to Tube Time, a venue filled with well-padded, obstacle course-like tunnels and cushioned slides, both designed to wear out even the most energetic kid. Jess and I take turns crawling in after our children when they refuse to get out of another child’s way, or when Jake is too frightened to go down the bigger slide. For a while, chatting with my sister and seeing the kids play, I almost feel like myself again.

The afternoon passes and the light starts to fade as we pull into Jess’s driveway. Derek calls and tells Jess he has to go out to dinner with his clients to write up an offer on a house. Jess growls playfully at her loss of their bet, happy, I know, to have another commission coming in. Lured by the promise of Jess’s cheesy lasagna and garlic butter-drenched bread, I agree to stay for dinner. My nephews have gone downstairs to play, but Charlie runs around the house, alternately clinging to me, then spinning in circles, arms spread wide in the middle of the living room.

“Hey, champ,” I say, “knock it off, would you? You’ll break something.”

“No I won’t!” he exclaims. “Look at me! I’m Spida-Man!” He leaps onto the couch and pretends it’s a trampoline. Even after a busy day of playing, his energy levels are insane; not hyperactive, exactly. More kinetic. He’s pretty much been in constant motion since he learned how to walk. This has been somewhat disconcerting for me to deal with as a woman who views exercise as punishment for her private, passionate love affair with ice cream.

“Wow,” Jess observes. “Too much sugar?”

“Too much Alice, more like it. She completely clamps down on him so he freaks out when he gets away.”

“I do not!” Charlie screeches, the slender cords in his neck standing out like rope. He jumps across my sister’s couch, feet together, cushion to cushion. “Don’t call me a freak!”

“I didn’t call you a freak, I said you freak out. Big difference. Now, get down.” I try to keep my tone calm, but there is an itch in my chest, a tightening that feels all too familiar.

“No!” He jumps again, once, for emphasis, then looks at me defiantly.

“It’s really okay,” Jess says. “The boys do it all the time.”

“No, it’s not okay.” I stand up, step toward him, and grab my child around his skinny bicep, maybe a little harder than I should have. “I told you to get down. Now.”

“Owww!” he squeals. “Don’t!”

I yank him a bit to get him to land on his butt, which he does.

“Cadee,” Jess says, her voice quiet. “It’s okay.”

I look at her, my eyes flashing. The adrenaline is already pumping. Another withdrawal symptom—extreme irritability. It takes nothing—nothing at all—to set me off. I want a drink is the first thought in my head. My blood is heating, bursting into tiny, stress-induced flames beneath my skin. I can no longer douse them with wine. My child is my trigger. “Identify them,” Andi encourages us in group. “Avoid them if you can.” What the hell is wrong with me? Who reacts like this to their own child? I let go of my son’s arm, sit down next to him on the couch.

“Sorry, monkey,” I whisper.

He sits still, arms crossed over his chest, bottom lip pushed out but no tears. I try to run my hand down his arm, but he jerks away. “Don’t!” he says, more quietly than the time before.

“Okay.” I rest my hands, cupped together gently, palms up, in my lap.

“Why don’t you go downstairs with the boys?” Jess suggests in a happy voice.

Charlie glances at me, tentative, sidelong. He is not ready to forgive me. I don’t blame him. I’m nowhere near being able to forgive myself.

I nod. “Aunt Jess is right. Go play, have fun.” He walks slowly, head hanging, down the hall and down the basement stairs. The ache in my heart is a palpable thing. I wish for a way to have it surgically removed.

“He’ll be fine,” Jess says. Her expression is blank, but her eyes can’t mask her concern.

I shake my head. “What if I can’t fix this? What if I’ve scarred him for life?”

She sighs. “All of us are scarred, Cadee. We’ve all got our wounds. No one escapes their childhood unscathed.”

I take in a jagged breath. “I feel like I’ve totally failed him. No wonder he’s freaking out. It’s not Alice. It’s me. It’s my fault. Kids need to know what to expect. They need stability and routine to feel safe and I’ve obliterated all of that for him. When I think about what I’ve done—”

“Stop it.” Jess cuts me off. Her voice is firm. “You can’t do this to yourself. Yes, you screwed up. Yes, Charlie has gone through some shit you wish he didn’t have to go through. But wallowing around in your guilt about it is going to get you nowhere. So knock it off.”

When I don’t respond, she walks over and puts her arms around me. She holds me close, her palm pressed against the back of my head, her mouth next to my ear. “You are a good mother.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not.” This is the tape that plays in my head: I’m shit. I’m selfish and useless and I got drunk in front of my son. I’m nothing but a piece of shit. It’s the sound track that sets the rhythm of my days.

“Yes, you are. Remember when Charlie wouldn’t nurse right away in the hospital? Remember how your milk wasn’t coming in?”

I sniff, then nod into her shoulder.

“And what did you do that I’m sure to this day the nurses at Swedish still talk about? You started massaging your boobs to get those milk ducts going. You rubbed your boobs so hard they were black and blue. I thought you were a rock star mom. You were absolutely determined Charlie would get what you thought was best for him. Right?”

I nod again.

“And what about the time when he had bronchitis and you didn’t sleep for eight days straight? Remember how you held him? How you sat in the bathroom running scalding hot water for hours and hours trying to help your baby boy breathe easy? You had tile marks on your ass for a week.”

A small, reluctant smile pushes out the corners of my mouth. She is still holding me.

“You’re a good mother, Cadee. Not perfect, but good.”

I shake my head, but don’t say anything more. She doesn’t understand. She has no idea just how deep this sense of disgrace goes. How could she?

She sighs. “Okay, then. I’ll set up the guest room.”

I pull back from her and start to protest, but she stops me by holding up her hand. “No arguments. You’re spending the night. Derek won’t be home until late and I need the company.”

“I should take him home,” I say meekly. “He needs to be in his own bed.”

“Cadence.” This is all she says. Her tone is enough to tell me the debate has ended. We won’t talk about it outright. She won’t say she is worried about the flare-up of my anger, my inability to manage it without taking a drink. She doesn’t have to speak. My sister knows me well enough to hear my thoughts, to know I need help, even when I can’t come close to admitting it to myself.