Page 67 of A Very Addicted Christmas

Audrey Cobalt - 14

CONNOR COBALT

THE REMNANTS OF a high school party are strewn pathetically across our backyard. Solo cups crunched on the grass, pool floaties deflated on the stone, and I bend down to grab a small baggie of pills next to an outdoor ceramic cat that Jane made with her Aunt Poppy when she was seven. Whoever these pills belonged to, they must have left in a hurry.

I pocket them, more perturbed than I like to let on.

My annoyance derives from the mere fact that I cannot be two places at once. I would like to be talking with the security teams at the driveway, discussing the ins and outs of how Orion, Luna’s Newfoundland puppy, was bugged. I would also like to be inside with my children to discuss this mess and make sure they're okay.

Alas, there’s only one of me.

One place to be. I’ll deal with the other after.

Rose’s face twists the further we walk along our back patio. “Heathens,” she spits. “They brokeeveryceramic pot.”

“We’ll replace them.”

“I’m not worried about the mess, Richard,” she snaps. “I’m worried about the kind of teenagers who were around our kids.”

“Eliot and Tom broke as many things as their friends.” I remind her of all the phone calls we’ve received over the years.

“This isn’t Eliot or Tom,” she refutes. “This is Ben.Audrey.”

Yes.

My soft children.

Vulnerable.

Tender-hearted.

I’ve tried to thicken their skin, but Rose always tells me they were born to be more butterfly than snake, and to be okay with that.

It’s hard to be okay with it when there’s onlyoneof me. I can’t be here to protect them at all times, and knowing others will see them as easy prey isn't a comforting feeling. They're my children. Our children. Any harm done to them might as well be done to me.

“Richard.” Rose struts powerfully to the outdoor bar where emptied liquor bottles tell more of the same story. “Do you see this?” She’s not pointing a manicured nail at the vodka.

I slide beside my wife, seeing a white powdery streak across the black granite. “You’ve found the cocaine.”

She glares at my calm tone. “You could be a little more enraged.”

“I am pissed, darling.”

“Cocaine,” she emphasizes with blazing heat, drawing me deeper into her fiery gaze. “We already have one child who’s fallen to this drug, and now it’s in our house around our youngest.”

“Beckett is clean,” I remind Rose, but him using cocaine is still a wound in her heart that hasn’t fully healed. She feels at fault as his mother. Responsible. She wishes she could’ve done more to guide him, to stop him. Our conversations with him were never enough, and that is painfully hard for someone like me to admit.

She lets go of that dark history with a breath. “I willmurderthe little asshole who brought drugs in here,” Rose seethes. “Justice will be served.”

“In the court of law.”

“By my fucking hand,” she amends.

I start to grin. She sees my upturning lips and rolls her eyes, but she cools down. After a big exhale, she asks, “How do you want to do this? Tag team together or you take Audrey and I take Ben?”

“Ensemble,” I say smoothly, and I clasp her hand.

She nods, holding tighter.

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