“I’m not going back to Safe Harbor. I’m going to do an amazing job, and Caroline is going to rave about me to all her neighbors, and when the summer’s over I bet she keeps me on. Or I’ll go work for another family in Spring Brook. That’s the plan.”
“What about the father? How’s Ted?”
“What about him?”
“Is he nice?”
“Yes.”
“Is he too nice? Maybe a little handsy?”
“Did you really just use the word handsy?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Sometimes these guys lose sight of boundaries. Or they see the boundary and they don’t care.”
I think back to my swimming lesson from two weeks ago, the night Ted complimented me on my tattoo. I guess he’d put a hand on my shoulder, but it’s not like he grabbed my ass. “He’s not handsy, Russell. He’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine. Now can we please order dessert?”
This time, he grudgingly accepts a menu. “Which one are we looking at?”
“Chocolate Hazelnut.”
He flips to the back of the menu, to the index listing all the nutritional information. “Fourteen hundred calories? Are you shitting me?”
“And ninety-two grams of sugar.”
“Good lord, Quinn. People must die in this restaurant every week. They must have heart attacks walking out to their cars. There should be medics in the parking lot, waiting to revive them.”
Our waitress sees Russell browsing the desserts. She’s a teenager, smiling and cheerful. “Looks like someone’s thinking cheesecake!”
“Not a chance,” he says. “But my friend’s going to have some. She’s healthy and strong and she has her whole life ahead of her.”
* * *
After dessert Russell insists on driving me back to the Maxwells’, so I won’t have to cross the highway after dark. It’s almost nine thirty when we pull up to the house.
“Thank you for the cheesecake,” I tell him. “I hope you have a great vacation.”
I open the door to the car and Russell stops me. “Listen, are you sure you’re okay?”
“How many times are you going to ask me?”
“Just tell me why you’re shaking.”
Why am I shaking? Because I’m nervous. I’m afraid I’m going to walk up to the cottage and find more drawings on the porch—that’s why I’m shaking. But I’m not about to explain any of this to Russell.
“I just ate fifty grams of saturated fat. My body’s going into shock.”
He looks skeptical. This is the classic sponsor’s dilemma: You need to trust your sponsee, you need to show you believe in them and have absolute faith in their recovery. But when they start acting weird—when they start shivering in cars on hot summer nights—you need to be the bad guy. You need to ask the tough questions.
I open his glove box and it’s still full of dip cards. “You want to test me?”
“No, Mallory. Of course not.”
“You’re obviously worried.”
“I am, but I trust you. Those cards are not for you.”
“Let me do it anyway. Let me prove I’m fine.”
He’s got a sleeve of paper cups rattling around the floor of the back seat so I reach down and grab one. Russell takes a dip card from the glove box and we both get out of the car. More than anything, I just want company walking back to my cottage. I’m afraid to go home by myself.
Once again, the backyard is dark. I still haven’t replaced the dead bulb that’s over my porch. “Where are we going?” Russell asks. “Where’s your house?”
I point toward the trees. “Back here. You’ll see.”
We step closer and I begin to discern its shape. I already have my keys in hand, so I test-fire the Viper and it makes a loud crackling noise, illuminating the backyard like a flash of lightning.
“Jesus,” Russell says. “What the hell is that?”
“Caroline gave me a stun gun.”
“There’s no crime in Spring Brook. What do you need a stun gun for?”
“She’s a mom, Russell. She worries about stuff. I promised her I would keep it on my key chain.”
The Viper has a tiny LED flashlight and I use it to scan the cottage porch: no new rocks and no new pictures. I unlock the door and turn on the lights and lead Russell into the cottage. His eyes wander the room—ostensibly he’s admiring what I’ve done with the place, but Russell is a veteran sponsor and I know he’s also scanning the room for signs of trouble. “This is really nice, Quinn. Did you do all this work yourself?”
“No, the Maxwells decorated before I moved in.” I take the plastic cup from his hand. “Give me a minute. Make yourself at home.”
You might think it’s gross, coming home from a nice dinner and peeing into a paper cup and then sharing that cup with a close friend so he can analyze its contents. But if you spend any time in rehab you get used to it pretty fast. I go into the bathroom and do what needs to happen. Then I wash my hands and return with the sample.
Russell is waiting anxiously. Since my living room is also my bedroom, I think he’s feeling a little awkward, like he’s breached some kind of sponsor-sponsee protocol. “I’m only doing this because you volunteered,” he reminds me. “I’m not really worried.”
“I know.”
He dips the card in the cup, holding it in place until the strips are saturated, and then he lays it across the top of the cup while we await the results. He talks a little more about his vacation, about his hopes of hiking down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon if his knees cooperate. But we don’t have to wait very long. The test panels show single lines for negatives and double lines for positives—and negative results always appear quickly.
“Squeaky clean, just like you said.”
He takes the cup, walks it back to my bathroom, and flushes the urine down the toilet. Then he crumples it up and pushes it deep down into my wastebasket, along with the test card. Finally he washes his hands, patiently and methodically, under warm water. “I’m proud of you, Quinn. I’ll call you when I’m back. Two weeks, okay?”
After he leaves, I lock the door and change into my pajamas, full of delicious cheesecake and feeling rather proud of myself. I’ve left my tablet computer charging in the kitchen, and since it’s still early I think I might watch a movie. But as I walk around the kitchen counter to retrieve the tablet, I see the drawings I’ve been dreading—not pinned by a rock to my porch, but pinned by magnets to my refrigerator.
I yank the drawings off the refrigerator and the magnets clatter to the floor. The pages are limp with moisture and a little warm, like they’ve just come from an oven. I put them facedown on the counter so I won’t have to look at them.
Then I hurry around my cottage and lock both my windows. The night ahead will be warm and stuffy and possibly sleepless but after my discovery I’m not taking any chances. I roll back the rug and check the hatch in the floor—it’s still securely nailed shut. Then I drag my bed across the cottage and use it to barricade the door. If anyone tries to open it, the door will bang into the footboard and jolt me awake.