“GREG’S DEAD.” IT’S THE FIRST LINE OF MOLLY’S EMAIL. Blunt, with nothing there to soften it. “He overdosed in a parking lot. I wanted to tell you over the phone but you never answer when I call.”

I’m in the midst of debating Matías’s proposition when I get Molly’s email. The news launches me back to that day at the coffee shop in Bowling Green, when Greg told me that he was planning to meet up with his intern in Miami instead of going home and putting his life back together. I think about what he told us during the first week, how his father had left when he was a kid, how he’d never thought himself worth sticking around for. Never thought himself worthy of love.

While I was in treatment I heard about others who’d checked out and died soon afterward. They overdosed, drove drunk, committed suicide. It was hard to make sense of these incidents, especially since everyone I encountered left the Ledge seemed so determined to get clean and sober. At what point did that resolve fade? After a few months, a few weeks? On the car ride home?

It terrifies me to think about how close to danger I’ve often lived. “Better safe than sorry.” Everyone at the Ledge echoed the adage whenever I vowed to distance myself from destructive behavior and people, and especially from my mother. For a long time, I’ve imagined telling her that I want everything she’s wanted me to pursue—a marriage, children, a lucrative career. But growing up in her house, subjected to her erratic rages, I didn’t have the energy. I was exhausted just trying to survive.

In high school I would skid down the driveway to get laundry detergent—her discovery that the bottle was empty would trigger a rageful episode—only to wish to casually drive into incoming traffic on the way there. I couldn’t always distract myself with sex or a drink, or any other usual means of distraction. In the meantime nonexistence often seemed like a viable alternative.

By the time I would return from the store she’d have calmed down. “Yalla, let’s go for breakfast,” she might suggest. I was expected to have brushed off the rebukes and be ready for eggs Benedict.

“I’m leaving,” I would say, a halfhearted effort to stand up for myself, swearing to sear the memory of the incident onto my consciousness. I knew better than to leave myself no out. But inevitably, the hurt would fade too quickly, and two hours later we’d be having lunch.