“That’s true,” Deb said, and Libby heard the door open. The ladies walked out of the bathroom.
A month ago, Libby’s anger would have exploded. Today, she felt as though if she just kept breathing, she could keep it under control. She had to keep it under control. She couldn’t possibly give them anything else.
But she wasn’t giving up on that race, especially now.
When she felt as if she could walk out of the church and smile at whomever she encountered, she left. In her car, she found her phone at the bottom of her purse and dialed a number.
It rang three times before Emma picked up with a lazy, “Hello.”
“Emma!” Libby said, surprised to have reached her. “It’s Libby. I can’t believe I got you.”
“What’s wrong?”
Libby could count on one hand the number of conversations she’d had with Emma over the last couple of years, and Emma never once asked about her. Emma never said much of anything other than no and leave me out of it.
“Nothing is wrong, but . . . but I need your help.”
“I’m not going to come out in the middle of nowhere and plan weddings, Libby,” Emma said. “I’ve told you that. It’s not worth my time. Or yours, for that matter.”
“This isn’t about a wedding, it’s about me,” Libby said. “I need to put on a 5k race in two months’ time and make some money from it.”
“Why?” Emma asked suspiciously. “Did you do something?”
“Do something?” Libby repeated, confused. “Like what?”
“Like a drug deal gone bad,” Emma casually suggested.
Libby pictured her sister somewhere in Los Angeles, her long, blond hair slick and shiny, her bee-sting lips, her skinny legs in skinnier jeans. “I don’t do drugs.”
“Oh, right, of course not,” she said, sounding disdainful. “Middle America does not do drugs. Or so they say.” She snorted. “So why do you need the money?”
“I am trying to raise money for Leo Kendrick. You know, Luke’s brother? He’s in a wheelchair and needs a new van.”
Libby could hear the clink of glass and voices in the background. “You don’t need me for that,” Emma said. “It’s easy. Get a couple of sponsors to make T-shirts and buy some trophies, and voilà, there’s your race.”
“No, this has to be done right.”
“So do it right—”
“No! Emma, listen—here is the real reason I need you,” Libby said flatly. “The real reason I need you is because this summer, I had a nervous breakdown and spent a week in a mental institution, okay? They call it Mountain View Behavioral Health Center, but that’s what it is, a place where they lock the doors at night and give you pills to help you sleep. And the other women on this committee think I can’t do this. They all think I am too crazy to do it. But I’m not, Emma. I want to prove I’m not. That’s why I need you.”
There was silence on the other end, nothing but the sound of a car driving by.
“Well, well, at last, something interesting to come from Pine River. Tell me about it,” Emma said.
Libby told her. And a half hour later, she was smiling and still in a bit of shock, because Emma had agreed to come and help her.
TWENTY-FIVE
If there was a lesson Sam had learned in his years of recovery and sobriety, it was that you could never take anything for granted. And that there was no rhyme or reason to why an addict or alcoholic would return to drinking or drugs.
He’d known a guy once who had been sober for six years. His name was Rick, and he was solid, he had it beat. Rick worked as an accountant, dated a beautiful, sexy woman, and liked golf. To Sam, he moved through life with ease. Rick had told Sam more than once that his addiction wasn’t a problem, that once he’d turned away from the Oxycontin, that was it—there was no turning back.
He said, like Tony had said the other night, he’d turned the page.
But then one fall the Colorado Rockies baseball team blew a pennant race, and Rick turned another page. Only he went in the wrong direction and took a bunch of pills, and just like that—like that—he fell off his sobriety.
It could happen in the blink of an eye.
Sam worried for Tony. To an outsider, it would seem that things were looking up for Tony. At Homecoming Ranch, he’d struck up a friendship with Ernest Delgado, and was doing some odd jobs around the place. Luke told him that Tony had been helping make some repairs and that he was pretty handy with a hammer. Just like Libby, Luke told Tony he could stay as long as he needed. They’d even try and pay him a little something.