Fidelity - SF6 (27 page)

"Okay, Love," Jamie sighed. "I’ve got to get to bed, now, Honey. I’ve got to get up early for sailing."

"I love you, Babe. Talk to you tomorrow."

"Night, Honey. Love you."

Well, this is just not the night to tell her about her father,
Ryan decided.
One more day won’t make any difference at this point
.

"Good morning," Jamie said to the assembled guests when she went down for breakfast. Much to her surprise her mother was already sipping a glass of orange juice, looking quite awake and perky.

"Morning, Jamie," the older woman said. "Ready for our sail?"

"Yep. I’m looking forward to it, actually. It’ll be nice to go out a little farther than usual." When she sailed with her father they almost always stayed within the confines of the Bay, not wanting to risk the unpredictability of the Pacific, and she found that she was enjoying the thought of a long sail on the calm Atlantic.

She looked around the table to see that all hands were on deck, save for Stephanie. "It looks like we’re almost all here," she said, smiling at Trey, who looked like he could use another five or six hours of sleep.

Carolyn spoke up. "I sent one of the servants to try to rouse my eldest. I swear, that girl would sleep until dinner if I allowed her to."

The servant in question returned to the table moments later, and bent to whisper into Carolyn’s ear. She folded her napkin and sighed heavily, pushing her chair back. One of the waiters was in the process of delivering her omelet, and she grumbled, "Just when my breakfast gets here, and I have to go wake that child up."

"Let me," Jamie offered, getting to her feet. "I haven’t even decided what I want for breakfast, Carolyn."

"Are you sure you don’t mind, Jamie?" Carolyn was already sitting back down, and her napkin was neatly placed on her lap by the time her sentence was finished.

"Not a bit." Catching the waiters eye, she indicated that she’d have an omelet too, and made her way towards the stairs.

"Oh, Jamie, here’s the key to her room. I doubt that she’ll answer your knock."

After the fourth round of knocking brought no response, Jamie inserted the key and poked her head into Stephanie’s room. The young woman had been occupying the room for less than a week, but it looked as though at least six people were squatting in the space. Clothes covered every piece of furniture, CDs, tapes, and other accessories of adolescence lay scattered across the dresser and the club table, and discarded shoes provided an additional hazard.

The room was pitch dark, even though it was a bright, sunny morning. Jamie didn’t want to wake her cousin too abruptly, so she stumbled around in the dark room for a few minutes, trying to reach the bed. She finally found it, and grasped Stephanie’s shoulder and shook it a few times. "Stephanie…it’s time to get up." No response. Three more tries finally elicited a response, but it was merely a very unhappy sounding moan.
Well, at least she’s breathing
.

Deciding that drastic action was called for, Jamie turned on the bedside lamp, casting a warm glow over the disordered room.
What a pit!
Jamie thought to herself.
I would never have been allowed to leave my room like this!
She stooped to pick up some of the discarded items that littered the area around the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans by the hems to fold them. A ticket of some sort fell to the ground, and she retrieved it to put it on the dresser.
Hmmm…that’s odd. Why would she have a receipt from The Minuteman Mini Mart in her jeans
? She looked at the paper idly as she placed it on the cluttered dresser, and almost gasped when she noted the time and the date.
This is from Boston…and it’s from this morning! What in the hell was she doing in Boston at four a.m.!?

Turning back to the bed, she shook the frail young woman harder, not stopping until she got a response. The response was a mumbled, "Leave me the fuck alone!"

Jesus! I don’t think she knows it’s me trying to wake her up! Don’t tell me she talks to her mother like that!

Her patience at an end, Jamie got close to Stephanie’s head and insisted, "I’m not leaving until you get up, Steph. Let’s go!"

As the young woman rolled onto her back, Jamie crossed the room and flung open the curtains. The bright light that washed in glinted off a small, foil-wrapped packet lying on the floor, and Jamie bent to pick it up, also. "Stephanie," she said, much louder this time, "it’s time to get up!"

"Fuck off, Jamie," she growled, pulling the pillow over her head.

Hmm…maybe she just doesn’t like me
, Jamie thought with a smirk. She unwrapped the tiny package and found a brownish-white powder.
I might not know a lot about drugs, but this is certainly not marijuana! Damn…this sucks!

Now angry, Jamie grabbed her cousin's damp tank top and yanked hard, finally propelling the young woman into action. Stephanie threw her pillow across the room and sat up, scrubbing at her face with both hands. "What in the hell is wrong with you? The fucking door was locked!"

"I know that, Stephanie. Your mother asked me to come wake you to go sailing, and since you ignored the earlier attempts to get you up, she gave me the key to your room."

"I’m not going sailing or any other goddamned place. Now leave me alone!" She flopped back down on to the bed, the acrid smell of perspiration hitting Jamie as she did so.

"I’m not leaving you alone until I know why you were in Boston early this morning," Jamie demanded in her best no-nonsense voice.

"Go fuck yourself," Stephanie snapped, pulling the covers over her head. "What I do is none of your business."

Not to be deterred, Jamie grabbed the covers with both hands and yanked hard, pulling them completely off the bed. Stephanie was wearing a tank top and a pair of bikinis, and as Jamie got a good view of her emaciated body, she shuddered involuntarily. Her earlier guess of 95 pounds was a significant overestimate, as she now realized that her young cousin was probably ten pounds under that.

With an outraged squawk, the girl jumped from the bed, and Jamie feared for a moment that she would punch her. Instead the irate young woman stormed into the bath and slammed the door, locking it after her.

"I don’t know if this is cocaine or some other drug, so I’ll just take it downstairs and let everyone discuss it over breakfast," Jamie called to the closed door.

The door flew open, and Stephanie lunged for her older, bigger, and much stronger cousin. Jamie sidestepped her, causing the young woman to hit the carpet forcefully. "Gimme that!" she cried, her thin arms flailing.

"No way, Stephanie. Come downstairs with me, right now, and we’ll get this out in the open. You obviously have a problem."

"I do not!" she cried. "It’s Trey’s! He’s afraid that his parents will search his room, so I agreed to keep it for him! Don’t tell on him, Jamie. Please!"

"Oh, Jesus." Jamie sank onto the bed, holding her head in her hands. "And that’s a reason
not
to tell!? Stephanie, that makes it even worse! He almost died from a overdose!"

"He’s trying to stop, Jamie, I swear! I’m helping him to stop. That’s why I’ve got his stuff! He’s going to call his counselor from the last clinic he was in to see if he can get admitted. Come on…you’ve got to let him do this on his own."

"Why? Why does it matter who calls as long as he gets back in treatment?"

"His grandfather will disinherit him if he finds out he’s using again! He told him the last time that he would not stand for it if Trey had a relapse. You can’t let that happen, Jamie! Trey would be out on the streets if Grandfather told Uncle Skip to throw him out!"

Jamie considered this argument for a moment. David Dunlop had some very strong views on a number of topics, and one of them was drugs. He thought that illegal drug usage was a sign of weak character, and Catherine had confirmed that Trey was on thin ice after his last relapse. "So what’s his plan?" she asked.

"He’s going to try to contact his counselor today. If he can get in, he’ll just make some excuse to his grandfather and take off. Give him a chance, Jamie. Please! He’d never make it without his inheritance."

Jamie took a deep breath and locked her eyes on Stephanie. "Do you swear you are telling me the truth?"

"Yes. Yes, I am, Jamie. I swear it!"

"Okay, Steph. I’ll wait until tomorrow. But if Trey isn’t on his way to treatment by tomorrow evening, I’m going to talk to Skip."

"He will be, Jamie. I’m sure he will be."

By the time Jamie returned to the dining room, Trey was nowhere to be found. "Any luck?" Carolyn asked from across the table.

"Yes, she’s up. She should be down in a few minutes."

"Have you ever seen a girl who was more difficult to wake?" Carolyn asked, laughing softly.

"No, she’s something all right," Jamie agreed, forcing a smile.

It was 7:45 on the west coast by the time Jamie was finished with breakfast, but she desperately needed to speak with her partner.
Maybe there’s a phone near her practice area
, she hoped, dialing in her number on Ryan’s pager service.

Thankfully, just a few minutes later Ryan’s honeyed tones came through the receiver. "God, it’s good to hear you," Jamie sighed.

"What’s wrong, Baby? You sound upset."

"Can I ask you a question about drug use?"

"Uhh…Jamie, that’s not the best way to open a conversation when I’m due at practice in ten minutes. What in the heck is going on?"

"It’s a long story, Honey, but the bottom line is that I found drugs in my cousin Stephanie’s room. She swears that they belong to my cousin Trey, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe her."

"Jesus! How old are these people?"

"Steph is just sixteen. Trey is my age. He’s been in and out of treatment centers since he was in high school. He’s been clean for a year now but Stephanie told me that he’s using again."

"Shit." Ryan desperately wanted to go to Rhode Island and bring her lover back from the crazy situation, but she knew that wasn’t an option. Instead, she tried her best to provide as much help as she could.

"It sounds like you are confident that Trey is using, huh?"

"Yeah…that seems pretty likely. But I don’t know how to tell if Steph is, too, Do you know much about drugs, Babe?"

"Well, not from personal experience," Ryan said. "But I’ve taken a number of seminars on drug use when I worked at the teen crisis center. Describe her manner and her appearance."

"She looks pretty normal, actually. She dresses like a Dunlop, and she obviously cares about her appearance. She’s painfully thin, but I think that’s normal for her age. Her eyes are funny, though. On Monday they looked dull and flat, but yesterday they just sparkled. I guess that could be boredom, but it seemed odd."

"Does she look like she has a rash or does she scratch her skin a lot?"

"No, nothing like that."

"Does she wear long sleeves all the time?"

"No. But she’s normally pretty well covered up. She wears the oversized clothes that girls her age wear. I saw her almost naked today and she didn’t have tracks in her arms or anything, if that’s what you mean."

"How’s her mood?"

"Well, on Monday she acted really withdrawn. We were by the pool for a couple of hours, and she was either asleep or bored to death. She didn’t say two words at brunch or dinner. I also noticed that she moved her food around her plate, but she didn’t seem to eat hardly any of it"

"Sounds like she could be bulimic or anorexic. Does she have a history of eating disorders?"

"I think all of the women in my family have some sort of eating disorder," she admitted. "I look like I could play nose tackle for the 49ers compared with the rest of the women here."

"Hmm…" Ryan’s agile mind was considering all of the details, and just hearing her partner think was reassuring to Jamie. "You say you saw her today when she was almost naked. What’s that about?"

"I went to her room to get her up to go sailing. Stumbling around in her pit of room I came across a foil packet which is obviously drugs of some kind. I confronted her about them, and I was afraid she was going to hit me! She got so angry that it was a little frightening."

"Unfortunately, that all sounds like plausible adolescent behavior. But it could also indicate cocaine or even heroin use."

"Heroin! But I didn’t see any marks on her arms or anything."

"Kids smoke or snort heroin more than they shoot nowadays. What drugs did Trey do?"

"I’m not sure. You know how closed-mouthed my family is about problems. But I know he overdosed a little over a year ago. That’s when he got clean. Steph says that he’s trying to get back into treatment now. She doesn’t want me to tell his parents because they’ve threatened to disinherit him if he relapses."

"Jeez! So all you have is Stephanie’s word, huh?"

"Yep. That’s it."

"Only one problem with that, Honey."

"What’s that?"

"Addicts lie. All the time. It’s the universal trait of an addict. So if he’s using and she’s using, you won’t get one bit of truth out of the pair of them."