10. Dana

Chapter 10

Dana

T he waiting room of Drew's pediatrician was a nightmare. Sneezing, snotty, screaming kids surrounded us on all sides. Somehow, despite the noise, Drew napped quietly in his carrier on the chair next to me.

Vee had told me she was happy to take him instead, but everything she did lately had been getting on my nerves to the point of me not even considering it. It was his four-month checkup. Besides, I should be the one to take him, the one to be there. But mostly, I wanted to take him out of spite for my sister.

She hadn't shut up about how I should let my parents meet him, how I should forgive them, give Mom the chance to show me that she had changed. It was incessant, and with every passing hour, I was starting to regret letting her stay with me, even if it was helpful to have another set of hands with Drew. I didn't think there was a single bone in my body capable of forgiving Mom, or Dad, by extension.

Had she forgotten everything we'd gone through? Had she dismissed our entire childhood, looking at it through rose-colored glasses?

Looking down at Drew and focusing on him helped to drown out the cries and shouts of the other kids in the waiting room. He was so peaceful, so calm, his little nose just barely beginning to leak. His lips and eyebrows twitched as he slept. My everything, all bundled in one tiny package.

How was anyone capable of not caring about something so perfect?

————

The biting cold was nothing against my warm cheeks, overly puffy jacket, and determination.

I'd wanted Mom to come with me. Stranger danger, and all that. But Jenny only lived a few houses down, Mom had said, and I'd be fine. She'd done that weird thing again where her words had all slid together into one string of consciousness, but I was getting better at deciphering it when it happened.

Making a mental note to ask about it during the health portion of class, I jumped from the bottom step of our front porch into the winter wonderland before me, making an indent into the snow that nearly reached my shins. Dad hadn't shoveled our walkway, he said we didn't need to seeing as we walked over it every day. But the snow had picked up since Dad and Vee had gone to the mall, their tracks barely visible in the uneven slush beneath my feet.

To Jenny's and back. Ten minutes. I'd be fine.

She was in the grade above me and had offered to let me borrow one of the books she had to read when she was in my class last year. Mrs. Stein had assigned us the project on Friday, and with Monday quickly approaching, I needed that book.

I tried to treat the walk like an adventure. Each little snowflake was a wonder, no matter how small. The Christmas lights our neighbors had decorated their houses with weren't on yet, and I found myself wishing they were so I'd have something other than a wall of white to look at as I trudged along, the wind howling and stinging my cheeks. If my parents had the time or energy to hang Christmas lights, I'd definitely make sure they were on all the time.

I counted the houses as I walked. One, with a deflated Santa Claus blow-up decoration lying limply on the lawn. Two, with hanging icicle lights and plastic reindeer in the front yard. Three, with a trash can sitting on the edge of the road filled with half-used wrapping paper. I stopped for a moment, considering plucking out one of the plastic tubes so I could wrap up Vee's gift in something other than printer paper. The longer I looked, the more the patterns on them stuck out to me.

Huh. One of them was the same pattern I'd seen on Santa's gifts to me last Christmas.

Weird.

Four, with nothing but a wooden sign out front that read, "Santa, stop here!"

And five, Jenny's house, with intricately placed Christmas lights along every edge of the house and wrapped around the dying bushes and trees. Blow-up decorations littered the lawn, a waving Santa and a swaying Rudolph in the heavy wind.

I sprinted up the front steps and knocked on the door. Jenny's mom, Ms. Alice, opened the door with Jenny's book in hand.

"Hi, Dana," Ms. Alice cooed, a smile spreading across her cheeks before falling abruptly. "You're all alone?"

I nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Mom said I was big enough to go on my own," I grinned, putting my hands on my hips like a superhero. " She's napping. "

" Oh. Okay, " Ms. Alice said, her brows scrunching together and creating lines on her skin just like my parents. "Do you want to come in? I was just about to make hot chocolate for Jenny."

" Oh, no thanks, Ms. Alice. I've got to get home and start reading." The idea of a hot chocolate and Jenny's clean house was tempting, but I didn't want to worry Mom by being gone longer than she'd said it would take. So instead, I gratefully took the book from Ms. Alice's hand and waved her goodbye with my mitten-covered fingers as I skipped off her snow-shoveled walk.

The cold had started to settle into my jacket as I began the short walk home. I didn't bother to count the houses this time since I knew the front of ours like the back of my hand, even covered in heavy snow. Maybe if I was lucky I'd be able to convince Mom to get up and make me a hot chocolate like Ms. Alice.

Wiping the snot from my nose, I followed my own footsteps through the front yard and up to the door, trying to line them up perfectly backward so my boots wouldn't be covered in snow. I pulled open the noisy screen door and turned the handle, but it didn't give way.

Confused, I tried again.

And again.

"Mom?" I called, shoving my shoulder against the door before trying the bell. She must have turned the lock while I was gone, but she knew I'd be back…

"Mom!" I tried again. I knocked, rang the bell, and shoved my face against the window trying to look in before my breath fogged it up. But there was no movement inside.

I bounced from toe to toe, trying to warm up a little. Why wasn't she answering? Something had to be wrong.

I banged on the door again, harder this time. It hurt the side of my palm. "Mom!" I shouted. "Mom, let me in! It's cold!"

I don't know how long I stood between the screen and the front door, pounding on it and shouting. But by the time Dad's car pulled into the driveway with Vee in the front seat, my fingers and toes had gone numb and my body had started to ache. I was shivering, my face burning from the lack of shelter or warmth, and I almost envied the redness on Dad's face when he stepped out of the car and slammed the door. At least his was from heated anger, not from the biting cold.

"Why are you outside?"

I gestured weakly to my pocket where I'd shoved the book once my hands had started to hurt from holding it. "I had to get a book for school from Jenny's house. Mom's not ? —"

"So you just left?"

"No, I asked Mom to come with me and she told me I was big enough to go alone that she was tired," I explained, my words sounding a little funny from my chattering teeth. "But then she locked me out."

"For fucks sake, Dana," Dad grumbled. "How long have you been out here?"

I shrugged. I didn't know, time was still confusing for me and it had felt like an eternity. "I left at two," I said.

"You've been out here nearly an hour?" Dad fumed, his nostrils flaring as he fished his keys from his pocket. "Why didn't you go to a neighbor's house? Or back to Jenny's?"

I watched as he shoved the key in the lock and twisted the door open. Quiet music filtered through the open door along with the sound of the television and that sickly scent I'd been smelling a lot lately when Mom was acting weird. "I…"

Vee looked at me in bewilderment as she stepped into the house.

" I just wanted Mom," I breathed.

————

The memory stung as I watched Drew begin to squirm in his carrier. I didn't know until later what had happened that day. Mom had been drinking, and after I'd left she'd entirely forgotten I had stayed home with her instead of going with Dad and Vee to the mall. So when she'd noticed the unlocked door, she locked it, drank herself stupid, and passed out on the bed. She'd been dead to the world until Dad woke her up.

I didn't want Drew to have to grow up experiencing things like that. He'd never have to question whether I loved him, whether I cared. And he didn't need her or anyone like her in his life.

"Andrew and Dana Beechings?"

Shit. I'd almost forgotten where we were.

I gently picked up Drew's carrier and followed the nurse back to our allocated room. The doctor, clad in his white jacket and greying hair, beamed at us with a customer-service smile as we walked in.

The doctor weighed him, examined him, checked the little red spot beneath his left ear that I'd noticed the night before, and gave him the all-clear. Apparently, babies can get pimples. All in all, it was an uneventful checkup, and although I was glad that he was in a good percentile, I couldn't shake the irritation from Vee and the memory off.

"Before you go," Dr. Sinclair said, catching me off guard as I packed up the diaper bag, "I wanted to check if you'd been able to get any more medical information from Drew's paternal side. We still need to update that portion of his record."

"I haven't had the chance to speak to his father yet." Lie. "I doubt there's anything significant."

"If Andrew's dad is in network, we could obtain his medical history fairly easily?—"

"I'll figure it out," I snapped, the words coming out harsher than I intended.

Dr. Sinclair's brows rose as he jotted something down. "If you don't want to, that's fine. It would just be useful to know if there's anything on Dad's side that we should be looking out for."

I huffed a sigh and lifted Drew in his carrier. "I'll figure it out," I repeated, hoping that maybe that time, he'd heard me.

————

The brewery loomed over me like a sleep-paralysis demon, inescapable and unmoving. This would be my first shift back after my recent night with Cole. I wasn't looking forward to the inevitable awkwardness or the potential conversation—I just wanted to keep to myself and get back home to my son.

Vee had apparently canceled the nanny's shift for the evening to take Drew on her own. I'd chewed her out for it when we'd gotten home from the pediatrician, telling her that she couldn't just take a shift away at the last minute, that it could unexpectedly impact the nanny's income. In truth, I was more concerned about leaving her alone with him after all the talk about our parents. In the back of my mind, I worried that she might try to take him to meet them without my knowledge.

By that point I didn't have much of a choice, though.

Pushing my way through the doors, I walked over to the tour guide closet, hung my purse, and slid on my vest with Pearson Beers printed across the chest and back. I tried not to appear annoyed as I clocked in, giving a courteous nod to my manager, Allison, and the handful of waitresses showing up at the same time as me. I didn't want to bring my frustration with Vee to work.

As I slipped out and through the hall, down past the elevator and through the doors into the main brewery space, I caught a glimpse of dusty blonde hair and a neatly pressed black suit.

I froze, half-hidden by one of the massive metal tanks, and watched as Cole spoke casually to a man I didn't recognize. He grinned eagerly, almost as eager as he looked before his mouth devoured every sensitive inch of my skin, and out popped a single dimple on his left side.

God dammit.

Okay, so it wasn't a one-time thing. It's okay. It never was. We knew this, I tried to tell myself. But god, why did he have to be within reaching distance nowadays? I'd already proven to both of us how easily I folded when it came to him. I didn't need it going any further, didn't need that temptation and the potential for another drunken blowup.

His eyes locked with mine.

As I watched his lids drop and his smile turn into a smirk, I knew I'd been caught. I sprinted across the brewery, hightailing it to the other side where the break room was. I still had five minutes until my next tour was scheduled to start and I'd rather spend it in there than being preyed upon by the one person I didn't have the guts to speak to right now.

A handful of waitresses and a fellow tour guide stood in the corner, cups of water in hand, giggling amongst themselves. I collapsed into one of the chairs and stared at the door, hoping he wouldn't follow me in.

"There's no way he was in rehab," one of the girls snickered, lifting her cup of water to her lips. "I bet he just learned to hide it better."

Rehab.

"No, I'm positive," another said. "I heard him mentioning it to his friend the other day. He was talking about things he'd learned while he was gone, and the guy asked if those were things they taught in rehab. Cole nodded yes."

Cole. I turned my attention to them, fully listening, no longer caring about who walked in the door.

"He was probably joking, Sarah."

She shook her head. "No, he was definitely serious. I'm positive he was in rehab."

"For drinking?" I blurted. The girls turned to me, quizzical looks on their faces as if I should already know the answer.

"Oh shit, that's right, you didn't see him before he left," Sarah said, her mouth popping open as if the cogs were turning in her head. "He used to drink here all the time. It got out of control—a lot—but most of the time he was barely functioning. Like he was constantly on autopilot. Definitely an alcoholic."

And just like that, everything clicked.

The bottles strewn across his counter a year ago. The drinking first thing in the morning. The anger. The way he always smelled faintly of booze when I met up with him despite not appearing drunk. I don't know how I'd never put two-and-two together considering my experience with it, but realization sank like a stone in my gut.

Cole was an alcoholic, just like my mother.