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“It’s not too late, Mira. But do me a favor. When you do talk to him, when you tell him how you feel, don’t hold anything back. Not only does he deserve it.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But you deserve it too.”
Giving him a quick, tight hug, she said, “I’m so sorry, Paul. For everything. But thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She pulled back, wiped her eyes. “I gotta go.”
“Yeah, you do. But make Jen drive. You’re a mess.”
“Ha!” She didn’t even care who looked at her now. “You’re right! I am a mess!” Walking backward toward her car while a thousand-watt smile shot across her face, she shouted, “But sometimes it’s the mess that makes life beautiful!”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-EIGHT
COLE
THREE DAYS EARLIER
Staring at the sketch of Mira’s cake he’d hung on the recording booth wall the day after he’d gotten back, because, apparently, he was a masochist, Cole asked, “How’s Davis?” into his phone. “I text her every day, checking in, but she doesn’t reply very often. And when she does, it’s only a sentence or two.”
“She doesn’t say much to me either,” Madigan replied, sounding indescribably exhausted. “But Ashley and Maude Alice have mobilized around her. They’re trying to keep her busy, not giving her much down time. But she’s not okay. She’s so…vacant. It was a trauma, seeing Kev like that. She needs time to process it. I wish she hadn’t followed us. I wish I’d noticed her car and made her turn around.”
“Even if we had, nothing would have kept Davis from coming,” Cole assured him. “We would have had to chain her up in the basement, and shestillwould have found a way out.”
“You’re probably right. But I’m worried sick about her.”
“Me too,” Cole said, and then, hesitantly, “How’s Kev?”
After a deep sigh, Madigan said, “I keep reminding myself that it could be worse, but it’s hard. I pulled every string I could, called in every favor anyone has ever owed me to keep him out of jail. He’ll do at least a month in rehab, and then… I don’t know.”
“I’m so sorry, Mad.”
“Not the first time, won’t be the last. But yeah, this one hurts.”
“I should have been there,” Cole said, finally giving voice to only one of the many regrets kicking relentlessly around his head since he’d gotten back from Red Falls. “I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have let Thom’s sister onto the property when she looked the way she looked. I should have told you immediately that they knew each other.”
“No, Kev’s the one who should have told me he knew Thom and his sister. He should have told me they used to use together. That part, at least, is on him.”
“I still feel like it’s all my fault,” Cole admitted.
“I get it. I wake up every morning with my brain trying to convince me Kev only left with them because I was gone.” The rasp of his knuckles against his beard through the phone made Cole wish they were having this conversation in person. They both needed to hug this one out. “Truth is, he would have found his way off the mountain one way or another no matter where we were. It’s addiction. This is just what it does. Relapse is, unfortunately, a normal part of recovery. But”—he sighed—“you already know that.”
Cole nodded, remembering Mad’s relapses, remembering how awful they were, but also how he came through each one a little bit stronger. Maybe that would happen with Kev too. “Will you take them back?”
“Not Thom.” Madigan’s voice held a cold anger Cole had never heard from him before. “When I admitted him, I had a gut feeling he didn’t actually want to get clean. Now I wonder if he’d had this whole thing planned from the jump. I’d take Kev back, but I don’t know how everyone else here will feel about that. It’s complicated.”
Picking up a drumstick, twirling it absently, Cole could only say, “Yeah.”
“But enough about me. Have you talked to her?”
“Who?” Cole asked, pretending he didn’t know exactly who Mad meant.
“Seriously, Cole?”
“I’ve tried,” he relented, scratching his head with his drumstick. “But I can’t figure out what to say. You know when you get something so wrong you don’t even understand how it happened? Like, you look at yourself in the mirror and think, ‘You really messed that one up, dipshit’?”
“Well,” Madigan said with his patented knowing tone, and Cole braced himself for the lesson he knew was coming. “Sometimes things feel wrong when, really, they’re just unfinished.”
Sometimes, he hated being right.
“You should call her.”
“Yeah.” Cole set his stick down across the floor tom. “Maybe.”
