Chapter 12
I told Dad about Ruby’s drinking, and I saw him get upset again. ‘She gets that from your mother’s side. Your mom’s brother was an alcoholic too.’ He decided to go to Dublin because, he said, Mom was clearly not able to manage her daughter.
‘Dad,’ I said, ‘she’s an adult, she doesn’t have to do what you or Mom say any more.’
Dad wouldn’t listen. ‘She’s still my daughter, Erin. My feelings for my children don’t disappear when they reach a magic age.’
I’d had one more letter from Margie.
The DNA was planted. Your dad knew the D.A. They were together in a photo.
What did she mean about Dad and the District Attorney and the DNA? Didn’t she know that it was impossible to just ‘plant’ DNA inside of a woman?
Dad flew out that night, leaving me feeling guilty.
I couldn’t afford the time, but the truth is I didn’t want to go.
I called Ruby after a few days, and she said the whole jumping in the river was a misunderstanding.
She said she’d been practising because part of her course was circus performance.
She was not terribly coherent. I suspected she was drunk again.
I got mad with her and told her she needed to go to rehab.
She was training to be an actress, and could be convincing, but I was not easily fooled these days.
‘We’re not all as prissy as you, Erin,’ she said. ‘Some of us like to let our hair down and have some fun.’
‘Right? Nearly drowning, was that fun?’
I didn’t know whether she was trying to commit suicide or not.
I do know that she didn’t give a damn about how it affected anyone else in the family.
I was still traumatized by the events of 1999.
I’m not sure if she was. I didn’t go visit.
Dad came back worried about Ruby. He had found an expensive private rehab place even though she insisted that she wasn’t an alcoholic.
Mom admitted that she had spoken to Ruby after some of her jewellery had gone missing.
She suspected that Ruby was on drugs as well.
She often stayed out all night. She went through her monthly allowance in a week and regularly asked Mom and Grandma for more money.
I didn’t want anything to do with her when I heard that.
I could hardly reconcile my memory of my cute little sister with this wild stranger.
If she got so drunk that she fell into a river and didn’t see how serious her problem was, I could not help her.
I knew that was mean of me, knowing what I did about the source of her trauma.
Five weeks later, Ruby left rehab after just ten days. She was a lost cause. Where had my innocent sister gone?