Amelia inhales sharply. For a moment I think she’s crying, but her voice is steady when she answers. “Not only that,” she says. With each syllable, she drums the side of her hand against her thigh. “I’m trying to make sense of how she lived the way she did, and I live the way I do.”
My sister certainly wouldn’t look to me—or to Dr. Rush’s opinion of me—to make sense ofherself. She thinks her place in the world is perfectly logical; she is exactly whom she was born to be.I’mthe one who’s out of step. Anne doesn’t want a doctor to explainwhy; she wants me fixed until I fall in line like generations of second sons before me.
Amelia presses her hands against me, pushing herself up to look me in the eye. “What would’ve happened if I hadn’t been here tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I answer heavily.
“What if I’m not here next time?”
“I’ll be careful,” I promise.
I can tell from the look on Amelia’s face that she doesn’t believe me.
I gesture toward the bed outside, the button on the nightstand. “Why didn’t you call for help if you were soworriedabout me?” I sayworriedlike it’s an accusation.
“I would’ve, if I couldn’t get you to your feet.” Amelia’s eyes widen as she realizes her poor choice of words, but for once, I laugh instead of cringing. In a second, Amelia’s laughing, too, so hard that she doubles over.
“Do you think your care manager has any idea?” she asks as the laughter ebbs and quiet falls over us.
“About what?”
“That you’ve been sneaking pills.”
I think of the doctor carefully meting out my dose each morning, and shake my head.
“They don’t know how much it hurts,” I say.
“No,” Amelia agrees. “They never do.”
38Florence
“It’s from Evelyn’s stash.” Andrew holds up the wine bottle like he’s a kid at show-and-tell.
Of course this is what he thought I wanted. Over the years, it’s gone this way more times than I can count: I meet a fan; I tell them something they don’t know about my music; they tell me something I don’t know about my music (how much it meant to them, how they interpreted it, etc., etc.) ; then they offer me a drink or a pill or a bump because they want to go home and tell their friends they partied with me. It got so partying was part of my job, another way to keep the fans engaged.
“Her stash?” I echo.
Andrew nods. “She’s got countless cases hidden around the property. She won’t notice a missing bottle or two.”
I grin as Andrew opens the bottle and hands it to me to take a swig.
“Cheers,” he says. I bring the bottle to my lips, inhaling the aroma of the wine. At so many dinners, the person sitting across the table from me would swirl their glass, breathe deeply, take a tiny sip. I never understood how they could drink so slowly. What was the point?
“Didn’t peg you for a wine guy,” I say, passing the bottle back to him.
“I’m not,” Andrew admits as he settles beside me on the deep couch where we screwed last night. During therapy this afternoon, I was amazed Evelyn couldn’t smell it. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t recognize the scent. “It’s Evelyn’s go-to, though.”
It’s hard for me to imagine Evelyn drinking something so dark, so rich. Isn’t she scared of staining one of her crisp white blouses?
“I bet you’ve got a local hangout where they know your favorite beer,” I say. “Like, you can walk in and say,My usual,instead of placing an actual order. Where the bartender knows your name.”
“You’re making my life sound awful wholesome.”
“The bar for what I consider wholesome is pretty low.”
“Well, you’re not that far off. I do have a favorite spot in town. Shelter Shack.” He grins like an old man remembering his glory days as a high school quarterback. “Used to sing at their open-mic night, thought someone might discover me.”
I picture Andrew sitting on a sticky stool in a dimly lit bar, and giggle. “Who exactly did you think would discover you out here?”
