Page 120 of The Treasure House

“Really.” I kissed her forehead. “This is hard, but I’m okay. I promise you.”

“You don’t have to be,” she protested. “I don’t need you to be okay all the time. I just…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just need you to not hide in the garden and not tell me what’s happening.”

“Deal.” I kept my arms around her for a moment, feeling her exhale a shuddery, relieved breath. “I love you, Flo.”

“Well, duh. I know that.”

After Tina had been in town for a few days, hassling me the whole time to let her see Flo, Jake called me at work. At first my heart leapt into my mouth at the thought that Tina had turned up at the house while I wasn’t there so she could talk to Flo. But it wasn’t that.

“Look, it’s probably not my business,” he started. Then he changed his mind. “No, screw that, you’re totally my business.”

“What is it?” I was poisonous with stress, imagining all the ways that Tina could hurt Flo. My time with Tina this week had shown me nothing was different. If anything, now that I was an adult, she scared me even more. “What’s she done?”

“Your mom has had her DO NOT DISTURB sign up at the motel since she got here, so my cousin said the cleaners haven’t been in. Your mother and Tate have barely left the room. The only time she leaves is when you meet her.”

I closed my eyes, dreading what he’d say next, even though I half expected it.

Jake sighed. “Well, today Tate set the smoke alarms off with his cigarette, and when the motel staff went in, they found glass pipes and a bag of crystal meth.”

I was unsurprised. I had the old sucking feeling in my gut.

“My cousin didn’t call the cops.”

“Oh.” I felt oddly disappointed.

“Do you want me to tell him to call them?” There was a long pause. “Or not?”

I didn’t know what to tell him.

That evening after work I volunteered to stay back with Dr. Nock for the Nar-Anon family group. Instead of slipping out the back and hiding out of sight until they were done, I took a seat in the circle of chairs. I saw Dr. Nock giving me a sideways look, but I kept my gaze on the floor. The day Flo had come to sit with me in the snowy garden, I’d decided it was time to get some help. I owed her that. I owed me that.

I had seen my mother stoned, high, tweaking, overdosing, dying. When I thought of her, there was a wild cry inside of me. But there was also a deep exhaustion. I couldn’t manage her. And I didn’t want to. Not just because I didn’t want her in Flo’s life, but because I didn’t want her in mine.

I was so tired of carrying it all around inside of me, a freak show no one knew about. The weight of it was too much. I wanted to put it down.

I didn’t intend to speak in that first meeting. But when it came time to introduce myself, I started talking and couldn’t stop. The entire hot mess of my childhood came pouring out of me. The circle was silent and attentive, everyone still as stone, and their quiet presence made me spill secrets I’d never told anyone.

“The last time they took me away from her, it wasn’t just because she’d overdosed.” Numbly, I was aware that I was crying. “It was because I’d written a composition for class. We had to write something about our vacation, so I did. I told them all about my vacation, with Tina passed out and me trying to stretch a packet of macaroni and cheese so it could feed me for three days.”

They stayed quiet, their watchful, gentle gazes on me.

“I guess it was maybe a cry for help…” I cleared my throat. “Or maybe I wanted to punish her. I wasn’t thinking… I mean, I didn’t think. I didn’t realize they’d report her and then it would be my fault she was back in prison.” The guilt was overwhelming. It was a sick, sweaty, crawling feeling. A nastiness I’d carried for years.

I used to lie awake at night, knowing it was my fault Tina was in a cell. I knew how lonely she was in prison, how much she suffered through withdrawal, how much pain she was in. And it was because of me.

“You feel it was your fault?” Dr. Nock asked in his measured way.

I was shivering. “It was my fault.” And something Flo had said in the garden had thrown a light on subterranean thoughts I hadn’t realized I was even having. “All of it was my fault. She didn’t know how to look after me. She was drowning. Because of me she had to work the streets. Because of me she had to escape with the drugs. Because of me…” My voice cracked.

“Why do you feel you need to take responsibility for her choices?” Iris, the elegant woman to my left, asked.

“She didn’t mean to get pregnant,” I said, feeling desperate. “I was an accident. I derailed her life.”

“That’s not your fault,” Iris told me gently. “And she chose to keep you.”

“I turned her in,” I reminded her. “I sent her to prison. That wasn’t her choice.”

“But if you didn’t turn her in, what choice would you have been making?” It was the teenage boy I’d heard at the first meeting. “You would have been helping her slowly destroy her life and yours.”