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“How do you know his name?”
Her dad looked up at her. “You post about him on Instagram.”
Right. Her social media accounts were all public because she used them to promote her real estate business. And she did post personal things on there because when people felt like they knew you, they trusted you.
“Do you want something to drink? Water, lemonade, whiskey?”
He chuckled at the last libation, but she wasn’t kidding. A shot might be the exact thing she needed to get through this conversation.
“Lemonade would be nice. Thank you.”
She dipped her head with a quick nod and made her way to the kitchen. Her shoulders tensed as she opened the cabinet to grab a glass. Her father being in her home felt too personal. She’d worked so hard to create a calm, peaceful environment and him being there threatened that. She didn’t want to have memories of him in her space.
Remembering that Seb had been there was bad enough. She didn’t want to have to deal with memories of her father there as well. She made a mental note to sage the entire house when he left so none of his bad juju lingered.
Chunks was beside himself with excitement because they had company. The mornings were when he was most active and she knew if they sat on the couch or at the kitchen table he’d be relentless, bringing them toy after toy in an attempt to get them to play.
“We can talk in the backyard, that way he can run around.”And it will cut down on you contaminating my house, she thought to herself.
As soon as Chunks heard the keyword backyard, his ears perked up and he scrambled to the back door. Her father followed her out onto the deck.
She set down the drinks on the small table between the two rocker patio chairs and they both lowered into them.
“This is such a beautiful place you have.”
“I know.” Thank you would have been the more polite response, but her father didn’t really inspire her manners. “What do you want to say?”
“First of all, I’m sorry that last night went the way it did. I’m not seeing Elaine to upset you. I really like her. And I told her about my past, about everything. She knows it all.”
Kennedy doubted that, but she wasn’t going to argue with him.
He must have sensed that she wasn’t buying his complete transparency thing, because he told her. “She knows that for a long time the man I was is not someone I’m proud of. I told her that I was a selfish, lying, cheater, because I was a drug addict.”
“A drug addict?” Kennedy repeated. She’d never seen him do any sort of drugs. She’d barely ever seen him drink alcohol.
“When I was twenty, just a few months after you were born, I got into a car accident.”
Kennedy vaguely remembered her mom and Nana telling her about that. They said that he was hospitalized for over a month and his rehab took a year.
“I was given painkillers and for a long time, I needed them just to deal with the pain of recovery. But about a year after my last surgery, I knew I had a problem when I was offering friends money to get prescriptions filled for me.”
Kennedy stared at him and tried to figure out what his angle was. How would he benefit by telling her this?
“And?” She wasn’t sure if he was hoping she’d be more sympathetic, but if that’s what he was expecting he was in for abigdisappointment.
“And like most addictions, it was a very slippery slope. For a few years, I was only taking prescription pills. I stole, lied, I did whatever I had to do to get my fix. It started with a few pills a day, but the more you take them, the more your body builds resistance to them. Then someone offered me heroin. Once I took my first hit, I knew I was in trouble.
“I was what is called a functioning addict for most of my adult life. Functioning in that I didn’t overdose and for short periods of time I was able to be employed. For so long, I denied I had a problem. I refused to see that I was a junkie. I lied to myself reasoning that since I was able to hide my addiction, it meant I didn’t have a real problem. Yes, I needed my fixes, and yes, I would do anything I had to do in order to get them, but I wasn’t strung out like other people I saw were.
“Then, five years ago, all that changed. I took a hit that had been laced with something and woke up in the E.R. I almost died. If the person I was using with hadn’t given me a dose of Narcan, Iwouldhave died.”
Kennedy wasn’t sure how she felt about everything her father was telling her. She wasn’t even sure she believed what he was telling her. She was by no means an expert on overdoses or drugs, but from everything she knew, heroin was not a recreational drug.
Was it possible for someone to be afunctioningheroin addict?
Why would her father lie to her about this?
Was he trying to make her feel sorry for him?
