Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
It being a Wednesday, Jack wondered what Will did that allowed him to be home during the week. Not that he’d ask. Jack knew better than to pry into the lives of the people he did work for. He’d learned as friendly as they might seem, they were generally just being polite. He was polite back, but that was as far as it went.
Though it was only eight o’clock, Jack had been up for hours. Since Emma had died he could never sleep much past the sun’s rising, though that didn’t stop him from lying awake long into the night, his mind refusing to shut off even though he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to think about.
For the first few months after she’d died, he started to use alcohol as a way to calm himself down enough for sleep. It began innocently enough, he supposed—with a shot or two of bourbon to unwind while he read or watched TV. After a while he was drinking more than a shot or two—sometimes drinking half a bottle before he’d drugged himself enough to pass out.
Each day he’d take mental stock—did he have enough liquor to get through the night? He would wake up, the bottle beckoning beside the bed like an old friend. Why not take a sip or two to start the day? To get him through?
One morning after an especially horrific nightmare in which he watched Emma and the boys plummet to their deaths while he stood helplessly by, he bypassed the tiny shot glass, instead grabbing the glass he normally used for water. With shaking hands he poured several ounces and drank them in a gulp. Closing his eyes, he sighed with relief as the burn in his gut shifted to a welcome heaviness in his head, blotting out the bloody, broken images from his dreams.
He lay back on the bed and passed into a woozy doze. When he came awake with a start several hours later, his first glance was again toward the bottle. Only opened the night before, it lay empty on its side.
Deeply shaken, he called his baby sister, Anna, who lived twenty miles away and was a stay-at-home mother.
“Anna. I need help. I’m becoming a drunk.”
While he was waiting for her to arrive he cleared out his liquor cabinet, opening and pouring out the contents of each bottle into the kitchen sink.
Anna arrived armed with coffee and donuts. Though she was a full ten years younger than he, he’d always felt closest to her of his three sisters.
They spent the morning at his kitchen table, a fine old piece he’d built himself from a huge slab of oak someone had been looking to get rid of when they were finishing out their basement.
She calmed his fears about becoming an alcoholic, as she herself was a recovering one. “You realized you were drinking too much and so you did what?”
“I called you.”
“That’s not all you did. You got rid of your stash. You recognized drinking half a bottle of whiskey at seven a.m. wasn’t a wise thing to do. I don’t mean to minimize the experience, but I don’t think labeling yourself a drunk is terribly useful right now. If you were an alcoholic, trust me, it would take you way more than one drink in the morning to admit you had a problem, much less do anything about it.”
Anna convinced him to see a therapist, just for a while, to work through some of his feelings of loss and move on with his life. He’d gone, mainly to please her, but it hadn’t really helped all that much.
Time—that great healer—had done the most, along with getting himself back to work and keeping busy. He still missed Emma, but not with the sudden, shocking wrench of pain he experienced during those first few months when he’d realize anew he would never see her again.
The front door opened. Will was dressed in blue jeans, his white shirt unbuttoned over a smooth, tan chest. He was drying his hair with a towel, his face ruddy from a recent shower.
“Hey, sorry. I didn’t hear the bell at first. Please come in. I overslept.”
The scent of shampoo and soap assailed Jack as he brushed by Will to head toward the kitchen. Will followed. “Want some coffee? I just put some on. I haven’t had breakfast yet. Would you like something? I have some croissants coming out of the oven in a minute.”
Jack started to refuse out of habit, but the coffee smelled wonderful and the small cup he’d had two hours before was but a distant memory. “Coffee would be fine, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Will took two mugs from the cabinet beside the sink. The wood looked to be of high quality, but it had been painted a seasick green color, which clashed violently with the pale orange countertops.