“Cybil?” Her mother was eighty-seven and in failing health.
“No. Cybil’s all right.”
“Then what?”
She sighed and unfolded her arms. Extended one fisted hand in my direction to show me what was on her palm.
Rough-textured, bronze-colored tin box, about the size of the ones sore-throat lozenges come in, with the same kind of hinged lid. Plain, no markings except for a few scratches and dents.
“Open it,” she said.
I flipped up the lid. Inside was a rectangle of cotton, and when I poked inside that I found a clear plastic tube, about three inches long, mostly full of a white powdery substance. I knew what the substance was even before I pulled the little cork stopper in one end of the tube, licked a finger, and tipped out enough for a bitter taste on the tip of my tongue.
Cocaine.
The relief I’d been feeling died in a sensation like an acid burn. “Where’d you get this?”
“I found it. A few minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“In Emily’s room.”
“Oh, Christ, no.”
“I went in to get my Roget’s,” Kerry said. “She was using it last night and I needed to look up a word. The box was on her desk, in plain sight, and when I picked up the thesaurus I accidentally knocked it off. It popped open when it hit the floor.”
Emily. Sweet, smart, intelligent, forthright, straight-arrow Emily. Not your typical rebellious thirteen-year-old; just the opposite, in fact. In the four years since Kerry and I had adopted her, she’d never given us any cause to distrust her. Not once.
I put the tube back into its cotton nest, closed the tin box, and slipped it into my coat pocket. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.”
“Yes.”
We went in and I shut the door. The living room was cold now, even though I could hear the furnace pumping warm air through the vents. I took Kerry’s hands in mine, chafed them until I could feel some of the chill go away.
“Did you find anything else?”
“No. Just what’s in the box.”
“But you looked. Searched her room.”
“You know I did. I had to, didn’t I?”
“Sure you did. I would’ve done the same.”
The privacy thing. We had a pact in this family: always respect one another’s right to privacy. Even under the circumstances, Kerry felt guilty at breaking the pact. Was that what Emily had counted on, why she’d left the box on her desk in plain sight? Flaunting it because she felt safe? No, that wasn’t like her. But hell, it wasn’t like her to bring drugs home in the first place.
Kerry said, “I keep telling myself it’s not as bad as it looks. That there must be some innocent explanation.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something. We had the drug talk with her, didn’t we? Both of us?”
“Yeah, we had the drug talk.”
“She swore she’d never have anything to do with drugs.”
“She probably meant it at the time. But thirteen’s a bad age, you know that. And peer pressure can be more persuasive than parental pressure.”
“But my God . . . pot’s bad enough, but cocaine . . .” Kerry sank heavily into her chair. “Maybe she hasn’t tried it yet. Maybe somebody gave it to her and she’s just thinking about it.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I don’t know what to think. I’m as hammered by this as you are.”
“It’s after five. She should be home by now.”
“Where’d she go after school?”
“The library to study with a couple of her friends. So she said.”
“Don’t start doubting her, babe.”
“Aren’t you doubting her? After this?”
“I’m trying to keep an open mind.”
“So am I. Oh, God, I hate this—I fucking hate it!”
Kerry almost never used the f word. And hearing it from her didn’t have any effect on me; I felt like using it myself. Neither of us had been this upset since the early stages of her breast cancer.
To calm both of us down, I went into the kitchen and poured her a glass of wine and opened the beer I’d been wanting for myself. The alcohol did its job, but there was no enjoyment in the after-work drink now. The beer seemed bitter, left a lingering sour aftertaste.
“When she gets home,” Kerry said, “let me do the talking. You just back me up.”
“Always,” I said.
Emily came in fifteen minutes later. All breezy and bouncy as usual—until she saw Kerry and me in the living room, standing like a couple of stone statues. She stopped, her smile sliding away, and blinked her brown eyes and said, “What’s the matter?”