“Oh, this is so not AA,” Phee protests. “All that powerlessness shit gets depressing after a while, don’t you think?”
His gaze scours her face. “What could you possibly know about AA?”
“Ten years in the trenches.”
“I don’t believe you. You don’t look like a longtimer.”
“I bounced in and out of AA like a rubber ball, always wondering what was wrong with me that it didn’t seem to take. I was drinking the last time we, um, talked.” It hadn’t been much of a conversation. She’s forgotten how much of a mess she was back then, and how horribly she’d bungled things after his accident.
“But you’re sober now?” he asks, with a tone that says this visit would be so much more understandable if she were totally soused.
“‘Sober’ is such a bleak word. Makes me think of Quakers. Or nuns. Amazed and alive, that’s what I am, five years now.”
“So what is this meeting, then, if it’s not AA?” He’s still skeptical, but also still talking. Maybe she can help him. If he trusts her, even a little, she’s likely to get further than she will beating him with the same old story she gave him the last time she saw him.
“Come and see.”
He shakes his head, takes a step back.
“I’ve sampled the church recovery groups, too. Not for me.”
Despite the sorrow in this house and the sad state her own heart is in, Phee laughs at the very idea.
“You thought I was about to turn evangelical on you? Sorry, but that’s funny right there.”
Her laughter sparks an answering emotion in Braden. A smile lights his eyes, activates an inner warmth that softens his face. “Enlighten me.”
“I’m an Adventure Angel.”
“A what?”
“An Adventure Angel.”
“And that means what, exactly?”
“Tomorrow. Four p.m. Come and see for yourself.”
He considers. “Tell you what. You stay away from Allie. No giving her any of the bullshit you laid on me about how this cello has a soul—”
Phee sighs. “It’s not Allie’s contract, Braden, it’s yours.”
“—and I’ll come to your meetings.”
This is easy to agree to, since Allie has only been the surrogate for her missing father, anyway. “Done.” She holds out her hand and Braden shakes it. Even though his is trembling, it’s warm and strong. The fingers curve as they are supposed to do.
Braden releases her and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I see what you’re thinking. They look fine. They do what I need them to, for the most part. I just have to operate them like they’re . . . robotic. A handshake is a different skill set from, well, you know.”
Phee feels the tears gathering in her eyes, blinks them back as best she can. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says. Impulsively, she hugs him. Before he has time to react, she turns and rushes down the hallway and out the door.
Braden doesn’t follow.
Chapter Nine
ALLIE
Allie used to love Mondays.
Today, her steps slow as she approaches the high school and she begins considering the alternatives. She’d thought about driving, had actually slid behind the wheel of her car and put the key in the ignition before a mental image hit her of her mother’s car, twisted and broken, and she’d bounced right back out again.
So she’s on foot, which is not unusual. She’s always liked the quiet time of walking to school, a chance to get her thoughts together and prepare for the day. Now her thoughts are to be avoided, and the whole idea of school, with its chaotic hallways and inquisitive teachers, is overwhelming.
But she can’t stay home, can’t be so close to her father all day. There’s the library, but the last time she went there, a tent was pitched, right there on the sidewalk, and a woman with two dirty little kids sat in front of it asking for a handout.
It made her cry to think about people living like that. She’d given the woman all of her allowance money, despite Steph’s vehement whispers that it was probably wasted and going to fund the drug trade. Allie didn’t care. She doesn’t think she can handle despairing faces today.
She could go to the zoo. Or the locks. Or Golden Gardens Park. Or she could just snag a table in a coffee shop and spend the day surfing the internet. But she seems to be utterly incapable of making a decision. When her phone chimes, she stops to look.
Steph: Are you coming to school? Please say yes. It’s a wasteland without you.