in the car and headed back to the family estate. She seemed much more at ease now, thankfully, and I hoped her meeting did her some good. But I didn’t pry.
“If you, ah, if you need to come back here again over the next few days while I’m here, I’m happy to give you a ride again. It’s a lovely drive, and I enjoyed walking around town.”
She fiddled idly with the strap on her bag while staring out the window. Her phone must have been out of battery. She turned slowly to me. “I take it you know what the meeting was?”
“I saw the red chip on your bag. I, ah, I used to attend Al-Anon. I recognized it.” I kept my eyes firmly on the road and avoided her gaze so I wouldn’t make her uncomfortable.
I caught movement in my peripheral vision as she must have moved her hand to the coin in question. “Hah, so funny. I put it there to flaunt it to my parents. Not that they’d know what it meant, anyway. They didn’t want me doing the program because of my ‘high profile.’ Someone might get word of it, the horror! And write about it where prying eyes could see. Lots of pearl clutching. They wanted me in a private and isolated rehab instead.”
I blinked. “They aren’t, uh, supportive?”
She flicked a lock of her dark hair over her shoulder. “Understatement. Especially the ‘bad timing’ of it, what with the reporter here and all the other extended family members. I’m in this all on my own. Not even my friends approve. Because I’m not fun and I don’t party with them anymore. As if that’s all there is to life. Claire and Liz haven’t stopped whining about it since they got here.”
Huh. Another reason to dislike Lucas’s ex. Those reasons seemed to be piling up rather easily. “I’m sorry. That must be so hard. And with the big party coming up.”
“Yeah, exactly. I need all the support I can get and I’m not getting any. Claire has already told me I should take a ‘night off’ and just enjoy myself.”
I knew this was overstepping my bounds, but I just had to. “Is it wise to have her here at a family reunion when you are so early in your recovery?”
Julia shot me a speculative look. She probably thought it was just a typical case of the second wife being self-conscious about the first. I also realized that she probably didn’t know the same story I did about how bad that marriage had really been.
“It’s complicated. She’s my friend. But her family is also close with mine. I mean… I think my parents feel somewhat responsible for the dumpster-fire that her and Lucas’s marriage turned out to be.”
My absolute puzzlement and disbelief must have been written all over my face because she spoke again to attempt to answer my unasked questions.
“I mean, no one blames Lucas. He wasn’t in the best place emotionally and whatever. But it was hard on Claire, too. When things got ugly with his depression, he just walked out and disappeared. None of us knew whether he was alive or dead for almost a year. Especially with his struggles. He might have done something to himself, you know?”
I blinked. What the…? I knew about the disappearing part. And Lucas had mentioned something about concern for his health but I’d understood that to be his physical health—not his mental health. This sounded way more serious than he had presented it.
Julia obviously read my confusion on my face. She put her hand over her mouth. “Jeez I have such a big mouth, spilling the tea like that. Maybe he didn’t want you to know.”
I forced a smile and a shrug. “Oh no, we are totally open and tell each other everything.” When the hell had I become such a great liar, anyway? “I just feel sad whenever I hear about that time in his life. How sad he must have been.”
“Situational depression is no joke.”
I swallowed. “No, definitely not.” Taking a deep breath and letting it go, I vowed to have a talk with Lucas. I needed to make sure he was fine and not slipping back into any of that while he was here and exposed to his rather insensitive family members.
I turned back to her again. “So do you have a strategy about the party? Is your sponsor available for you to contact?”
She nodded. “Yeah, yeah. She told me I can call her