I paused. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“You said you hadn’t had sex in eight years. How is that possible? You’re an incredibly attractive woman.”
“When you get out of treatment, they strongly encourage you not to date for at least a year so you can focus on yourself and your sobriety. Since then, I’ve dated a few times, but no one really interested me enough to take the next step.”
“It sounds lonely.”
“Maybe it was my penance,” she whispered.
Her eyes widened, like she hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“Penance for what?” I asked curiously.
“I was a terrible wife, a terrible mother who abandoned her daughter even before Jack kicked me out. By the time I finally admitted I needed help, I was homeless and stealing to support my drug habit. I have a lot to make amends for.”
“You’ve done that now, right? You don’t need to keep punishing yourself for the sins of your past.”
She shrugged and I took that as a sign she didn’t want to answer.
“May I ask what happened? How you started taking drugs? Only if you’re comfortable talking about it.”
“I was in a car accident, and the doctor prescribed oxycontin. I loved it. It took away the pain and made me feel kind of euphoric. Whenever I stopped taking it, the pain would come back, and I would get really depressed. The doctor kept prescribing them, but after a while even that wasn’t enough. I needed more and more to get the same results.”
“That sounds hard.”
“Eventually I started using alcohol to supplement the drugs. Soon nothing was more important than the drugs, not my daughter, not my husband, not my job. Jack begged me to go to treatment several times, but I blew him off. Eventually he divorced me and got full custody of April. I took off and lived on the streets for a while, never calling April or showing up for my visitation days. I lived that way for a long time until things finally got bad enough for me to realize I needed help. I did six months of in-patient and have been clean ever since. It’s been eight years.”
I gave her a squeeze. “That’s pretty freaking amazing.”
She shrugged. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m finally in a good place now.”
“I’m glad.”
We lapsed into silence for a while and eventually Erika’s breathing evened out, letting me know that she’d fallen asleep. As I snuggled her into my side, I resolved to do whatever I could to keep her with me forever.
Erika
“Mom, you look beautiful.”
I looked up from where the team was finishing my hair and make-up.
Suzanne, April’s stepmother, added, “You really do.”