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I place my hands against his chest, futilely attempting to push him away. “I’m not here for that. Where’s my locket?”
“What are you going to give me for it?”
I cringe at his nearness. Dear God, in a lifetime full of bad ideas, coming in here with him may have been my worst. “It’s not worth anything. It’s just sentimental. I’ll give you two hundred bucks for it.”
“Two hundred?” He laughs, waving his hands around the room—at the massive television and ridiculous custom bed. “You think I care about two hundred bucks?”
“Five hundred. Please, Kent. This is all I’ve got left of my daughter. It doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“The fact that it means something toyou,” he says, wrapping his hand around my hip, “means it’s also valuable tome. I don’t want money, babe. Tell you what: do one line, justone, and I’ll give you the necklace.”
My mouth waters at the idea, a deep, ugly anticipation cresting in my chest.
I could do one.It’s just to get the locket back. I could do one line, just one, and prove to myself and to him that it’s behind me. “I don’t even know that you still have it.”
He reaches into his nightstand and pulls it out, swinging it to and fro. “Of course I have it. I knew you’d come back for it eventually. It was the only thing you ever loved.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper.
He laughs, tossing it from one hand to the other. “Sure it is. Think about the shit you did to get coke. You were willing to steal, you were willing to cheat on your husband, you were willing to give up every fucking thing, but you never, ever agreed to give up this gold-plated piece of shit. It was a game to me. I’d always ask you to give up the locket first, remember? And when you wouldn’t, we’d move on to option two.”
I stare at him, at it. That can’t be true. I couldn’t have loved athingmore than my husband. I couldn’t have loved athingso much that I’d sleep with someone I hated instead of giving it up. Except...it wasn’t just a necklace to me. It was Hannah. It was a way to hold onto her, to pretend she wasn’t gone. And getting back together with Caleb, having another child just like her...it was a ridiculous, comforting fantasy, one I chose over the real, beautiful, terrifying thing I had with Beck.
I’ve lost him because of it, and worse…I hurt him in the process. So even if it’s too late for the two of us, it’s because of him that I’m going to let go of the fantasy at last. It’s because of him that I’ll enter the real, beautiful, terrifying world again, even if he won’t be by my side to watch it happen.
“Forget it,” I say, heading for the door.
“You’ll be back,” he warns, tossing the locket in a drawer and perhaps he’s right, but I continue down the stairs, through all the people in the living room, ignoring every greeting, and get outside to my car.
I’m still sitting in his driveway when I call Ann for the first time in weeks and finally admit what I’ve really known all along:
I’m still not well, and I have no idea what the fuck to do about it.
42
KATE
Afew hours later, I’m at my first NA meeting in four months. It’s asunthrilling as the ones I remember. Same shitty tile floor in a church rec room, same folding card table with coffee, same fluorescent light and stench of desperation.
The stories I hear are, arguably, worse than my own. The guy beside me has only been clean for about ten hours, and at one point stole his parents’ life savings. There’s another woman whose kid got into her stash and overdosed. But my errors feel no more minor because I didn’t expect anything of these people, while once upon a time, I expected a lot of shit of myself, and I failed at all of it. Mostly, I failed Beck. I shudder, recalling that broken look in his eyes before he drove away.
I did that to him. To big, unbreakable Beck. Of all the unforgivable things I’ve ever done, that was the worst. The one that made him finally give up.
They go around the room. I am reluctant to speak when they get to me, but Lynn, Ann’s psychotherapist friend in San Francisco—isn’t about to let me off the hook.
“I’m Kate,” I tell them.
“Hi, Kate,” they say in unison. That greeting has always annoyed me. There’s nothing genuine about the rote welcome they offer every person. But I digress.
“I’ve been clean for a few months, but just last night I was at my dealer’s only half sure I wasn’t going to do anything.”
There are nods, which I expected. I’m not the only one who’s gone right to the line before backing away.
I tell them that I got clean for the wrong reasons, and that I now want to stay clean for the right ones. That I want to become some semblance of the person I was before my daughter died, and that I suspect it’s going to be a lot harder the second time around because I no longer have a reason to bother.
I’m no better when it’s all out—I’m just empty. I want to sleep for a hundred years, but perhaps that’s because I drove straight to San Francisco from Kent’s house last night and haven’t seen a bed in far too long.
When the meeting concludes, Lynn and I walk to the back table where a pot of coffee and a plate of store-bought cookies awaits, like anyone wants cookies at six in the morning.
