His gaze wandered over her face, and yet he didn’t seem to be looking at her, but rather something only he could see. “Alcohol was a huge problem in my marriage. On both sides.”
This was a whole new side to Sam Winters. Libby placed her bowl in his, put them on the end table, and turned to face him. “I’m a good listener, too.”
Sam chuckled. He casually touched the back of his hand to her face. “No you’re not. You’re possibly the worst listener I’ve ever known. But I’ll tell you anyway.”
He told her how he’d met his wife in college. Terri was her name, he said. A free spirit. Sam said he’d been enthralled, that he’d never known anyone like her. “We fell in love, and after college, we moved around to various jobs. She was always looking for a big cause to get involved with.”
When the jobs had ended up leading them nowhere, Sam brought her to Colorado Springs and joined the ranks of law enforcement, and eventually they ended up in Pine River. Terri, he said, had trouble keeping a job because she couldn’t stay sober, and by that point, he wasn’t much better.
“It snuck up on us,” he admitted. “I’d never been much of a drinker. My dad drank, and I didn’t want to be like him,” he said, shifting his gaze to the fire. “It made him as mean as Millie Bagley.”
“Oh wow,” Libby said. “I’m sorry. He was an alcoholic?”
“I’m sure,” Sam said. “But I never really thought of him that way. To me, he drank too much, that was it. I never thought of it as a disease, or that it could happen to me. And when I started drinking, it didn’t seem like a big deal—a drink here or there, that was all. I guess I fooled myself. I remember justifying it by telling myself it wasn’t like I had to have it. I had myself convinced I was very different than dear old Dad, you know? Terri and I drank to unwind after class. She’d binge drink on the weekends, but you know, it was college, and a lot of people did that. I was na?ve.” He glanced at his hand.
There but for the grace of God, Libby thought. When she first started working at the sheriff’s office, there had been some wild parties. On a couple of occasions, she’d had far too much to drink. She’d even known in the moment she was drinking too much, but alcohol had a way of making her believe she was okay. “When did you realize you had a problem?”
“Not until it was too late,” Sam said with a snort. “By the time I graduated and we got married, Terri and I would have a drink at the end of the workday together. And then, it began to roll into the dinner hour, changing to wine. And somewhere along the way, it became a cocktail, wine with dinner, brandy or port after that.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Libby said. “I know a lot of people who relax with a few drinks.”
“They’re probably not alcoholics,” he pointed out. “I remember the first time I put whiskey in my morning coffee. I remember standing at the kitchen sink telling myself it wasn’t that big of a deal. That was my life—a constant state of rationalization. I refused to acknowledge that my life and my marriage were unraveling into one tangled string of drinks. Terri and I were of one mind—any excuse for another drink.”
It was hard for Libby to imagine it. It was hard to look at Sam, a stand-up guy by anyone’s measure, and imagine him in the grip of addiction.
“I tried to talk to her about it. I told her we should get help, but it’s easier to talk about than it is to do.” He paused, glanced at his hands again, stretching his fingers wide. “I tried to stop drinking. I tried to be a good husband even though Terri had abandoned any pretense at being my wife. She drank in front of me, and I couldn’t vanquish the temptation to drink with her. I was losing everything. I knew it, I could see it, and still, I couldn’t stop drinking.”
“Wow,” Libby said softly. “I’m sorry, Sam. It must have been so difficult for you.”
“You have no idea,” he said with a wry laugh. “I tried everything, but I still found myself pulling off the side of the road while on patrol and digging a bottle out from beneath the seat.”
Libby knew something like that had happened—everyone knew Sam had been drunk on the job. But looking at him now, the strong, kind man that he was, she couldn’t picture it. She couldn’t guess how hard that must have been for him, to be that strong and yet unable to defeat his biggest adversary.
“I started missing work with some pretty spectacular hangovers. When I was at work, I chewed gum like a maniac to keep the smell from my colleagues, but they knew. Everyone knew. I’ve smelled it on drunks myself—once alcohol gets into your blood, there’s no masking it.
“It caught up with me. At the time, I thought it was the end of everything, but it ended up being my salvation. If it hadn’t caught up with me when it did, I could very well be dead now.”