“It’s a date.”
Jude got out of the car. She waited for Celia to drive away. She looked up at the sky. She’d become accustomed to the light pollution in San Francisco. Jude had forgotten the way the stars flowed through the river of the night sky. She wiped her nose again. Her tears felt as if they were crystalizing in the cool air.
She didn’t go into the house.
She went into her father’s office.
The lights flickered on like fireflies. She looked around the room. The filing cabinets and photographs. The school desk with its sturdy rolling chair. The photographs and the record player and the old shotgun hanging over the door.
During Jude’s childhood, the shed had housed old farming equipment that had rusted into steel monsters. Now, the space felt solid and utilitarian, two words that would describe the better parts of her father. Since her return, the few times she’d been inside had felt like a violation. The Gerald Clifton who had worked behind that desk, the doting father, the sober confidant, had been a total stranger.
Now, Jude sat down at his desk. She propped Myrna’s index card against a photo of Cole in his sheriff’s uniform. Then she pressed her palms flat to the paper blotter. The calendar that was filled with doctor’s appointments and haircuts and birthdays that Gerald hadn’t lived to celebrate. The silver Wahl-Eversharp pen that had belonged to his father was still where he’d left it. So was the folder that had contained a note he’d never finished.
Jude closed her eyes.
To become an alcoholic took a certain amount of arrogance. You put your needs above the needs of others. You convinced yourself that you were entitled to your indulgence. You justified the trail of destruction, the constant lying, cheating and theft, because you had been destroyed in some way, too. No one got blackout drunk every night because they were happy.
Thirty-nine years and three and a half months ago, Jude hadapproached sobriety with an academic rigor. She’d wanted to understand the processes of intoxication, the faults in her thinking, the genetic inner workings, that had made her vulnerable to alcoholism.
In recovery, the body could let go of the physical addiction—the lingering cravings, the brain struggling to rewire its reward system—but the emotional addiction never fully went away. Neither did the arrogance. The belief that you had it all under control. That you’d put in the hard work to examine your life, your bad choices. The knowledge that for thirty-nine years and three and a half months, you had slayed your demons. The blind delusion that you could walk into your father’s office, sit down in his chair, and not drink the bourbon in his desk.
Jude opened the drawer. Took out the flask. Felt the worn imprints in the leather of her father’s fingers beneath her own. Penley had bought Gerald the flask as a gift. Which was fitting.
Penley had given Jude her first drink. She had hated the taste, felt like fire had burned down her throat, but Penley had assured her that she would get used to it. He’d been right. She had loved the heat on her tongue. The way her stomach had churned. The sensation of her body blissfully letting go. The white noise of intoxication drowning out the bad voices in her head.
Jude twisted open the flask.
Gerald had filled it to the top. Bourbon sloshed onto her hand. The caramel and charred oak scent of Old Rip Van Winkle hit her senses like a baseball bat. Her eyes burned from the 107-proof. Her taste buds flooded with the memory of toasted nuts, cinnamon and dried cherries. She heard echoes of laughter from a thousand different bars. Felt the warmth of camaraderie. Saliva filled her mouth.
What was she doing?
Jude looked at the bourbon that had spilled all over her hand. She wouldn’t drink from the flask. She would just have a taste. A tiny taste. After nearly forty years, after the brutality of her conversation with Emmy, she deserved some sort of respite. She opened her mouth, raised her hand, but her gaze found its way back to the photograph of Cole.
Jude’s grandson.
The card Myrna had left for Celia rested below his beautiful face.
Exculpate—to free from guilt, responsibility, and blame.
Jude’s hand dropped into her lap. She thought about her mother sitting down at her desk and writing out all the cards. Myrna had not been the sort of woman to waste time. She took long walks for her health. She read books for their educational value. She started conversations because she had something to say. Everything she did was for a reason.
Myrna had placedmellifluouson the windowsill behind the coffee maker. Tapedinsuperableto the bathroom mirror.Gallimaufryhad been left on the nightstand. Taybee had gottenraconteur. Millie had gottenopprobrium. Cousin Ace, of all people, had been left withexpiate.
Jude grabbed her father’s pen. The dry ballpoint skipped across the calendar when she tried to write. She opened the desk drawer to look for a replacement.
She found another card.
Verisimilitude—the seeming plausibility of truth.
Myrna Joy Clifton had been a high school English teacher for over half a century. She’d earned a master’s in education and a PhD in American literature. She was clever and brilliant, sometimes funny, occasionally cruel, but her puzzles had been created specifically for her children, and she had made sure to leave clues that her children would understand.
Jude wrote down the first letters of each of the words from the cards—
E-F-M-I-G-R-O-E-V
She tried different combinations, attempted different phrases. In the end, the solution left her breathless.
Forgive me.
