‘No.’ Sarah thought about the unlikely mix in her own household – four mismatched people who didn’t really belong together but shared space because each of them needed something the household provided. They were all still being extra polite and careful with each other, eager to please. Like four people on a honeymoon. But I’d know if one of them was stealing or doing drugs. Wouldn’t I? Of course I would.
‘Sarah, you need some more water?’ Oscar spoke sharply, reaching for her glass.
‘What? Oh, yes, please. Angela, how’s your drink, want some more?’
Oscar went off to fetch drinks after an anxious glance. Sarah re-focused and asked Angela, ‘You never saw any sign of stress? No clue what Frank might need money for? Was he gambling?’
‘Mr Homebody? Hardly. I was as big a sap as everybody else, I guess. I just thought he was a nice old guy. While we lived together he would do anything to make me happy – anything – because he thought it was wonderful that Ed had found a wife. I remember being surprised by how happy he seemed to be when we got married. I believe he thought of it as kind of like a passing grade, you know?’
‘A passing grade for what?’
‘For how well he had done at raising Ed. Like it proved Ed was all normal and could be happy like anybody else.’
‘Why was that a question?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe because he had been neglected by his mother and kicked around by her boyfriends when he was small. And frankly they were all … kind of odd, but in different ways. Luz was just this side of a whore, if she missed it at all. Marisol was like a nun, always in church. And Memo was hell-bent on becoming a tycoon – I think he thought if he made enough money he could make them all respectable. I used to look at them sometimes and wonder if they really did all have the same father. But everybody assured me that the first wife had been a saint, and you only had to watch Teresa look at Vicente to see she would never stray. And in spite of all the commotion I was happy, too, till Frank got arrested and Ed went nuts over it.
‘After Frank got hauled off to jail Ed began to say, over and over, “I owe him everything. I should be able to help him.”
‘Then Frank got out on bail, and for a few days Ed was like his old self. He was sure all they had to do was find a good lawyer and beat this thing. But when Frank killed himself and left that note the way he did, without saying a personal goodbye or anything, well, that was the last straw for Ed. He really never got over it.’
‘But you weren’t, um, sympathetic?’
‘What do you mean?’ Angela was instantly on the defensive. ‘Of course I was.’
‘But you said he was impossible.’
‘Well … sympathy is all very well but facts still have to be faced, you know what I mean? I was sorry for him, and for a few months I waited for him to start getting over it. Then I saw that he wasn’t healing – he was going down the tubes instead. So I started asking people, counselors and so on, what I should do. Because anybody could see he was headed for a crack-up. We were starting to have financial problems, too. His drug habit cost big time.
‘All the pros said, “You have to confront him. Tell him he’s got to get some counseling and snap out of this now or you’re done.” They said, “He’s got a life, he’s got you! He’s got a good career, it’s ridiculous that he’s throwing good life after bad. You have to make him stop.”’ She shook her head. ‘Counselors say things like that with great confidence. As if the wife could just … push a button.’
‘But you did make an effort?’
‘Yes, of course I did. And Ed tried, for a couple of weeks. He made appointments with the department counselor, and he kept the first two or three. But then he said he couldn’t do it any more – talk to a stranger about personal matters – so he didn’t go. What none of us realized was that by then he was addicted to meth.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. The greasy slide to nowhere. I’ve … I’ve done a little investigating of my own since I’ve been single – a little research in the evenings. It’s something to do, you know? Fire up the laptop when Jeopardy’s over and it’s still not bedtime?’ Angela hesitated, as if she were weighing up a dilemma, then looked straight at Sarah. ‘The runaway father, Morgan Lacey? He abandoned Luz when Eddie was small, and the family has managed to pretty much forget about him. But he was typical of the men Luz always picked – a lay-about when she married him and a fully-fledged drunk soon after. His father was a lifelong alcoholic who died of cirrhosis. Ed had addiction in his DNA all along. It never surfaced before because Frank forbade him to drink. He told him why it was too dangerous for him. Ed was chosen for the training crew partly because he was always so straight-arrow and sober. “Edley Do-Right,” they used to call him at the academy.’