The Baby Trail

“Your dad said she moved to Indiana.” Again his voice was quiet, almost kind.

“Peter, her new husband, had family there. They decided a fresh start was best for everybody. But it wasn’t. The night she left, Dad started drinking and didn’t stop until three years ago.”

“Whatever happened three years ago must have been earth shattering to him if he stopped.” Garrett’s interested statement urged her to go on.

“I’d never realized it, but all those years I took care of him, I was enabling him. Shaye and Kylie encouraged me to get counseling, so I finally went to a few Al-Anon meetings. I learned I had to change as much as he did. So, I did my own intervention of sorts. I told Dad I was moving out and buying a house and he was going to have to take care of his own bills. That meant he had to work regularly. He’d been an accountant up until then. He just took on work when he felt like it, or when he needed the money. I don’t think he thought I was serious until I put a contract on a house, packed my things and then moved out. I had a neighbor check on him and for about a week, he drank even more. Then he checked himself into the rehab program at the hospital and started going to AA meetings. All those years he drank, he’d stop now and then for a few weeks at a time, but then he’d pick up the bottle again. So now, I hold my breath and hope for the best. But I guess I’m always preparing myself for the worst.”

“You did the right thing—making him responsible for his own life.”

There was admiration in Garrett’s voice. Kylie and Shaye had supported her through it all, but in the dead of night when she worried about her father, she felt alone. “I was so scared when I told him I was moving out. Afterward, I think my dad actually respected me more. The problem is with all those years of me taking up the slack between us, I think he knows I don’t trust him to stay sober. We have surface conversation and walk on eggshells a lot of the time.”

“Do you hear from your adoptive mother?”

“I get a Christmas card once a year,” she said lightly as if it didn’t hurt that her own mother didn’t send letters or birthday cards. Except it wasn’t her own mother. It was her adoptive mother.