Page 65 of You Say It First

Meg sighed. “Em, can we just—”

“Yes or no, Meg?”

Meg took a deep breath, and then she just said it. “Probably not,” she admitted. “No.”

Emily seemed to absorb that for a moment, taking a swig from the bottle of prosecco before setting it down on the pavement. “Don’t text me, okay?” she said, getting unsteadily to her feet. Then almost to herself: “Yeah. Just, like... don’t.”

“Emily,” Meg said, “come on,” but Mason was already pulling up in the car by then, the slow crunch of tires on concrete. She could hear Bob Dylan playing on the stereo as Emily got clumsily inside.

“Tell your dad congratulations again,” Mason called, waving through the passenger-side window. Meg watched the taillights until they disappeared down the street.

The house was dark when she got home, just the sound of the cicadas through the window and the hum of the refrigerator clicking on and off. Meg was grateful for the quiet—she wanted to get into bed and sleep for a hundred years without trying to spin tonight into something that a) wasn’t a disaster and b) wouldn’t somehow hurt her mom’s feelings. She changed into leggings and a T-shirt and scrubbed her makeup off in the bathroom sink, pointedly avoiding looking at the guest room, but as she was creeping down the hallway, her mom’s door opened.

“Is that you?” she asked, blinking a little, swaying the same as Emily had back in the parking lot and curling her hand around the door frame for balance. Her blond hair was mussed and her face was creased from the pillow, but she was still wearing the clothes Meg and Colby had left her in that afternoon. She must have passed out, Meg realized dully, though not for long enough to sleep off whatever it was she’d drunk in the first place.

“It’s me,” Meg said, pasting what she hoped was an even expression on her face and heading down the hallway in her mom’s direction. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” her mom said, turning and shuffling back into the bedroom. If it occurred to her to ask where Colby was, she didn’t let on. “How was your thing?”

Hearing her mom describe it that way made Meg want to cry more than anything else had all night, though she couldn’t have explained why in any articulate way. “It was nice,” she lied.

Her mom nodded, heading into the master bathroom and shutting the door behind her. Meg sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed. It smelled stale in here, though, so she got up again and opened the window above the hope chest that held her christening gown and baby pictures. She was doing the one near the TV when the bathroom door opened again. “Leave that,” her mom said, though instead of getting back into bed, she fished a pair of Birkenstocks out of the overflowing closet. “It’s too cold.”

Meg frowned. “What do you need your shoes for?” she asked. “Where are you going?”

Her mom didn’t look at her. “Errand to run.”

“What?” Meg shook her head, already knowing what it was in the pit of her stomach; the gas station at the end of the street sold cheap, syrupy-looking wine. “Now? It’s after eleven, Mom.”

“Are you the parent now, Meg?” her mother snapped, raking her hands through her bedhead. Then, more gently: “It’ll be quick.”

“Mom,” Meg said, following her down the narrow hallway. “Come on. What is it? I’ll get it for you.”

Her mom ignored her, trailing a hand along the wall for balance. Meg blew out a breath. What was she supposed to do? Her mother was a grown woman. She couldn’t just tackle her to the ground. “What if I make you a sandwich?” she tried finally. “And then if you still want to go out after that—”

“Enough, Meg,” her mom said. “I’ve had enough from you tonight, okay?”

“I haven’t even been here tonight,” Meg argued, stung by the unfairness of it. “And I’m just saying—”

“Yes, Meg, I know,” her mom interrupted. “You’ve been with your father and his blushing bride.”

That stopped her. “Mom,” she said. “Really?”

That was when her mom tripped on the runner at the top of the stairs.

It was a bad fall, loud and sloppy; Meg thought both of them screamed. She ran the few feet to the top of the staircase just in time to see her mom land crumpled at the bottom of it, her left leg twisted unnaturally underneath her. Blood seeped from a gash in her head. “Mom,” Meg said, thundering down the stairs so fast she almost fell herself and had to grab the railing hard to keep from stumbling. “Mommy. Can you get up?”

Her mom was still screaming, the kind of cries Meg would have expected out of a child; adrenaline coursed like ice water through her veins. “You’re okay,” she forced herself to say, though her mother obviously wasn’t. “I’m going to call 911, okay?”

The ride to the hospital was a blur. The EMT couldn’t have been that much older than Meg, a skinny dark-haired kid who looked like Andrew, Emily’s brother. It felt like years ago that they’d argued at the party; it felt like even longer since Colby had left. “Is she on anything?” the EMT asked as he slid the backboard underneath Meg’s mom and lifted her onto the stretcher.

Meg hesitated. Her instinct was to lie—her instinct was always, always to lie—but when she opened her mouth to deny it, she found she’d run out of ways to make any of this all right. She thought of Colby asking her, weeks and weeks ago, and how she’d known the truth then, even if she hadn’t been able to utter it.

“She’s drunk,” Meg said now, taking a deep breath and climbing into the ambulance behind them. “She’s an alcoholic.”

“Okay,” Meg said, sitting beside her mom’s hospital bed a couple of hours later, squinting at the clipboard the nurse had handed her to fill out. “It says they need a full medical history.”

Her mom made a face. “Because I fell?”

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