thousand bucks to find a new place. I was glad to let him have the place. I rented an apartment, and for the past year, I haven’t had to come home to clean up full ashtrays and empty beer bottles.”
“Did your mama drink a lot?” he asked. “You don’t have to answer that. I don’t mean to pry.”
“Yes, she drank a lot. Cheap men bought her cheap wine or whiskey or tequila. Those with more money bought her better wine, good whiskey, and top-shelf tequila. She seldom bought it for herself because she didn’t have the money to do so, unless she caught me doing something, punished me, and made me pay her whatever I was earning at the time to show me the ‘responsibilities’ of life.”
“How about you?” Noah asked. “Did you drink?”
“Nope”—she shook her head—“never even been drunk. I had the occasional beer at Luis’s family reunion, or a margarita on New Year’s, but I’ve always been determined not to be like my mama. How about you?”
Teresa waited several minutes for him to answer. Maybe he was tired of all this heavy talk and she should steer the conversation toward the beautiful sunrise coming up over to their left. Trees that had been nothing but dark blobs had begun to have details like limbs and leaves. The sky turned shades of pink, orange, and lavender against a backdrop of blue sky with big fluffy white clouds drifting back and forth as the wind carried them.
She wished she could take the question back when his expression went blank. He’d gone into a dark place, and she had caused it. “I’m sorry. That was me prying. Let’s talk about something else.”
Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “I’m a recovering alcoholic.”
That shocked her speechless for a full minute.
“How long have you been sober?” she asked.
“More than six years,” he answered without looking at her.
She had vowed to never, ever get involved with a drinking man again, but more than five years sober was a good testimony.
“As you pointed out—we’ve all brought baggage back to Birthright with us.” She shrugged.
He jerked his head around, and their eyes locked. “You aren’t going to pry like I did?”
“Nope,” she answered. “If you want to talk, you will. If you don’t, then it’s not my place to force it out of you. Since I got back here, I’ve talked to Kayla, and it’s helped me a lot to know I wasn’t the only one with a horrible past.”
“Have you told her everything?” he asked.
“Some things are so painful that it’s hard to talk about them.” She finished off her coffee and set the mug on the wide arm of the chair. “Maybe someday she and I will trust each other to tell it all, but not yet.”
“Do you know the difference between an alcoholic and a plain old drunk?” He reached across the narrow distance and laid a hand on hers.
“Yes, I do.” She smiled. “Mama said it often enough that it’s burned into my brain.”
“Drunks don’t have to go to those damned old meetings,” they said in unison.
He removed his hand and took a sip of his coffee. “I take it that your mother never went to the meetings?”
“Not while I was living with her.” Teresa wished that he hadn’t taken his hand away. She liked the way it made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “I hope that wherever she is now, she’s realized she has lots of problems and has done something about them. That is, if she’s still alive. With her lifestyle, she could be dead.”
That word—dead—sounded harsh in Teresa’s ears, and yet it was the truth. Suddenly, she felt guilty because she’d never tried to contact her mother after she’d disappeared from Sulphur Springs. If as an adult, she’d found her, was it possible that Teresa could have helped her turn her life around?
“Your mother was in California working in a bar a few months ago. I don’t know where she is now, but . . . ,” he said. “But I did find her if you ever want to reach out.”
“Thank you, but I don’t think I’m ready to open up that can of worms. I do think it’s ironic that Kayla’s mother and stepdad went there, too.” Teresa grinned. “Makes me wonder how many deadbeat parents head west. We were talking about you, though.”
“I have a sponsor in Houston that I still check in with every week, and there’s a meeting in Sulphur Springs I attend