“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Darcy said. “I doubt the mangoes are going to make or break his recovery.”
Teagan hardly seemed to be bad off, for the people who came through the camp. He was too skinny, but he didn’t have that sallow glow that accompanied real damage from substance abuse. He looked pretty good, in fact. He looked like a guy she would have seen jogging on the trail with his dogs—purebreds, probably, he looked like a sighthound kind of guy—and thought,I’d like one of those. One of each. Maybe if I ever have my life together.
Teagan would sober up, switch to Shirley Temples, and be some nice woman’s normcore fantasy by the end of the year, she thought with a tinge of wistfulness.
Sloane made a frustrated noise. “Sure, that’s what it seems like, but I thought he was just a little overworked before, and then he ended up in the hospital.”
Darcy shrank back defensively. “Well, he knows about bear safety now.”
“Bear safety? What bear?” Sloane asked, cocking her head.
“The bear that put him in the hospital?”
“What?”
They stared at each other in mutual confusion.
“Teagan was... in the hospital,” Darcy said slowly. A different hospital? For non-bear reasons?
“Are you listening? Yes! I brought him straight here from the hospital.”
Darcy swallowed. “Well, I didn’t know that.”
“Uh, yeah. Nobody knows,” Sloane said. “My mom, when she drove into the tree, that was no big surprise. You drive home drunk, eventually you’re going to hit something. Teagan spent years trying to wrestle her car keys away. But nobody had any idea anything was wrong withhimuntil I got a call from the hospital.”
“Holy shit,” Darcy said, eyes widening. That must have been one hell of a bender. She would never have guessed Teagan’s drinking problem was that severe. She’d figured he was one of those martini-lunch guys who figured out they were spending a thousand dollars a week on hard liquor and decided to dry out before moving on to a new expensive hobby. “Well, Teagan’s safe out here,” she told Sloane. “No booze, no drugs, nothing but sunshine and healthy living.”
“You think that’ll do it?” Sloane asked, face skeptical. “That’ll fix him?”
“He’s doing okay here, isn’t he?” Darcy asked. It was alarming that Teagan had never told her how deep his problems ran, but he’d shown no signs of wanting to leave and get back to bad habits since the day of the bear attack.
“Okay, but that’s why I’m worried! When mom died, everyone was all like, ‘She should have taken an Uber,’ as if the real problem was that she didn’t keep her phone charged. No! The problem was that she was an alcoholic. So even if Teagan seems fine out here, he’s gonna go home someday, right? I’m already screening calls from a bunch of jerks whowant him to go back to work. He’s not going to do anything different. He’s not addressing his problems.”
“You’re worried he’s not taking his recovery seriously,” Darcy said, frowning.
“He’s totally not,” Sloane said. “He thinks the Goederts are full of it.”
Darcy could understand why he thought that. But that didn’t mean that Teagan couldn’t use this opportunity to turn his life around.
Sloane had her narrow hands twisted together in front of her, pretty face full of concern. For the second time in the day, a Van Zijl was looking at Darcy like she had all the answers. This wasn’t the reaction Darcy typically elicited in others—the Goederts, for example, treated her like a poorly housebroken foster pet—and she was taken with Sloane’s assumption that she could do something to help with Teagan’s recovery.
“You know what?” Darcy said, filled with sudden resolve. If the Goederts weren’t reaching him, that meant it was up to her. She’d screwed up at a lot of jobs, but it was never for lack of trying. There was nothing about this one she couldn’t handle, if given a chance. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Uh, the doctor already tried to talk to him.”
“No, like, more than talk,” Darcy vowed. “I’ll take over his schedule. Plan stuff he’ll actually do. Real wilderness therapy, not Rachel’s vibey-wibey homeopathic bullshit.”
“Okay,” Sloane said, looking only mildly reassured. “That’s where he’s been all day?”
“All day?” Darcy asked. She checked her watch. It had been almost seven hours since she last saw Teagan. She’d repaired the generator, cleaned up all the breakfast dishes, then taken her test. She felt a pang of foreboding.
“Yeah, he wasn’t there at lunch,” Sloane said.
“Um, he is probably still out on the trail,” Darcy said, scrunching up her face. She hadn’t meant that he needed to clear out the whole trailtoday.
Sloane made an alarmed noise in the back of her throat. “See! This is what I meant. You have to tell him when to stop, or he’ll do dumb shit like work through lunch.”
“Yeah, I’ll go, I’ll go,” Darcy said guiltily, standing up and looking out the window again. “I’ll have him back for dinner.”
