The Escape Collection: (The Escape Collection) (26 page)

I threaded the reed through the square I’d laid out on the table and gently lifted the whole pile up and…subsequently watched it fall apart. I tossed the reeds I was holding onto the mess and threw up my hands. “Why are we even doing this?”

Grams glanced over at my mess and chuckled. “We’re making baskets, dear.” She turned back to her own project that was neatly shaping up. “It’s arts and crafts time. And you did say you wanted to participate.”

I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. “I only said that because I want to spend time with you. You know I hate this stuff. I don’t have a crafty bone in my body.”

I could hear the laughter in her voice and when I peeked through my fingers at her, I could see her familiar warm smile back on her face. It was infectious, and as always when I saw Grams smiling and laughing, I couldn’t help but join her.
 

“Okay,” I said, grabbing a reed again. “But I still don’t understand basket weaving. I mean, I didn’t think anyone even did this anymore.” I slapped the reed against the table. “Aren’t there factories and machines or something to do this?”
 

“It’s a lost art form, my dear.”

“Did you ever think there was a reason for that?”
 

She shot me a look. “Whitney, if you’re not going to actually weave a basket, maybe you could get me a cup of tea?”

“Happily.” I pushed away from the table and tossed the reed back onto the pile.
 

I needed the reprieve from arts and crafts time. I could only take so much before my total and complete lack of creative ability started to frustrate me. Even as a child, I couldn’t manage to glue the macaroni on the paper to make a decent picture. But really, I’d never seen a decent macaroni picture before, so maybe it wasn’t just me. I poured Grams a tea from the cart they kept at the side of the room and turned to look at her and our table full of reeds. She’d somehow managed to construct a decent looking basket out of her materials, and was starting to pick from my pile. I swallowed a chuckle because there was no denying it. I definitely didn’t inherit any crafty skills from Grams.
 

Before I returned to the table, I took a second to look around the room. Dozens of elderly women and men were happily weaving baskets and chatting with their neighbors. They all seemed so much older than Grams, but then again, a lot of them were older. At eighty-two, Grams was probably one of the younger residents, but she was also one of the sickest. A point that was made when I saw her grab her side again. She winced and rubbed, just the way she had earlier. It took everything in me to not drop the tea and run to her. But I knew she’d just push me away and tell me everything was fine. So instead, I watched. She only rubbed for a moment, and then as if she knew I was watching her, she looked up and saw me.
 

Grams offered me a smile. The type of smile that told me not to question her. It was getting harder to sit back and watch her in pain and not be able to do anything or say anything to make it better. Or even to understand it.
 

I added sugar and cream and wove my way through the room back to Grams. I could no longer sit by and do nothing.

“Grams?” I cleared a place to put the cup of tea among the reeds and took my seat. “We really do need to talk.” She didn’t look at me but I saw her tense a little. “Grams, I mean it,” I said. “You know I need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, but it’s not just me.”
 

That got her attention and she paused in her weaving long enough to look at me with her eyebrows raised. Still she didn’t say anything.
 

I tried to keep my voice gentle, because I wasn’t mad, but I did need answers. “The past doesn’t matter, Grams,” I said. “Mom needs to know, too.”

“Whitney, the past always matters. But I—”

“You know I’m right. And that’s why I invited them for dinner next Sunday.”

“Them?”

I braced myself. “Mom and Stan.”
 

“No.” Grams tossed her basket to the table, where it landed with more of a thud than I would have thought possible for something made of dried reeds.
 

“Stan’s a good man, Grams. It’s not his fault that Mom does what she does.” Even as I spoke, I knew I wouldn’t change her mind. I could have scripted her response, I’d heard it so often.

“If he didn’t own such a shady establishment, there would be no place for your mother to do what she does.”

I shook my head. She always conveniently forgot about all the other strip clubs that existed in the world. “He’s a good man, Grams,” I said again. “He’s good to her. And didn’t you just tell me that love is all that matters?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I told Patricia years ago that man was not welcome in my house.”

“Well,” I said with a smile. “I guess it’s a good thing that house is mine now.” I waited for her to tell me it was still her house and just as she forced a roommate on me, she could tell me who I could and could not invite.
 

Instead, she said, “I won’t go.”

I waited a beat but Grams didn’t turn around. She stared at the mess on the table, her face grimly set in the way it only was when she spoke about my mom’s lifestyle. You’d think after all these years, she would accept it. I mean, I had. Or had I? The conversation I’d had with Reid the night before flashed through my head. Was I embarrassed? What about Glenmore Academy? I shook the thoughts away before I could dwell on them.
 

“Grams,” I said as firmly as I could. “You’ll come. And you’ll tell her about the cancer. She’s your daughter and despite everything, you love her.” She shook her head, but I knew it wasn’t because she disagreed. “You’ll come,” I said again, this time softer. “Because you love me.”

Ever since she’d let him read her journal, Reid couldn’t put it down. Whitney was a fantastic writer. Her words were full of emotion, and when he read her poems he could see into her soul in a way he was pretty sure she didn’t even realize she was putting forth. With her notebook in one hand, Reid flipped open his own book and combining Whitney’s words with his own, he began writing.

Maybe, cracked but I ain’t broken

Cracked.
 

Reid wrote the word again. Scratched it out and then wrote it again. That was it. He was cracked. But not broken. He looked up and out his car windshield at the brick building that was Lizzy’s treatment center.
 

If he was cracked, it was for no lack of trying to be whole. With a sigh, he stuffed the pen inside his notebook, tossed it to the passenger seat and grabbed his keys before getting out of the car.
 

It only took him a few minutes to walk to the main doors of the building, sign in and make his way down the hallway to his sister’s unit. He’d only been there once before and on that particular day when he signed her into treatment, despite the fact that she’d wanted to go, needed to go, Lizzy had been so angry, she was practically frothing at the mouth and he’d spent the last few weeks trying to cleanse his memory of the hateful words she’d spat at him. Logically, Reid knew she didn’t mean what she said. It was the drugs talking. It was the drugs boiling through her veins and infiltrating every speck of humanity that was his little sister. By the time he’d delivered her to the treatment center, there wasn’t a whole lot of Lizzy left. The drugs had mostly consumed everything that was sweet and wonderful about her.
 

But that would change. And that’s why he was there, sitting in the sterile waiting room, hoping and waiting for his little Lizzy back.
 

He dropped his head and clenched his hands together.
 

“Mr. Phillips?”

Reid popped his head up to see a motherly woman dressed in scrubs standing in front of him. He jumped to his feet. “Yes,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Reid. Lizzy’s brother.”

“Yes.” Her smile was warm and Reid instantly warmed to the woman despite the impression he had of her from their phone chats. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Marion, Lizzy’s mentor. Will you come with me?”

Reid followed her down a short hall to a small room that was set up to look like a living room. There was a couch that looked like it had been in that room for thirty years with the same thin cushions and orange plaid throw pillows. And two equally uncomfortable looking chairs. Marion waved her hand and Reid chose one of the chairs, with Marion sitting across from him.
 

She pulled the coffee table closer and put the file she was holding on top. “Mr. Phillips, I wanted to remind you that Lizzy has given me full permission to speak with you about her treatment so both of you can be on the same page.” Reid nodded. “I’m sure you must have a lot of questions about the status of your sister’s treatment.”

“I do.”

“And I’ll try my best to answer them for you. As I told you last time we spoke, Lizzy is responding well to treatment. Her mind is clear and she seems to be coming into her own.” Marion’s smile was bright and Reid relaxed back into the chair. “She’s really a lovely girl.”

“She is.” Reid nodded, remembering his little sister and the wonderful generous spirit she was before the drugs took hold. It had been a long time since he’d seen that girl. Cocaine, or pills or whatever else it was that she was on, changed Lizzy and turned her into a mean, scared, hollow version of herself.
 

“She really is,” Marion said. Reid looked at the kindly woman and could tell that she saw the doubt in him just as surely as he felt it. “I know it’s hard to think that it might be possible to have her back because of everything you’ve seen. But you have to understand it was the drugs. It wasn’t her. Lizzy is not that girl anymore.”

Reid nodded. His head moved up and down almost unwillingly. “I know that,” he said. “I do. It’s just—”

“I know,” Marion said. “And I’m not going to sit here and fill your head full of false promises. The truth is, there are no absolutes when it comes to treatment. But I can tell you that we are doing everything we can and with a lot of work and a little luck, Lizzy will stay clean.”

Reid let himself think of that. Lizzy was all he had. For too long, it had just been the two of them, and when Lizzy fell into the wrong crowd and let herself get swept up into the darkness, things changed. Suddenly it was him against her, about everything, all the time. At least that’s the way it was for Lizzy. The drugs changed her. How could they not? The constant fighting was exhausting. And more than that, looking at his baby sister and seeing what she’d become wrecked him. It was his job to take care of her and he’d failed.
 

Reid looked at Marion and offered her a weak smile. “That’s all we can hope for,” he said. He’d failed, he thought, at everything except bringing Lizzy here and finally getting her help.
 

“Now before I bring Lizzy in,” Marion’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “There’s just a few more things we need to discuss.”

Reid didn’t like her tone. The way she shifted her eyes down to Lizzy’s file and for a moment wouldn’t meet his gaze. His spine stiffened and suddenly the uncomfortable chair felt even more like a slab of concrete, if it was possible. “What aren’t you telling me, Marion?”
 

The woman wrung her hands together before looking up and into Reid’s eyes. “Like I said, Lizzy is doing fine. She is well on her way,” Marion added, when Reid didn’t look so sure. “But we’re still working on getting to the root of why she started using.”

“Easy,” Reid said. He sat back and crossed his leg over his knee. “She got involved with the wrong guy. Isn’t that a pretty common story?”

Marion nodded and Reid had the distinct feeling he was being patronized. “Yes, Mr. Phillips. But even with the wrong guy, a woman isn’t going to start using drugs unless there is an underlying issue.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not usually as simple as she tried it once and became an addict.” Marion held up her hand. “Now, don’t get me wrong. That is sometimes the case, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on with Lizzy.”

“Well, what do you think it is then?”

“That’s the problem, Mr. Phillips.”
 

“Please, call me Reid.”

“Reid,” Marion said, with another warm smile. “As I was saying, that’s the problem. Lizzy has put up some pretty strong defensive walls and we’re having a hard time getting to the root of the problem.” She picked up the file and started flipping through pages. “Now, we have here that both of your parents are out of the picture. It’s just you and your sister.”
 

“That’s right.”

“When was the last time Lizzy’s seen her parents?”
 

Reid swallowed hard and let his leg drop to the ground. “The last time she saw her mother was when we were little and she took off. Turned out she didn’t want to be a mother and a wife after all.”

“I’m sorry.”

Reid shrugged. “The last time she saw our father was a few years later when he split, too. He at least waited until I was old enough.”
 

Marion’s pen scribbled furiously across the page. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. I’m not sure how this never came up in Lizzy’s therapy.”
 

“It’s fine.” Reid shook his head. “It’s old news. Lizzy doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“But you see how important it could be?”

Reid shrugged again. Maybe he should have thought about how important it was, but in his mind what was done was done. It was possible that Lizzy didn’t see it the same way.

Marion looked at Reid. “So how old was Lizzy when your dad left?”

“Ten when Mom took off. Sixteen when Dad left. I was twenty-one and working I took care of things,” Reid said. The little voice in his head that told him he certainly hadn’t taken care of things very well popped up. After all, if he’d done a good job, they wouldn’t be sitting in a treatment center discussing his little sister.
 

“That’s a pretty impressionable age,” Marion mused. “Maybe it’s not quite such old news for Lizzy.” Marion’s voice was gentle but her words hit Reid squarely in the heart. “I think this information will really help in her therapy sessions. And with any luck, she’ll be ready for release soon.”