The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,153

my chair. “I know I heard her.” The certainty in his words belied his puzzled frown.

I held his face in my hands. “It’s not like Gracie to lie, especially to you. You drank the Kool-Aid, too. Maybe you imagined it.”

He shook his head. “Time sped up. Things were a little brighter and funnier, the volume turned up. But I didn’t see or hear anything that wasn’t there. I know what I heard, Evelyn! I don’t understand why she won’t admit it.” He pulled me closer. His face looked no older than it had when we’d married.

“Don’t cry, Evelyn. Everything will be okay.”

“I’m not crying,” I muttered into his collar.

He laughed at my lie.

We kissed. He tasted different. Like water. But what resonated softly from his mouth and chest, pouring into me, felt ancient. Older than Addie.

Overwhelmed, I spent the rest of the day in a stupor, napping while the girls moved softly up and down the hall, taking care of the day’s chores. Adam brought me soup and crackers for supper.

After I’d eaten a second time, I finally felt coherent enough to discuss what we should do about the girls and the drugs. The power of the LSD awed me, and our daughters were so young and so delicate. I wanted to ban everything like it from the property.

But Adam disagreed. “If it is happening, we should know what’s going on. For me it wasn’t any stronger than marijuana, Evelyn.”

That shocked me into a momentary silence. The drug had hit me like a sledgehammer.

“No. No, Adam, we have to do something! We can’t just let them take these drugs. And they did something careless and stupid.” I felt my panic rise higher each time I said no.

“Evelyn, did you see their faces when I said the drug had little effect on me? I think it’s the same for them. I don’t think we can assume that any drug will affect them like it does their friends. Or you.”

I remembered what the doctor had said about the uniqueness of Adam’s brain and hoped they were like him in this. “Yes, Adam, they may be like you but their friends are not. And even if you think it’s fine for all of them to experiment, they should not have disguised drugs lying around. Plus, it’s against the law!”

He nodded his concession and sighed. “We need some rules. Still, we can’t control what our daughters do every minute of every day. And we’ve never tried to. We’ve always trusted them. Gracie is twenty and Rosie is seventeen. If we jerk the reins, especially now, Gracie will pull away and Rosie will run in the opposite direction. And Lil and Sarah will see them do it.”

“They are not horses, Adam.”

“They are horses. You’re a horse and I am a horse. We need to lead them, not take the responsibility from them.” Then, with a tender exasperation, he added, “Evelyn, trust me. I once trusted you with what the girls should do. Trust me now.”

A nauseating wave swept through me. I suddenly understood what I’d seen on Gracie’s face earlier that day—the same dissonance of shame and confusion I’d seen there after Jennie’s funeral, when I’d stilled her father’s voice.

My resistance collapsed. “Okay,” I whispered. “We won’t jerk the reins.”

The next night at dinner, Adam rapped his knife on his glass of iced tea. All four girls were immediately silent. Adam looked around the table at each of them, his gaze stopping at Gracie. “Girls, your mother and I trust you. We know you trust us to take care of you. We all have to take the responsibility for ourselves and for others. This is what your mother and I want from you.” He glanced at me and his voice grew firmer. “You will never have anything in this house again that does not look like what it is. No disguises. No more Kool-Aid and no funny brownies. Hallucinogens can be very powerful. If you are going to take them, you must do it at home and only rarely. Nowhere else. You must tell us if you or one of your friends is tripping. And if you get caught with anything illegal, we will not mortgage our home and livelihood to bail you out and pay a lawyer’s fees. Is that clear?”

There was a round of nods and “Yes, sir.”

“Gracie and Rosie, we have more to say to you after dinner.” Then Adam raised his glass as if for a toast. “Daughters, you have to