Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Iris walked to her bathroom to take a shower, and Hugo toddled after her. She pulled her shirt over her head and caught a whiff of the perfume on her collar—buttery white florals, warmed by sandalwood and vanilla—it was so comforting. She needed that feeling after the morning.
Her phone rang, and Iris hurried to answer it, expecting Mike’s reply about the Pattersons’ case.
But the screen showed an incoming call from Beth Miller, her aunt.
Iris couldn’t remember the last time she and Beth had spoken on the phone, and she had the irrational sense of having summoned the call by mentioning Jacob to Veronica earlier—a jinx. On the last ring, she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, have you spoken to Jacob recently?” Beth asked abruptly.
The words hit Iris’s ears like an accusation.
Iris had always planned on reconnecting with Jacob when he got clean, but that day never came, or at least it never lasted.
She hadn’t seen him in years. She and his mother, Beth, were barely in each other’s lives, save for liking posts on social media.
But Beth, her husband, Clay, and Jacob were the closest living family she had left.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Clay thought he might have reached out to you.”
Why would he? Iris felt on edge. “He hasn’t. Is everything okay?”
Her voice broke. “He’s missing.”
“Oh, no.” Iris softened immediately. “I’m so sorry. For how long?”
“He was in rehab in Fort Lauderdale, but he left the program early last week. No one knows who picked him up or where he went. None of us have heard from him. This isn’t the first time he’s gone to ground, but, call it mother’s intuition, I have a bad feeling this time.”
“I’m sorry, Beth, I hope you find him safe soon.”
“Will you try calling him? I know you haven’t been as close as you once were, which makes me very sad, but you two always had a special connection, you always will. You have a bond that can’t be broken.” Beth always talked about them this way.
“Gosh…we haven’t talked in such a long time. I don’t think I have his current number.”
“I’ll give it to you. Call him, or shoot him a text, whatever you kids do these days. You remind him of his best self. The real him.”
Iris hesitated for only a moment before Beth added, “Don’t make me beg.”
“Of course. I’ll try. Text me his number.”
A minute after they said goodbye, Iris heard the text chime in, but she couldn’t bring herself to open it right away; the thought of contacting Jacob filled her with anxiety. What could she say? Her mind drew a blank. She’d think better in the shower.
Under the soothing streams of hot water, Iris’s thoughts swirled around Beth’s request. She’d long sensed that Beth found her insufficiently grateful to Jacob for saving her life and, relatedly, insufficiently engaged with his recovery.
Beth was under the impression that Iris held the key to summoning Jacob’s better angels, that she was living proof of his true character and a touchstone that could inspire him to get clean.
Although Iris didn’t agree, she could track Beth’s belief to the intervention she participated in over a decade ago.
An experience they interpreted very differently.
She was twenty-three years old. Iris couldn’t remember having been so nervous as she was sitting on that couch with her handwritten letter to Jacob on her lap.
She had followed the addiction specialist and facilitator Randy’s instructions, mirroring the formula on the worksheet, although writing her own version had still been difficult.
She had struggled to find the right words, so fearful of saying the wrong ones, and in the end the letter had come out short, sweet, and rather generic. Not life-changing, but safe:
Dear Jacob,
Ever since I was a little girl, I looked up to you, and you looked out for me.
You were more than my cousin. When you lived with us, you were like a brother to me.
And during the worst night of my life, you were my hero.
You saved my life. But ever since you became addicted to drugs, we have not had the close family relationship that we used to, and that I wish we could have again.
Will you accept the gift of treatment today?
Iris’s stomach dropped when Jacob walked in with his mom.
He looked like Death itself. His black sweatshirt shrouded his gaunt frame with the hood pulled up, under which he wore a knit hat despite the mild weather.
His skin was dull, his cheeks were hollow, and his eyelids were at half-mast, so all the parts of him that might connect—his eyes, a smile—were buried under layers or withdrawing from the world.
He saw the rest of them seated in the living room and gave an empty laugh, instantly registering what was going on. He didn’t even look surprised. Until he spotted Iris.
“What are you doing here?” Jacob lifted his eyebrows like they were heavy. He seemed as taken aback by her appearance as she was by his. “You grew up.”
“Hi, yeah, it’s been a minute.” She stood and hugged him, and found herself fighting the urge to recoil at his smell, something she couldn’t put her finger on. “It’s good to see you, Jacob.”
“I fuckin’ doubt it.” Jacob slumped on the couch between his mother and father. His father swiped the beanie from his head in a gesture of both admonishment and affection—capturing the tone of the day. Jacob was seemingly too exhausted or too high to put up a fight.
Randy, the facilitator, kicked them off, explaining the purpose of their gathering.
Jacob made the expected protestations—“I take pills for pain. I have a back injury. I got prescriptions. You’d die if you had pain like mine”—but, as instructed, they didn’t engage with him.
Randy spoke frankly of how the sympathetic origin of Jacob’s drug problem might have become an obstacle to his sobriety, as he used it to hook his mother into enabling him.
Iris stole glances at her aunt Beth. Randy called out how his father, Clay, took a harder line with his son, but Clay’s own drinking was something Jacob had learned to throw in his face as deflection.
Clay sat stone-faced. Randy said addiction was “a family sickness,” and they were here to listen and heal as a family.
Iris didn’t know where she belonged in the equation, but it felt like someone was cranking a Jack-in-the-box that she was sitting on top of.
When it was time to read the letters they’d written him, Beth read her heartfelt one through tears, ending with “I will no longer participate in the destruction of your life. I will not love you to death.” Iris was moved.
His father read a short one that could’ve been paraphrased to “Man up!” Little seemed to be getting through to Jacob, who appeared to nod off at times, but at least he was being quiet and calm. Then it was Iris’s turn.
Iris looked down at the notebook paper that trembled slightly in her hand; her mouth was already dry. She began, “Dear Jacob—”
Jacob cut her off, “You don’t gotta talk.”
Iris looked up and Jacob was staring at her, more alert than he’d been yet. He held her gaze with his Husky-blue eyes and gently shook his head. She felt frozen like a rabbit, unsure of what to do next.
Randy stepped in. “Your cousin wants to share her experience with you, Jacob. All we ask is that you listen.”
Jacob sighed audibly and leaned over his knees. “Whatever.”
The facilitator nodded to Iris.
“Dear Jacob, ever since I was a little girl I looked up to you, and—” Iris ran her tongue over her teeth and swallowed.
“And you looked out for me. You were more than my couthin—cousin.” Her lip caught on her tacky teeth, distorting her enunciation.
“When you lived with us, you were like a brovher to me.” Her lips, teeth, and tongue felt tangled and stuck, the natural choreography of speech suddenly clumsy and disobedient.
As her cheeks burned with embarrassment, Iris wiped the corners of her mouth, if only to replace her lips over bared teeth.
“Is there water?” she asked from behind her hand.
But Jacob turned to his mother, suddenly outraged. “Why’d you bring her into this? She’s got nothin’ to do with this. What is she here for?”
Beth put a hand on his arm. “We’re all here because we love you and we want you to get help. Iris knows the man you really are, and she came a long way to say this to you. Please listen. Iris, go ahead, honey, say your piece.”
Jacob crossed his arms over his chest, his knee bouncing.
Iris took a breath through her nose, trying to summon all the calm and saliva she could. “And on the worsht nigh’ of my life, you…you were…” She could not get the next words out. Iris felt like she was choking. “Shorry,” she croaked. “Water?”
Randy heard her request this time and cracked a plastic water bottle for her.
But just as he reached it across the coffee table, Jacob sprang to his feet, overturning the table, and bashed the bottle out of Randy’s hand.
Iris flinched as water sprayed her, Beth screamed her son’s name, and the two older men stood, Randy with a stern authority and Clay in wordless fury, while Jacob loomed over them all and roared.
“What the fuck is this? What are you trying to do? Dig through my whole goddamn life to show me I’m a piece of shit? I don’t need to hear any more, I know already, I fucking know !”
“Whoa, whoa! Let’s relax,” Randy said, hands up.
“Why drag my cousin out here, like she has any idea about anything, kicking up old shit. For what? ” The veins in Jacob’s neck and temple bulged.
“Sit down,” Clay said through clenched teeth, going chest to chest with his son.
Jacob looked at him, eyes bloodshot and wild. “Or what ? You want everything out there? Tell me, why’m I like this? Huh ?”
Clay grabbed him by the collar, twisting the cotton hoodie in his hands.
“No, let him go! Nothing good comes from getting physical.” Randy tried to jam himself between the men. But Clay held fast to his son, unblinking, fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white.
Jacob was panting with agitation, but his expression started to crumple. “Who made me this way, huh?”
“Enough!” Beth cried, now standing.
Clay released him and Jacob stumbled backward.
Jacob’s fury spent, he adjusted his warped sweatshirt as if he was straightening a suit jacket. He nodded with a snort that curled his nose. “It is enough. This is over. I’ll go to rehab, okay? That’s what you want, right? Fine. I’ll go.”
Instantly the mood shifted. Aunt Beth erupted in a grateful sob and threw her arms around her son, Randy clapped a hand on his back, even Clay muttered a few words of praise and pulled his son in for a hug by the back of his neck.
Only Iris had remained frozen in her seat, gripping the chair arms like a roller coaster ride.
—
Iris rinsed the last of the conditioner out of her hair and turned the water off.
She blotted her face with a towel, letting its softness press the upsetting memory from her mind’s eye.
She had always felt that she had triggered Jacob that day, that she was responsible for his outburst, though it didn’t stand to reason.
She knew addiction could cause erratic and agitated behavior; she just wasn’t used to being around it.
But Aunt Beth remembered the intervention differently.
She saw Jacob’s breakdown as a breakthrough, and although the sobriety that followed that rehab stint hadn’t stuck, she viewed Iris as the lucky charm for Jacob’s compliance.
But then Iris thought of how scared Beth sounded on the phone. And who was she to second-guess a mother’s intuition?
After toweling off, Iris picked up her phone.
She opened her text messages, copied the number from Beth’s text, and pasted it into the field of a new one.
Jacob’s name popped up; turned out she did have the number.
She told herself not to overthink it and typed a message that was, again, not life-changing, but safe:
Hey, it’s Iris. Been a long time, but I hope you’re well. Your mom is worried about you, everyone just wants to know you’re okay. Please get in touch.