“I guess I’d like to share,” I say, forcing a smile onto my face, but before I continue, the door opens. Jude slips in, unnoticed by anyone but me. He doesn’t take a seat. Instead he waits in the shadows, arms crossed over his thin, gray t-shirt. Sunglasses cover his tell-tale eyes.
Sondra reaches out and pats me on the back, as if to encourage me to continue. I came here for this purpose and I might as well be judged all at once.
“My name is Grace,” I begin, knowing that will get everyone’s attention. A few people begin to whisper, but Stephanie hushes them. “That’s probably a surprise to you because you’ve always known me as Faith.
“Faith was my sister. She was a drug addict and a few years ago, she gave birth to a beautiful, little boy. He was lucky. His mother’s addiction only took his hearing. It could have taken so much more. She abandoned him with me and then when he was nine months old, she came back, looking for him.” I tell my story. I don’t gloss over the choices I made or the sins I committed. No one speaks. No one interrupts with the well-meaning advice so frequently shared in this group—but no one tells me to get out either.
“I came here looking for answers,” I tell them. “I wanted to understand how she could choose her habit over her son. What I learned was that I had been addicted to her. I’d fallen victim to the idea that I could fix her. So I kept coming back, seeking some magical formula and when I couldn’t find it, I let the guilt take over. If she couldn’t get clean, I would take her place. I would serve her time. I would raise her son.
“It took me a long time to understand why I did that. It probably sounds pretty stupid to you, but I lost sight of who I was. She swallowed me whole, without ever even trying. I found out she was a dead a few weeks ago.” Sondra moves her chair closer to mine and puts her arm around my shoulder. A few people mutter apologies.
“I spent all this time pretending to be her because I cared more about her than myself. I was obsessed with who she might have been if she’d gotten clean.
“Love makes us the people we hope to be. I thought if I loved her enough, she’d come back. She’d be the person that I always suspected she could be. I didn’t realize I was giving all that love away and keeping none for myself. My therapist urged me to come here,” I shrug, knowing more than a few people can relate to that. “She told me I needed to face the people I felt I had wronged. Sound familiar?”
Bob nods across the room.
“But really, I wanted to come back and say thank you. We’re all addicts. Most of us just turn a blind eye to that fact. None of you do. You face it head on. It took me far too long to see that you were showing me how to be strong. You were giving me the courage I needed to come to grips with my past. I’m so sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry that I breached the bond of trust that we all agree to when we walk through those doors, but I’m so very grateful that I found myself here.”
No one speaks but a few people wipe tears from their eyes. Jude slips back out the door. He’s already heard this story, and I’ve given him my apologies.
There’s no one left to forgive me but myself.
“I guess I should go,” I say, pushing onto my feet.
“You can stay,” Stephanie offers quietly, and a chorus of other voices join her but I shake my head. I don’t tell them that I’d found a new support group or about the rape. They’ve been carrying my burdens for far too long to carry another, but they’re not about to let me walk out the door.
Sondra draws me into a tight embrace. “We aren’t mad at you,” she whispers, “so it’s time to stop being mad at yourself.”
Anne doesn’t hug me a second time but she gives me a small smile. “Since I don’t think you’re coming back,” she guesses, “I have one last piece of advice. Face your past and then let it go.”
“I’m trying,” I promise. No one questions me on that because it’s all any of us can ever do—hope that we’re still capable of change and believe there are still blank pages to fill in our stories.
Chapter 29
The warm scent of vanilla calls me from my dreams, or at least it calls to my stomach, which begins to growl adamantly. I pull a pillow over my head, but it’s no use. I’m too hungry to sleep in now.
“Why do you have to torture me?” I ask Amie sleepily as I pour myself a cup of coffee.
“You never used to sleep in,” she says, jabbing the spatula in my direction. “You’re getting soft on me.”
I clutch my mug in both hands, waiting for it to cool. Max is already at the table, haphazardly cutting into a stack of pancakes. I abandon my mug and go over.
Want some help?
It’s amazing to think that by this time next week, I may not be signing to him at all. He shakes his head, a goofy grin plastered on his face. Behind me, Amie starts to hum. My heart beats when I recognize the melody. I still haven’t confirmed that Jude wrote the song, but I know it in my bones. It’s been on every radio station for the last two weeks. Every time it comes on, I sit and listen and pick it apart.