Chapter 54 Georgia Blue
My teeth are chattering by the time I make it back to my “cottage.” Only people who were born rich would call these mansions cottages, like they’re fucking Marie Antoinette or something, playacting at being poor, pretending to be plain country wives instead of diamond-adorned queens.
Tonight, though, I can see glue poking out where the heavy glass windows meet the sheetrock walls, like whoever put it together was in too much of a hurry to be careful.
I see crumbs on the kitchen counter, and a ring left behind by a red wine bottle Andrew set down thoughtlessly.
Finally, I see this place for what it is—a shithole, dressed up with shiny glass and gleaming countertops, but a shithole nonetheless.
It’s all a trick; this place pretends to be indulgent but it actually robs patients of their agency, calling them guests when they’re really prisoners.
I have to get out of here as soon as motherfucking possible.
I throw my belongings into my bag, my guitar still slung across my back. I certainly don’t bother folding even though the mess is so bad that I have to sit on my suitcase to close it. I pull on a pair of jeans beneath my dress, tucking my notebook into the waistband.
I’m going back to California. I don’t want the icy dark Atlantic but the bright blue Pacific. I want the sun to set over the ocean, not rise from it.
Shit, that’s a lyric. I pull my notebook from my waistband and start scribbling:
I want the sun to set over the ocean,
I need to get back to my side of the sea,
I can’t spend another second
so far from the heart of me.
The words come fast, the chorus rising hard.
I sit cross-legged on the floor and write the words to a song from deep inside, every feeling and fear I’ve had since my daughter was born and my husband died and my mother came to stay; how badly I wanted to be a good mother and how terribly I fucked it up.
I scrawl the song’s title across the top of the page.
I’m crying. I wipe my eyes, relieved no one can see me like this. Only an asshole would cry at her own lyrics. But the chorus of dead musicians in my head is applauding, Scott most of all.
Great song, babe, he says just like he used to. God, we loved each other so much. And shit did he love Amelia Blue. AB, he called her. I bet she doesn’t remember that, which means no one on this whole earth knows it but me. I have to tell her so it doesn’t get lost.
I hear the sound of heavy footsteps on the floor and then the touch of a hot hand on my bare upper arm, fingers digging into flesh, pulling me up to stand.
“Going somewhere?” Andrew eyes my suitcase, half-zipped, on the floor beside me.
“I’m going home.” I try to say the word like I mean it, even though I’ve never felt comfortable calling the house Scott bought, the one he didn’t leave me in his will, my home.
My mom is Amelia Blue’s power of attorney, not me—I signed those rights away a long time ago—so she’s the one who controls the house.
She could kick me out anytime. I guess I should be grateful she never did.
“You can’t leave.”
“Oh no?” I laugh, but it comes out sounding desperate, weak.
“ ‘Imposter Syndrome’ is just as much mine as it is yours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We wrote it together.”
“No.” I shake my head. Scott and I wrote together; I know how writing as a team works. “I wrote it, and you were in the room. That doesn’t make you my coauthor. It makes you my audience.”
Andrew’s face hardens.
“Andrew,” I try to sound reasonable. My kid says it’s the best way to win an argument. “It’s a personal, feminist song. It doesn’t make sense coming from you.” I lift my suitcase onto its side. “But thank you for being there. I’ll mention you in the liner notes.”
I won’t, not anymore, but I need to throw him a bone. I step toward the door. Andrew blocks the way.
I shove the suitcase in front of me, trying to force him to move, but he stands strong.
I throw myself at him, my fists pounding against his rock-hard chest.
I don’t see the syringe, but I feel the needle pierce my skin.
Almost immediately, my body feels like it weighs a million pounds. I slump against Andrew, and he lifts me, carrying me to the bed. He’s not gentle, not kind. He drops me like I’m nothing. It’s hard to remember that just a day ago I held him willingly.
He must’ve dosed me with a sedative, just like Evelyn threatened when I first got here. I try to say something, but my tongue is thick in my mouth. It feels like there’s a bear sitting on my chest, pressing against every breath.
That first day, I was so panicked that they might drug me, that being here would throw my months of sobriety out the window.
It nearly happened again when Andrew showed up with Evelyn’s wine, but he didn’t seem to notice when I only pretended to drink it.
It was tempting; if I’d had my phone, I would’ve called my sponsor, but I wasn’t about to give Evelyn the satisfaction of asking for it.
I concentrate on my heart. Each beat takes effort, as though my blood has turned from liquid to sludge. I beg my lungs to fill with air.
“Shit!” Andrew says at the sound of my wheezing. “It’s not supposed to—shit!”
I hear him shuffling around the room.
“You have to get here, now,” he says frantically. He must be on the phone.
I don’t know how much time goes by before I hear another set of footsteps, lighter than Andrew’s.
“What did you do?” Evelyn’s voice sounds frantic and out of breath. There’s something else in her voice that takes me a moment to recognize: disappointment.
She must have run from her house. Andrew told me it’s on the edge of the property, the one structure they didn’t tear down or renovate after Evelyn and her husband bought the land for the recovery center.
They wanted a place of their own, Andrew said, then scoffed, adding that Evelyn’s husband only lived there for a few months before Evelyn kicked him out.
I wait for Andrew to explain, to spew a lie about how I attacked him and he had to restrain me, but instead I hear him hiccup and cough. His voice is octaves higher than when he spoke to me, so that he sounds like a little boy.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
Mama? Again, I try to speak, but my tongue is made of cotton.
Evelyn is Andrew’s mother?
Of course. He said it was a long story, how he got the job here. Turns out, it was a very short story: plain old nepotism.
How could I have missed it? It’s not only that Andrew knew so many details of Evelyn’s personal life—and she’s not the sort who would’ve shared all that with a mere employee—but the disgust when he spoke about her drinking, like it offended him somehow.
He was pissed that his mother couldn’t keep her shit together.
I’ve seen that same disgust on my kid’s face a thousand times.
“You said you could handle this.” Evelyn’s disappointed-mom voice is undercut by the fact that she’s slurring her words slightly, obviously a few glasses in. “Your father was right, for once. I never should’ve given you this job.”
“This was an accident!”
I can hear echoes of my own voice, whining every time Naomi scolded me. I’d called a lot of things accidents, trying to get out of trouble, but Naomi always saw through me.
“This isn’t tinkering with your guitar in your room. My job—your job—involves people’s lives—”
“It’s not tinkering!” Andrew sounds shrill, I think, though no one ever uses that word to describe a man’s voice. “And music can touch people’s lives just as much as you can.”
I can practically hear Evelyn rolling her eyes. If I were able, I’d roll mine, too. “Not this nonsense again.”
“If you’d just supported me to begin with, I wouldn’t have had to move here with you.”
“You begged me to help you meet Georgia Blue. You said you had something useful to offer.”
“I did! I still can!”
“We can’t afford this.” There’s desperation in Evelyn’s voice. “She’s supposed to be our success story! Callie already started leaking items to the press.”
Despite the drugs coursing through my body, rage bubbles up at the sound of Callie’s name. All the drugs in the world couldn’t dull that anger.
“What do we do?” Andrew sounds panicked. “I could get sent to jail!”
“We’ll say she was trying to hurt you.” I can tell Evelyn’s trying to sound rational, but she’s too drunk to pull it off. “No one would trust her word over ours.”
What’s more believable than a woman with anger issues losing her temper?
“No.” Andrew’s voice cracks. “I gave her too much. Her breathing—”
At once, I understand: Andrew thinks he killed me. He’s not worried that I’ll tell my side of the story. He’s worried that I’ll never tell anyone anything ever again.
“Don’t worry,” Evelyn says. “I’ll take care of it.”
For maybe the first time, I feel something like a connection with Evelyn.
In fact, this is the least I’ve ever hated her.
She’s willing to do anything to protect her child.