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“How so?” Jake asked gently.
“Okay, so I see this therapist I can barely afford. I like going, but at the same time, I don’t. You know what I mean?”
Antonio nodded. “I go to a marriage counselor, and I love and hate it.”
Brian muttered, “Same with Planet Fitness.”
Everybody laughed, and Jake motioned to Melissa. “You were saying. Folks, let’s keep the cross talk to a minimum.”
“So I’m always late for our session, and it makes him mad, and the last session we ended up talking about why I’m late. So now I’m spending money on therapyabouttherapy.” Melissa broke into a hapless smile. “And it’s on me, it’s a me problem. I don’t have compassion for myself.”
Greg interjected, “Keep coming back, Melissa. We all have bad habits. I have bad habits older thanyou.”
Everybody chuckled again, and Phyllis looked at her with sympathy. “Don’t beat yourself up, honey. We’re trying to break our worst habit right now. You can only break so many habits at once.”
I thought of Carrie. “Right, I self-sabotage in a million ways. I have a suitcase of self-sabotage, like Felix’s bag of tricks.”
Phyllis grinned. “Felix the Cat? I remember that cartoon. I loved it.”
“Me, too.” I felt a happy surge. “Remember the song? ‘Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat—’ ”
“—whenever he gets in a fix—”
“—he reaches into his bag of tricks!”
Everybody laughed, and Jake waved his hands, trying to restore order. An AA meeting had a structure and he’d get us back on track, but our fellowship created a cheery bond. This meeting had already accomplished a purpose, for me. It made me realize I wasn’t alone.
It was my home group.
And I was home.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t missing something.
•••
An hour later, I was sitting in the car across the street from Carrie’s house. I knew a heart could ache because mine did from time to time, and all of those times were about her. I’d been in love before her, but she gotthrough, and I was still in love with her now.
Her townhouse was in a cluster, each house with its own driveway. All of the townhouses were dark, and the only car in her driveway was her white Camry, thank God. I checked her social media all the time to see if she was dating anyone, and it was still just old photos of her with fellow teachers. She didn’t like social media and wanted to set a good example for Emily.
My gaze strayed to her bedroom, then to her daughter Emily’s, who’d be four now. We’d met in Wegmans, where I’d been buying beer, when a little girl came giggling around the corner, then a mother chasing after her, also laughing. I caught the little girl before she ran into me, and that got me talking to her grateful mother, then something told me I wanted to be in their lives. Carrie and I started seeing each other, and my feelings for her were bound up in a tangle of mother-daughter curls, the two of them the best package deal ever, like a car loaded with every feature you wanted and some you didn’t know you needed.
We used to pile into Carrie’s bed at night and read to Emily before bedtime. Carrie loved me too much to see that I was a functioning alcoholic. She believed me when I told her my hangovers were migraines. She didn’t deceive herself; I deceived her. She believed my lies, until one night.
June 7.
I was about to start the ignition when I spotted a plush purple rabbit on the driveway behind Carrie’s car. Tomorrow morning, she would be rushing to school and run it over.
I’m not good at reversing, she always said.
I got out of the car, hurried across the street, and plucked the rabbit from the driveway. Then I went to the front step, set it down, and went back to the car.
I loved Carrie and Emily.
So I drove away.
Chapter Seven
The next morning I took the Subaru for my stakeout at Runstan’s, where Lemaire worked. I wanted to see if he showed up, so I parked in the lot, sipped coffee, and fake-scrolled my phone. I had on a ball cap and sunglasses, the closest I come to Detective Wear. There’d been no news of him online, dead or alive, and I’d driven by his house again this morning. No maroon Volvo.
