He’d tried to leave me. Sure, he hadn’t tried to run off with another woman, but I still felt betrayed. I became a low-level version of Angela Basset in Waiting To Exhale, sorely tempted to pile all of Neil’s expensive suits into one of his cherished super cars and light it all up.
But, while the fantasy was momentarily satisfying, it was replaced by guilt. Neil wasn’t being selfish, he was being sick. How could I hold that against him? Why would I want to punish him? He was already going to feel crushing remorse, once he got better.
Wow, that was going to be a wild series of conversations.
When Valerie arrived, I was just about to go through the den. She joined me and didn’t ask many questions about Neil’s hospitalization as we worked.
“Sophie, you don’t really think he’s hiding drugs in lamps?” she asked, her voice tired.
She was tired? She wasn’t the one crashing from the first upper she’d had since college. “He hid some in a book. So, yeah, I’m going full Addams Family vault here.”
Valerie felt along the seat cushion of the leather recliner. “Aha!” she declared, triumphant as she held a flask aloft.
I don’t know what my face looked like, but Valerie sure reacted to it.
“Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat as she unscrewed the top. She sniffed it. “Okay, that is scotch. That is… Ooh, that’s good scotch.” She tossed back a drink of it, and I laughed with shock.
“Valerie!” I crossed the room to take the flask from her hand. “What is this, some sick Easter-egg hunt thing where we find all of Neil’s substance abuse hotspots and do all his drugs?”
But I took a drink, too.
Her lips canted in a smirk. “Why not? You did.”
So far, I really had been on a weird little “get high” scavenger hunt. I’d snorted the coke in the library, now I was swilling scotch in the den. No, this wasn’t a scavenger hunt. It was like the Wolf of Wall Street version of the Clue! board game.
There was a sick kind of closeness in it, and that’s what drove me, I guess. We didn’t find much, but every time we came across a little coke or booze, I felt like I was discovering a bit of Neil that had previously been hidden from me. I thought I knew what his life was like, but this was Neil’s life. A double life I couldn’t begin to understand.
It was nearly ten by the time we’d searched every room. We’d flushed some unlabeled pills, a few packets of cocaine, and poured seven hidden bottles of various liquors down the drains. All that was left was the kitchen.
“We won’t find anything there.” It sounded stupidly optimistic, considering how well I clearly didn’t know my husband, but I knew it in my heart. “He wouldn’t want to accidentally poison Olivia. Or me.”
“You’re right,” Valerie agreed. “I guess we can call it a night?”
“Yeah.” I looked at the dark windows. “If you want to stay here—”
“No. That’s very generous of you, but I have to get back.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked on her heels. “You two really need a smaller house.”
Poor Valerie. She had a life of her own, and yet again, Neil and I had dragged her into ours, where she decidedly did not want to be.
The house intercom crackled. “Ms. Scaife? I need you in the nursery. It’s important.”
My eyes widened, and I met Valerie’s own frozen panic. We didn’t run to the nursery, but we certainly walked faster than we should have had the energy to.
Mariposa met us at the door. She wasn’t covered in blood or screaming, which I had kind of expected in my worst-case-scenario default. In fact, she was smiling.
“I was having a little trouble getting Olivia to sleep, so I decided to let her burn off some energy. And…”
She pushed the door open farther. Olivia stood—stood!—in the center of the floor. She beamed up at us, clearly proud of herself, her two bottom teeth displayed as she jutted her jaw out.
“Oh…my…gosh!” I squealed, and Olivia shrieked in delight.
Because she knew I was proud of her. Because she wanted me to be proud of her.
My heart was going to explode.
Valerie covered her face with one hand. “I can’t believe it! I thought you said she regressed in all her milestones!”
“She had!” I gestured helplessly to Mariposa. “Right?”