Page 125 of High Society

After the paramedics brought Walter to the ER, he was diagnosed with a broken hip from his fall in the smoke-filled solarium. The surgery to pin the hip went smoothly enough, but afterwards he suffered an acute post-operative delirium that left him confused for weeks. Most of the time, he was convinced he was still in his own home, and he frequently called out for his long-dead wife.

Holly now finds her grandfather sitting up in bed, his untouched lunch tray in front of him. She kisses his forehead. “It’s good to have you back, Papa.”

Walter chuckles. “Speak for yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

“At my ancient age, carbon monoxide poisoning wouldn’t have been such a bad way to have exited stage left.”

“No one’s exiting anywhere. Even if you’re ready, I’m not.”

He shrugs. “Now that my brain is functioning at a level slightly higher than an ostrich’s, remind me again what happened.”

Holly summarizes the events from the day of the fire for him and then says, “Reese figured I was another loose end she had to tie up. And she saw you as the means to do it.”

“There’s kind of a rich irony to that. Using DMT to get rid of us.”

Technically, the hookah was her means, but Holly understands his point. “Reese found a way to weaponize psychedelics.”

His shoulders dip. “They’re not the panacea we both hoped, are they?”

“Don’t be so sure. After all, a huge part of Reese’s motivation was her desire—her need—to maintain ketamine therapy. In her mind, it was the only thing keeping her sober.”

“Now she has prison for that.”

Holly pulls up a chair beside his bed. “I refuse to give up on the promise of psychedelics in therapy, Papa. Of course, they’re not foolproof. What is? Besides, not all traumas are surmountable.”

Walter nods. “And not all damaged souls are repairable.”

“Agreed. Ketamine didn’t turn Reese into a killer. Her desperate desire for sobriety did.” She swallows. “There’s something else, too. About my last DMT trip…”

His eyelids crease. “What about it?”

“I saw Dad again.”

Walter’s chin drops. “Haven’t we’ve been through enough?”

She lays a hand on his shoulder, which feels even bonier than before. “The details from the accident came back to me after the DMT. The real events. I remember everything now.”

“Maybe so,” he murmurs. “But do I have to know?”

Holly considers her words carefully. Her grandfather doesn’t need to hear about her parents’ separation or the other woman in her dad’s life, though Holly suspects Walter has always known. She doesn’t plan to tell him about the conversation where she begged her dad not to go. But only after the fire did Holly realize just how much she had idealized her father since his death. He had been willing to leave her, which Walter never would have done.

And it wasn’t only memories of the crash that came back to her. She now also recalls how withdrawn and unavailable her father had become in the months leading up to that fateful car ride, when he must have already been planning to leave.

Initially, after regaining the memories, Holly felt only relief. Despite what she had feared, she hadn’t been responsible for the accident. She assumed that awareness would finally free her of the guilt she had been carrying most of her adult life. But over the intervening weeks, another realization slowly took shape. She felt it like a heat in her belly. Underneath the guilt, she had buried something even deeper: a fury that bordered on hatred of her dad for having chosen someone else over her.

And because she never had the chance to process that anger, it had lived with her in other ways and affected her life choices. Would she have ended up with someone like Aaron if she hadn’t been trying to fill that gaping emotional void her father had created in the moments before he died?

Still, Holly has finally found peace over the accident. And that’s all her grandfather needs to hear. She gives Walter’s shoulder a small squeeze. “It was a deer, Papa. It came out of nowhere. And Dad tried to swerve at the last second.”

Walter doesn’t comment, but his face relaxes. They sit in peaceful silence, Holly’s hand still resting on his shoulder.

Finally, he turns to her and asks, “Will I be able to go home soon?”

“There’s been a lot of structural damage.” In fact, the destruction was limited to the solarium, and the house is otherwise livable. But the geriatrician told Holly that Walter shouldn’t be living alone anymore. “You can’t move back in yet.”

He’s crestfallen. “You’re not going to put me in one of those awful homes, are you?”