I don’t want to see her face staring back at me. Her name, her life, her mistakes. I’ve carried them all, and now I have to keep bearing her face.
The bottle whizzes across the room and smashes against the wall before I realize I’ve thrown it. A minute later, the hall light flips on and Amie appears, holding a baseball bat. She’s still half asleep with her fiery hair piled like a bonfire on top of her head. When she spots me, she drops the bat.
“Faith?” she calls as she makes her way to the kitchen.
“Nope ...” I begin to laugh. It makes my head swim. “No Faith here.”
“What the hell?” Her voice trails away as she takes in the shattered remnants of the whiskey bottle. She stares as if it will transform into something else, then she looks at me. Striding over, she grabs my cup and sniffs it. “Jesus, what is going on?”
“I needed a drink.” I tell her, lounging back in the chair. “It has been a terrible day.”
She puts the cup in the dishwasher and turns on me. “Is this about Jude?”
“Yes.” I nod my head, then shake it, “And no. I mean, Jude is terrible, but I’m terrible, too. We’re actually made for each other.”
“You’re not making any sense, honey.” She uses that sing-songy voice generally reserved for children.
I wave my hand wildly in the air. “None of it makes sense. I mean, look at how many awful people have money. Or how many wonderful people get cancer. Life is a shit show, my friend. The lucky ones check out early.”
Faith checked out early. She’s not the one here, disappointing her best friend. She’s not here pretending her heart isn’t broken. She doesn’t have to face the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow, even though it shouldn’t. “Come on,” Amie urges, trying to grab my arm and pull me to my feet. “Let’s get you to bed. You need to sleep this off. We can talk tomorrow.”
“Lecture me now. Wait, I’ll do it for you. I’ve always been good at this.” I raise my finger and shake it as I start. “You have so much to live for and you’ve worked so hard. Everyone slips up sometimes. Our flaws make us human. What matters now is your choices. You can choose to be sober.”
Amie raises an eyebrow, her lips pressed thinly together.
“Did you hear that?” I turn my finger on myself. “I can choose to be sober, but tonight I choose to be drunk.”
“I want you to start explaining right now.” Amie snaps her fingers, as though she could jolt me out of this.
“Or what? You’ll call my mom? She’s dead. My dad? He’s dead. My sister? Turns out, also dead. My grandmother? As good as dead.” It’s a bit depressing to rattle off the list for her.
“What do you mean your sister is dead?” Amie asks slowly.
“I found her death certificate in my Nana’s sock drawer. Surprise!” I throw my hands up in the air in mock excitement. “All these years, I’ve been waiting for her to come back and be my family again and for the last year, my grandmother has known that she’s dead. Well, she hasn’t known. She couldn’t remember, after all.”
Amie scoots a chair out and sits down at the table beside me. Taking my hand, she cups hers over it. “I am so sorry.”
She’s writing off what’s happened as though I’m drunk because I found out about my sister. If only it were that simple, but I don’t think I’m up to explaining it to her right now. Instead, I stick to the facts.
“Overdose,” I tell her. “No surprise there. I don’t even know how they found my grandmother. She never came to visit.”
“I can’t believe they didn’t tell you,” Amie muses.
I don’t tell her it’s because they couldn’t find me, because I spent years covering my own tracks. Or that I don’t know how Faith discovered where I’d gone. She sent a post card to Jude. Her death certificate found its way to my grandmother. She had known I was here in Port Townsend, and that I had her son.
And she never came.
“I want more to drink.” I whisper.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Amie pats my arm and suddenly, I am more pissed off than I’ve been in years.
Slamming my fists against the table, I repeat myself, “I want more to drink. You can give it to me or I can just go and get it. Your choice.”
Amie leans back and crosses her arms, “Takes a little bit more to impress me, honey.”
“Fine.” I stumble to my feet and make my way out to the garage. I don’t even bother to look at what I’m grabbing. “I’ll help myself, then.”
Her head falls forward as she sighs, “How long have you known those were there?”
“Since I moved in with you.” I screw off the lid and drink it straight.
“And you never…?” She’s confused now. I can’t exactly blame her.
“Drank it? I don’t really drink. You see, it was my sister who had the drug problem,” I explain.
“You’ve never done drugs?” Amie asks in a strangled voice. She stares at me as though she’s looking at a stranger.