“Synthetic marijuana isn’t marijuana,” he’d say. “It’s two percent marijuana, ninety-eight percent unregulated components, which is as good as a hundred percent poison. This is a high that kills, get me?”
I volunteered often to go with Dr. Dweck to these schools. It felt good being with young kids who laughed and sang, weren’t sick, dying, orphaned, tortured, or homeless.
Father Alphonse McNaughton took over at St. Paul’s.
He was a traditional priest who stuck to the book, and his homilies were solid if not inspirational. I was asked to help with church benefits, and I always said, “Yes. When?”
Along with my job at Prism, good works were bringing me not just peace but joy, too.
Kyle Richardson took me on as a client, and together we set up a private foundation. I thought Karl would have approved of my anonymously donating his money to Boston clinics for the poor. My “father” and I had no contact, but when I learned that he had been admitted to an in-house drug rehab facility, I made sure that whatever Harvard’s health insurance didn’t cover was settled anonymously from my account.
When I came home at night exhausted from the activities of the day, unrest settled over me, and sadness rolled in like high tide beneath a full moon. James and I exchanged a few texts, but they were so impersonal, I felt worse after writing to him.
I prayed. I wrote in my journal daily, adding new stories of individual lives to my collection of hundreds. I entertained Birdie, and she did the same for me.
But I still felt less than whole.
I knew what was missing. I wasn’t at the center of anyone’s life. I was really alone, and midnight was the loneliest time of all.
That was when I thought of Karl and the best of our times, which had been spent lying together in bed, our sides touching, our fingers entwined, telling each other about what we had each lived through and felt since saying good-bye that morning.
And I ached for our baby. My instinct to check on her at night was still alive, even though Karl and Tre were not.
So every night, I draped my orange tabby cat over my shoulder, and I climbed the stairs. We got into bed, and I thanked God for all the good things in my life.
I closed my eyes, and then a paw would tap my nose, a yowl would ensue, as another morning arrived.
Chapter 81
ON A dark January morning, a blizzard fell on Boston and wrapped it in a cold, blinding hug.
When I arrived at Prism, homeless people bundled in rags were piled up three deep against the storefront. There were no lights inside the facility, and no one was home.
Rob called me. He was stuck in a snowdrift on Pearl Street. I had never needed a key to Prism, and I didn’t have one now.
Louise, our nurse practitioner, had a spare, and she was on the way, but before she arrived, someone hurled a spanner through the glass of our new pharmacy. The opportunity to steal drugs was too good to pass up, and people poured in through the shattered plate-glass window.
I dialed 911 and was yelling to the operator that we needed squad cars, pronto, when a boy of about ten threw his arms around my waist and cried, “Don’t let them take Mommy to jail. Please.”
I hugged him back as people eddied around us and snow obliterated the curbs and hydrants along Putnam Avenue. Louise called out to me over the wail of sirens as she came up the sidewalk toward Prism, her head lowered against the driving snow. As squad cars streamed onto the street with red lights flashing, my phone rang in my hand.
“Rob? It’s a mess. But Louise—”
“Brigid. It’s James.”
“What?”
It was too much to comprehend in one second.
The boy broke away from me, Louise struggled with the door lock, dark figures scattered with bags of drugs in their arms, and cop radios snapped and crackled around us.
“James!” I shouted into the phone. “I can’t talk now.”
“Call back when you can,” he said.
It took all morning to sort out the chaos. Our clients were let inside. The young boy found his mother, and they came in for coffee and a good cry. Rob arrived by ten and shouted orders in the calmest possible way. When I finally got to my office, shed my coat, scarf, and mittens, I hit the Return Call button on my phone.
“James?”
“Everything okay?” he asked me.
“For the moment,” I said. “How are you?”
“Can you take a break for a day or so? I want you to see what I’m up to.”
“James. Tell me. What is it?”
“Telling you will spoil the fun. You have to see this for yourself. Expect the unexpected.”
I was actually a little annoyed. I hadn’t heard from James in months, hadn’t seen him in more than a year, and now he was telling me to drop everything, and he wouldn’t tell me why.
“Will you come?” he asked.
“There’s a blizzard here,” I said, “if you didn’t know. A whopper. And I have a job. And a cat.”
“When the blizzard moves on, see if you can take a few days off,” said James. “And bring the cat.”
Chapter 82