“My dad died of a heart defect when I was eight. One day he was there, the next he was gone. No one knew about the defect until it was too late. I only have a few memories of him that are sharp, clear, as if they happened yesterday. The rest are just impressions of him as a dad, as a husband. I was so young. But he was the kind of dad who sat patiently removing gum from your hair when you had a little-girl freak-out at the idea of the gum being cut out.” My smile was watery. “The kind of dad who cheered you on at Little League like you were the next Frank Thomas when in truth you couldn’t bat for shit. And he was the kind of husband who kissed his wife every morning before he left for work and every evening when he got home. The kind of husband who dried the dishes she washed and made her laugh when she’d had a bad day.”

“He sounds like a good man.”

“He was. The best. And when he died, Mom started drinking to cope. She went to rehab when social services got involved, I was in foster care during that time, and then she got me back a few months out of rehab. But she fell on and off that wagon for a few years. Then when I was thirteen, she met Phil. My stepfather. That’s when she got help again, and she was sober for a long while. I was lulled into the idea that it was over.

“But then when I was nineteen, at college, Mom had a breast cancer scare. Nothing came of it, but it screwed with her head. She started to drink again.” I knew what Roane could see in my eyes. Despair. Pure and simple. “She’s been in and out of rehab for fourteen years. Her sobriety can last years and then something happens—losing a job, a friend dying—and she starts drinking again. Anytime life gets a little bit hard.

“Phil adores her. He’s a great guy and has been a wonderful stepfather, but he seems to have this unending reserve of patience and support for her.”

“And you?”

“I’m tired.” I smiled sadly through the tears that slipped quietly down my cheeks. “I’m tired of disappointment. For years it’s been a cycle of picking her up off the kitchen floor and putting her to bed, or getting a call from some stranger in a supermarket because my mom is so far gone, she can’t even remember how she got there. And then her remorse, her determination to get sober.