Loree Lough - The Redemption Of Lillie Rourke

Lillie thought of her brother’s twins, who’d once lit up at the sight of her, and wondered if Sam had told the girls that their beloved aunt was a drug addict.

“You’re worried that if you spend too much time around your nephew, you’ll be a bad example?”

“Bingo.”

The bus merged with traffic on 28th Street, and Gabe shifted in his seat.

“Your brother told your nephew...everything?”

“That’s just it,” Gabe said. “I don’t know.”

He looked as distraught as she felt. Disappointing people was tough. She’d certainly learned that the hard way.

“Well, even if the boy knows, that’s not such a bad thing, is it? I mean, you made a mistake—”

“Lots of mistakes.”

“—but you made things right, and stayed clean for a long time. What better example can you set than that?”

Who are you trying to convince, Lill? Gabe? Or yourself?

“Maybe...” And then, “So how’d you get into, ah, trouble?” He held up his hand again. “If I’m poking my nose where it doesn’t belong, say the word.”

Lillie reminded herself that this was the perfect opportunity to practice the difficult “I was a mess and I’m sorry” speech before she had to deliver it yet again...to Jase, the one person she hadn’t repaid. Yet.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “A little over three years ago, my car was T-boned by a city bus.”

“Holy smokes. How badly were you hurt?”

Lillie stared at the jagged white scar that crossed the back of her right hand, and instinctively covered it with her left. “There were seven operations...” To repair her shattered left leg and arm, and the ribs that had punctured her lung. Even after all this time, nightmares about the impact still had the power to shake her from deep sleep.

“Then I spent a month in an inpatient rehab center—the physical therapy kind—followed by months more of outpatient work.”

“Holy smokes,” Gabe repeated. “That’s one brutal story.” He paused. “Did the transit system pay the medical bills?”

“Yes, they were very accommodating.”

“So the trouble started when your doctors put you on pain meds?”

“More like when they decided I didn’t need them anymore.”

“And?”

Admittedly, the pain had been excruciating, making it next to impossible to climb to her second-floor apartment—especially when hauling groceries—or to stand onstage for hour-long intervals or sleep more than an hour at a time.

“There were three doctors. My surgeon. My regular guy. And my shrink. Little did I know, they compared notes. And when they realized I was hooked on the meds, they cut me off.”

“Harsh,” Gabe said. “Wouldn’t it have been better to wean you slowly?”

“Maybe.” But given how totally dependent she’d grown, maybe not.

“So you had to find other ways to cut the pain...”

It should have been easy to admit. It wasn’t. And so Lillie said, “What about you?”

Gabe shrugged. “Nothing as dramatic or understandable as a car wreck. No, I was the stereotypical spoiled brat with too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets. Got in with the wrong crowd—although at the time they sure didn’t seem like the wrong crowd—and the rest is history.”

It wasn’t unusual for recovering addicts to be tough on themselves. Unfortunately, the self-deprecating mindset, her counselors said, was responsible for more addicts relapsing than just about anything else.

“Still,” she reminded him, “your mom inspired you to get help.”

“She’s only half the reason. I watched a pal OD on crack.” He grimaced and his voice trailed off, a clear sign that he’d recalled a raw memory. “I got real serious about rehab after that.” He turned slightly. “So when you got off the prescription meds, what cut the pain?”

“Hydrocodone, mostly.”

“As in Watson-387?”

“That, and half a dozen other types of pills supplied by my go-to guy.” Although she hadn’t touched drugs or alcohol since entering rehab, it shamed Lillie to admit that she’d washed down hydro, norco, vic, and more—with dry gin—and paid for it with money taken from those who cared most about her. Her sister and her husband. Her brother and his wife. Her parents. Her best friend. The guys in the band.

It had been humiliating, facing each of them, stammering through clumsy apologies, voice quaking and hands shaking as she returned every dollar. Though she didn’t believe she’d earned their forgiveness, they’d been gracious, smiling as they told her to stay in touch and take care of herself. Had they meant it?

She’d saved the toughest encounter for last. Jase...

“Your friend,” Gabe began, “the one who hooked you up with the Rising Sun people...is he a boyfriend?”

That inspired a smile. “No, Pete owns a pub in the Bronx. We met when my agent booked me to sing with his house band. I was barely eighteen, and he looked out for me.”

“Like a big brother.”

“Exactly.” Pete was the first person she’d turned to after that last night with Jase, when it became clear that she’d gotten completely out of control.

“So—to quote my grandpa—you’re footloose and fancy-free?”

Lillie had no idea how to answer him. Jase likely wouldn’t want anything to do with her, other than to accept repayment of the money she’d taken. If that was the case, she’d deal with it, somehow... In all this time, she hadn’t entertained thoughts of starting a relationship with someone new. He’d been her first true love, and he’d probably be her last. In her mind and heart, she hadn’t yet earned the right to romance or happiness.

“This Pete guy, he’s got connections at Rising Sun because he’s a recovering addict?”

“Yes. They helped him kick his addictions, so when he inherited a lot of money, he donated a chunk to them. He’d been into the hard stuff. Heroin. Mescaline. You name it, Pete did it. And almost died when someone sold him a bad batch of H.”

“Yeah, I can see how that’d scare a dude straight.”

“That, and finding out he had a child.”

“Whoa.” Gabe nodded. “The whole set-a-good-example thing, like me.” He reached into his duffle bag and withdrew two bottles of water. After handing one to Lillie, he said, “So you’ve been clean for a year?”

“Fourteen months.” And sixteen days...

He unscrewed the cap, took several gulps. “You said you were on the road before this all happened?”

“Mmm-hmm. I was a singer. Hotel lounges, mostly, but now and then, my agent would book me with a band. I saw a lot of this country through bus windows.” Until Jase, when she’d been more than content to stand on the same stage, singing into the same mic, every night for nearly a year before—

“Play an instrument?”

“Guitar. Practically the only thing I owned that I didn’t sell for, well, you know.”

“Yeah, I do.” He picked at the bottle’s label. “I have an Ovation. Belonged to my grandfather. And like you, it’s one of a handful of things I held on to.”

“Mine is handcrafted. It’s a MacCubbin. It has a great sound.” Jase had scrimped to give it to her the Christmas before she left for Rising Sun. While living at the center—and ever since—she’d taken the instrument from its plush-lined case only to change the strings and buff the Brazilian rosewood to a fine sheen. The calluses on her fingertips had all but disappeared, because she couldn’t bear to hear the resonant tones that reminded her of the music she and Jase had made together.

“You going back to it now? Music, I mean?”

And think about the way she once shared a mic with Jase, creating perfect harmony?

“Absolutely not.”