is that?” the leader, Ray, asked thoughtfully as he leaned on the table at the front of the room. “What does that look in her eye say to you?”
He forced a lopsided smile. “All the things I said to myself after it happened. I’m a loser. Everything I touch turns to crap. I mean, I couldn’t even look at my own reflection in the mirror for the longest time. Because of my own selfish and irresponsible choices, Rebecca’s no longer . . . breathing.”
“And now?” Ray asked.
“Well. At first I had no choice but to quit drinking,” he admitted. “Incarceration will do that for you. But the other thing it does for you is give you time to think. And pray. And get a clear picture of who you are in comparison to the man you wanted to be. Sounds predictable I guess, but I found a God who forgave me before teaching me how to forgive myself and start again.”
“You just wish the mother-in-law could do the same,” Ray assessed with a knowing smile.
“More than I can tell you.”
“I know just what you mean,” a young guy in the back said as he stood. “I’m Rich, and this is my eleventh meeting in three weeks.”
“Hi, Rich,” they all greeted him.
“My folks have put up with the kind of nonsense from me that . . . well, I don’t know how they’ve done it.” Rich ran both hands through his oily dark hair. “But the thing is . . . they can’t manage to take my sobriety seriously, and every time they look at me I can see it in their eyes. They’re just waiting for me to come stumbling home at five in the morning, reeking of beer and puke. I mean . . . I get it. But still. I’d just love to look into their eyes and see them proud of me, you know? Every morning that doesn’t happen, shouldn’t they be proud of me?”
“Let’s remember,” Ray told them as Danny and Rich took their seats again, “the people in our lives—the ones who have known us through the drunken binges and the bail hearings and one wrecked car after another—they’ve been suffering, too. Just like it takes time for us to look at ourselves in the mirror again, it’s going to take time for the people we’ve dragged through the mud with us to watch us rebuild.”
Danny reached for his coffee before resting his ankle on the opposite knee and taking a long drag from the cup.
“The ninth step of our recovery says we should make direct amends to the people we’ve harmed, wherever possible,” Ray reminded them. “How about we go around the room? Let’s hear what everyone has to say about the challenges of rebuilding relationships, and maybe it will help each of us figure out whether recompense can be made.”
Danny had spent a lot of hours praying for guidance, wondering how he could ever possibly make amends to Jackie and Brent for all he’d taken from them. The second segment of the ninth step included a warning about not doing so if it might cause injury. Just a few random seconds face-to-face with him seemingly ignited the hatred in Jackie’s soul all over again, and he came back once again to the notion that the best way to atone might involve disappearing completely, evaporating from the earth so absolutely that his reminders were incapacitated.
Short of moving to a deserted island somewhere . . .
He suppressed a chuckle. Wasn’t that what Stanton had done? It hadn’t managed to bring much forgiveness for him.
***
Jessie decided to wear her hair down, randomly threading several skinny braids and anchoring them with shiny colored beads. She chose a sky-blue maxi dress and sandals, then grabbed a soft navy blue cardigan with jewel-toned gems embellishing the collar in anticipation of chilly breezes out on the water. When Danny arrived, wearing jeans and a light blue denim shirt, she grinned at him.
“We match.”
“We do,” he said before kissing her softly. “Will you braid my hair, too?”
“Of course. I’ll use rhinestones for yours to bring out your eyes.”
Snapping his fingers, he shook his head. “If only we had the time.”
When they settled into the Jeep and Danny turned the key, an NPR discussion blared from the radio.
“Talk radio?” she said with a grimace.
“Tune to your heart’s content.”
When she recognized a couple of notes of Rachmaninoff and decided on a classical station, Danny shot her a sideways glance. “Rachmaninoff. Really?”
“I like it,” she defended. “And apparently you know his work.”
“He’s one of my mom’s favorites,” he told her with a grin. “And I can see you and Mom sitting in a garden, drinking tea, listening to Mozart or something.”
“Now you’re just”—she chuckled—“What are you doing?”
“Why do I have to be doing something? I thought we were talking about music.”
“Classical music.”
He furrowed his brow. “Right. That’s weird, right?”
“A little.”
“Since Dad can’t take it, Mom and I have a couple of dates each year to the Philharmonic.”
“And you learned to love Rachmaninoff?” she teased.
“Love him?” He shook his head against the notion. “No. Appreciate him? Maybe. You?”
“Jack kind of threw me at classical music like a missile,” she said with a chuckle. “Trying to take the Slidell out of the girl, I think. But I found Rachmaninoff, Bach, and Vivaldi. The rest of it belongs in a bin with bluegrass and rap, as far as I’m concerned.”
As they pulled to a stoplight, Danny tossed his head back and laughed. When the light changed to green, he accelerated and darted a look at her as he did. “Speaking of Jack . . .”
“Must we?”
“Rafe called me today.”
Her heart fluttered. “I planned on telling you about it on the ride over, but . . . I guess I forgot.”
“Are you being straight with me?”
“Yes,” she exclaimed. “Truthfully, I put it out of my head and just started looking forward to tonight. I’m excited to see Steph. Which reminds me: don’t keep calling her Steph Neff. She hates that.”
He quirked an eyebrow and his face turned to stone. “If she didn’t want me to remark on it, she should have married a guy with a different last name.”
“Danny. She kept her maiden name just so people wouldn’t do that.”
Softening, he said, “Fine.”
“They’re really sweet together, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Vince is the first guy, in all the years I’ve known Steph, that has nudged her toward the awkward side of giddy.”
“Danny.”
