three floors below.
“I found you passed out in a living room chair,” Matt informed me. “Java was curled up in another. You both looked too cute to disturb, but I figured you’d be pretty sore in the morning if I left you in that position. Java can fend for herself.”
“I didn’t mean to pass out.” I yawned again. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“You didn’t get any, Clare.” He smiled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay…I was actually trying to wait up to talk to you—”
“What did I do now?”
He’d cut me off before I could mention the kiosks. But it didn’t matter anyway. Something more important had come up before I’d dozed off.
I shook my head. “Not you Joy.”
Matt’s body stiffened: aloof to anxious in less than sixty seconds. It didn’t surprise me. Even when we were married, Matt’s focus on Joy had been hyper-protective—when he’d been around, that is. When he’d been off on his coffee buying and brokering expeditions, an entire week could go by without even a call. For that, it had been hard to forgive him.
“She’s fine, Matt. At least…I think so.”
“What do you mean, you ‘think so.’” His tone was censuring, but I overlooked it. When it came to extreme sports, my ex-husband had no fear. When it came to our daughter’s well being, however, dread was his middle name.
“Take it easy,” I said gently. “When I first came upstairs, it wasn’t that late—just after eleven. I called her home phone and she didn’t answer. Then I tried her cell…”
“And?”
“And an obviously drunk boy answered.”
Matt stiffened again.
“After a number of tries, I got out of the boy what was going on. He was a friend of Joy’s. Apparently, she’d left her bag at the bar at some dance club and went to the restroom with a few people in their group. I asked how long she’d been gone—and he said a half hour or so but that was no big deal because, as he put it, ‘Joy obviously didn’t go to the restroom to rest.’ Then he hung up.”
“Which club, Clare?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. I tried calling her cell again, but the boy must have turned off the phone because I just got her voice mail for an hour after that. And before you ask, I left messages on her cell and her apartment phone, demanding that she call me no matter the hour.”
Matt stood up, rubbed his neck, began to pace the polished hardwood floor in his bare feet.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking she’s doing drugs. What else?”
“I thought about that, too, but it just isn’t Joy. For one thing, where would she get the money?”
“Clare, you’re so naïve. The clubscene revolves around young professionals with money to burn. They drink and do drugs because things are good, and they drink and do drugs because things are tough. Joy’s an attractive, outgoing young woman and she has a lot of friends. It would be easy for her to fall in with a crowd that would share their recreational drugs with her. She wouldn’t need money for that.”
“I know my daughter. She’s too smart for that. We had long talks about this stuff when she was in high school. She has her head on straight. Besides, she saw what…”
Matt stopped his pacing. “What? Saw what?”
“Nothing.”
He folded his arms and his biceps swelled, obscuring the NO part of the NO FEAR scrawled across his faded tee. “Saw what?”
“You. What the cocaine did to you. To us.”
Matt’s expression faltered. “I thought she was too young to…”
“Children, even young ones, pick up more than you know.” I was ready to point out that if he’d been around more, maybe he would have noticed how very perceptive his young daughter had been, but I’d made that point so much and so often over the years, Matt had to be sick of hearing it—and I was certainly weary of repeating it.
He uncrossed his arms, sat back down on the bed, met my eyes. “After rehab, I never did drugs again, Clare. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know it was hard for you. I know you’re straight now. I just pray you stay that way.”
“Junkies don’t need a reason to start. But they definitely need one to stop…I had more than one reason. I had two.” Matt’s hand came to rest on my leg. I felt the warmth seeping beneath the nightgown’s thin layer, warming my thigh.
I swallowed uneasily, trying not to react to his touch.