But I had a long way to go. Another month of rehab before I could even get out of California. Who knew what would happen when I was finally back in Lubbock? All I knew was that I’d do anything to make up for what had happened with Julia.
One of the things that the center really pushed was family therapy days. It helped the therapist connect to the entire situation. And mine was always trying to get to the root of the problem. What had caused me to be this way?
I insisted I had always been this way. He smiled and assured me that I didn’t come out of the womb as an alcoholic. It might run in my family, but that didn’t mean I had to succumb to it.
We were in one of those sessions when Jensen leaned back in his chair. “I wonder if some of this goes back to the fact that you were there when Mom died.”
“You were there when Mom died?” Sutton whispered. Her voice was as light as a feather caught in the wind.
“Yeah,” I said, angling away from that particular conversation. “I was with her…or…well, yeah.”
“Tell us more about that, Austin,” my therapist said. He pointed his pen toward me, as if to say, Go on.
“About Mom?”
“I didn’t know you were with her either,” Morgan said.
“Me either,” Landon admitted.
My eyes found Jensen’s in a panic.
He nodded and patted my back. “It’s okay. We’re not Dad. We can talk about Mom.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Okay. Well, I hadn’t known how sick Mom was. Dad didn’t like to talk about it, and Mom tried to hide it. She was the perfect wife and mother. She was still cooking, cleaning, and taking care of us kids through chemo. It was a pretty traditional marriage by that standard, I guess.”
I reached for the glass of water in front of me and took a long drink. I was off on a tangent. That wasn’t what they wanted to know about anyway.
“I didn’t even know about the pancreatic cancer until she died when I was nine. Maybe you did,” I said, gesturing to Jensen, “but I was in the dark.”
“I guessed,” he said. “It definitely wasn’t what Dad had said it was, but he wasn’t ever honest with us.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Landon muttered.
“She wasn’t even supposed to have it,” I continued. “She was so young. Only thirty-five. With five children, ages twelve to one.”
“That had to be hard,” the therapist said.
“It was.”
My siblings nodded. I could see that they were all remembering their version of what had happened after Mom died. Jensen had taken over. Life had gone on, but it was never the same.
“I was watching her one day. Dad had told me to stay with her. She was sick and got into bed. I remember telling her that I wouldn’t nap with her because I didn’t want to catch her cold. I went out to play instead of staying with her, and when I came back, she was gone.”
“Oh, Austin,” Morgan said softly. “That isn’t your fault.”
“I agree with your sister,” the therapist said. “As a nine-year-old boy, you were not responsible for the care of your terminally ill mother. It’s perfectly reasonable that you wanted to go outside and play.”
“Logically, of course, I know that. But I wasn’t logical. I covered up my distress as a kid and through my teen years. I looked adjusted. Maybe I was adjusted.”
“Of course. It sounds like you internalized the issue. When did you start drinking regularly after that?”
“After Dad died.”
“Tell us about that,” the therapist continued.
“I was twenty and in college at Tech. I was at a bar when I got the news,” I said, as if that memory had just dropped into my mind.
“So, you were around alcohol when you found out about the death of another parent?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I remember thinking about all the stuff that had happened with my mom, and suddenly, I just…I couldn’t cope. Not that any of that is an excuse. I suppose it’s my reason.”
“Shit,” Landon said.
“That’s awful,” Morgan said.
Sutton’s eyes were red, and she was looking down at her hands. She looked like she might burst into tears at any point.
“I didn’t realize,” Jensen said. “All this time, you were self-medicating over Mom’s death, and you weren’t even responsible.”
“This feels like a breakthrough,” the therapist said. “Something we can work with from here on out.”
I looked around at my family in shock. Deep down, I’d known that Mom’s and Dad’s deaths had affected me, but I hadn’t ever wanted to believe that I was drinking to cover up that hurt. Now that it was in front of me, it felt like a hurdle I could overcome. And maybe it would help all of the Wrights to finally deal with it.