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I sat up straight and looked at him. “I don’t think that’s true at all, Dad. You’ve been great.”

“I mean... with the drinking. Or your sobriety, rather. Your journey through that. I’m not sure I’ve known quite how to

support you through it all.” He cleared his throat and lowered the arm that had been around my shoulders. “Clearly I don’t

even know how to broach the subject now.”

Oh yes, I supposed there was at least one more entry on the list of things my dad and I never talked about. There were those

last thirty days before I came back to Adelaide Springs (when I was getting clean and sober and digging myself out of the

spiral at a DC rehab).

Oh. That.

For the record, it wasn’t that I never talked about it. I talked about it every Sunday evening during Celebrate Recovery meetings

at a little church in South Fork. It also wasn’t that I intentionally avoided talking about it with my dad. It just never

came up. (And if I’m honest, I didn’t absolutely hate that it never came up.)

The CIA cover story as to the nature of Joel’s death was that he’d been killed by a drunk driver, and that fake story about

Joel’s death informed part of the fake story about my sobriety. How could I not stop drinking after that? How could I risk

being the one to lose control and take a life? The agency didn’t mandate that part of the story, but I must admit it was convenient.

Such a large part of the true story was classified, and there was just no possible way for me to be fully honest with anyone.

Admittedly, that made getting sober tricky. But isn’t it always?

Still, every Sunday night I was completely open and honest about my alcoholism and my sobriety and even my grief. I just left out the details that required an SF-86, an NAC investigation, and a polygraph.

“You’re coming up on a year, aren’t you?”

“Three hundred and sixty-one days.”

“I’m proud of you.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, of course. Thanks, Dad. But... what’s got you thinking about all of this?”

He released my hand and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “What’s the plan, Addie?”

“The plan for what?”

“For you. Look, sweets, I love having you home.” He tilted his head to look at me. “I do. But I know you’re not happy here.”

“What are you talking about? Sure I am.”

“Okay, if that’s true, explain it to me.”

“Explain what to you?”

“How you’re happy.”

I chuckled lightly and jumped up from the couch. “ How I’m happy? What is there to explain?” I walked over to the fireplace and stoked the logs that were burning just fine without

any help from me. “How are you doing? That’s what I want to—”

“Adelaide!” My dad raised his voice to me. My dad raised his voice. I couldn’t remember the last time. I couldn’t remember many times at all, actually. Ever.

I turned around slowly as jolts of heat rushed up my neck to the top of my head, causing it to throb. “ What? ”

There was a little too much sass in my voice. I knew it in real time, but I couldn’t shut it down. Also in real time, I reminded

myself I was a grown woman, and I didn’t have to watch my tone. (Yeah, that was stupid and a little too The Outsiders for me. The thought of disrespecting my dad would never not horrify me. Real time.)

“Why can’t we just talk anymore?”

What is happening? “Of course we can talk, Dad. I don’t know what you—”

“Fenton said he saw you outside Cole’s restaurant with someone he swore he thought was Wes Hobbes. And I told him he must

be mistaken.”

The throbbing in my head intensified. “Dad—”

“But Jo confirmed he’s staying at the inn and that you’ve been spending a fair amount of time together.”

“ Excuse me? That’s none of Jo’s business.” I turned back to the fire, fairly certain that if it did need a boost, I was going to have

some flames shooting from my eyes pretty soon. “And frankly it’s none of yours either,” I muttered under my breath.

My dad was moving slower these days. I’d noticed he got up to go to the bathroom more during the night. Certain foods didn’t

agree with him anymore. But by golly, he had the ears of a bat in its prime.

“How can you say that to me?” he asked, standing and walking toward me. “How can you possibly say that to me?”

I dug my fists into my hips as I turned around. “It’s my life, Dad.”

“But I was there, Adelaide. I saw what he did to you, and I saw you struggle to pick up the pieces. For years. Yes, you’re

a grown woman, but you’re also still my little girl, sitting under that tree in her wedding dress in the rain.”

“I know, but—”

“I’m so proud of you and your 361 days. I may not be the best about talking it out, but I know how hard you worked to get

healthy. And I know you think it’s not my place, but I just have to question the wisdom of spending time with someone who

caused you so much pain. Everything else I think and feel about him aside, if he’s a threat to your sobriety—”

“A threat to my sobriety? Is that what you think?” My hands left my hips, and I folded my arms across my chest. “You think I’m going to drink because

of Wes ?”

“Well...” His eyes glistened orange with the reflection of the fire, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

“Isn’t that how it started?”

That was such an oversimplification, and he had to have known it. He had to have. Even taking into account all the things I’d never talked about with him, he was a doctor. And he’d known my mom’s

mom, and her mother before her. He’d lived with my mother who, in so many ways, adopted the life of a Prohibition-era teetotaling

nun in order to avoid the heirloom passed down through the generations the way other families might pass down a pocket watch.

I’d known it. They’d made sure I knew it.

But by the time I was out in the world on my own for the first time, I was willing to do anything to stop feeling sad all

the time, and also somehow desperate to feel something . I was tough and cocky and naive and convinced I had survived the worst thing anyone had ever had happen to them. I understood

now, as I never could have then, of course, how blissfully unaware my misery made me. So did I drink for the first time in

college, while still throwing myself into anything and everything that took my mind off Wes? Yes. But don’t a lot of people

try things in college? Not that I recommend the getting-drunk-at-an-off-base-party-the-weekend-before-midterms method of exploration

and self-realization. And did I realize the next morning, when I was puking my guts out and worried I was going to get caught

and thrown out of the Air Force Academy, that the pain and sadness had gotten turned off for just a little while? Absolutely.

And that was how I knew. I didn’t fully understand it then, of course.

Yes, the warning signs had been there. Yes, there were lessons from previous generations that I could have heeded.

But again, I was young and damaged and stupid enough to truly believe I was tougher than any genetic predisposition toward addiction.

There was no harm in it, I told myself. I was doing myself a favor, really, by giving my brain a chance to stop working so hard for a change.

So yeah, I didn’t know it then, obviously, but I knew now, with absolute certainty, that Wes didn’t turn me into an alcoholic by leaving me.

Addiction had been lying in wait, knowing that if it was patient, it would get its opportunity to pounce.

And the fact was that while I didn’t feel I owed him a thank-you card or anything, I had eventually come to realize, after attempting to pin it all on Wes for a very long time, that if I’d lived in a different environment as a teenager—maybe in a different town or with a different dad or different friends or a different boyfriend who, unlike Wes, may have pressured me or been a negative influence—it was entirely possible the beast would have awakened sooner.

Regardless, it would have come alive at some point, and that could have just as easily been when I wasn’t heartbroken and empty.

“It’s not fair to blame Wes for my alcoholism, Dad, any more than it’s fair to simply blame genetics or the guy who gave me

my first drink in college or the cashier at the liquor store where I bought my last bottle of vodka 363 days ago. It’s really

not.” I took a deep breath and attempted to rein in the frustration I was feeling. “And I’m pretty sure you know that.”

He’d lost a little of his height, but he still had a good six inches on me, allowing him to hold the upper hand in our stare

down. But I knew I wasn’t going to budge. I loved my dad as much as any daughter possibly could, and I had never lost sight

of what an incredible person he was. I could remember so many times as a kid when people would show up at our door or the

phone would ring in the middle of the night. I never once saw him respond to any interruption of dinner or sleep or family

time with anything other than compassion. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Addie,” he’d said when I was seven or eight. “People would be a whole lot happier if they’d just remember that the world is an awfully big place, and not a single one

of us is at the center of it.”

I respected my dad more than anyone else I’d ever known, but I wasn’t backing down. Not on this. I’d fought too hard for the

understanding I had of myself. It was far too valuable for compromise.

“Did your mom ever tell you about the time my plane went down near Kham Duc?”

He asked it so randomly, so calmly, as if he were inviting me to play a hand of gin rummy. As if we hadn’t been engaged in

an epic showdown for the ages—at least by Atwater household standards—and I was so confused that I blinked repeatedly.

“What? No. What are you talking about?” I shook my head as the reality of what he said registered. “Your plane actually went down? Are you kidding?”

“You know me. I joke about the Vietnam War all the time.”