"I'm in the city. I thought I'd drop by. I'll be there in ten minutes. Let me in."

I lurch to my feet, almost crying at how much this means to me. I really am a mess. I will talk to Margie-my almost-mom. Maybe she can help me. "I'd love that."

I disconnect the call and rush into the bathroom, where I dry my hair quickly and put on enough product to bend steel. Then I put on makeup and dress in jeans and a short-sleeved top. I am pathetically eager to see someone who loves me, to be welcomed and wanted. I slip into a pair of flats. (I shouldn't have had those two glasses of wine; my balance isn't quite good enough for heels.)

The doorbell rings and I run for it, opening the door.

There stands my mother, looking as thin and ragged as a piece of twine. She is dressed like a refugee from a seventies commune: baggy pants, Birkenstock sandals, and one of those embroidered Mexican tunic tops that I haven't seen in years. Her gray hair is fighting the leather strap she's pulled it into; wisps float around her narrow, wrinkled face. I am so bewildered by the sight of her that I don't know what to say.

"Margie sent me," she says. "But it was my idea. I wanted to see you."

"Where is she?"

"She's not coming. I'm the one who wanted to see you. I knew you wouldn't open the door for me."

"Why are you here?"

She walks past me, comes into my home as if she has a right to be here.

In the living room, she turns to me. In a hesitant, gravelly voice, she says, "You have a drug or alcohol problem."

For a second, my mind goes utterly, terribly blank. I think, I've been caught. It's horrifying and humiliating and I feel stripped bare and vulnerable and broken. I back away, shaking my head. "No," I say. "No. My medications are prescribed for me. You make it sound like I'm a drug addict." I laugh at the idea of that. Does she think I hang around street corners and score drugs and inject them into my veins and slump to the street? I go to a doctor. I buy my drugs at Walmart, for God's sake. And then I consider the source of this accusation.

My mother steps forward. She looks out of place in my designer room. I can see all the disappointments of my life in her wrinkles, in the sun spots on her cheeks. I cannot remember a single time she held me or kissed me or told me she loved me. But now she's going to call me an addict and help me.

"I've been through rehab," she says in a timid, uncertain voice. "I think-"

"You have no right to say anything to me," I yell at her. "Not a thing, you understand me? How dare you come to judge me?"

"Tully," my mother says. "Margie says your voice has been slurred the last few times she's talked to you. I saw your mug shot on TV. I know what you're going through."

"Go away," I say, my voice breaking.

"Why did you come to see me in Snohomish?"

"I'm writing a book about my life. Not that you know anything about it."

"You had questions."

I laugh and feel the start of tears, which makes me angry. "Yeah. A lot of good it did me."

"Tully, maybe-"

"No maybes. Not from you. Not again. I can't take it." I grab her by the arm and drag her out of the condo-she weighs nothing. Before she can say anything, I shove her out into the hall and slam the door shut. Then I go into my bedroom and climb into bed, pulling the covers over my head. I hear my own breathing in the dark.

She is wrong. I don't have a problem. So what if I need Xanax to keep the panic attacks at bay and Ambien to sleep? So what if I like a few glasses of wine at night? I can control all of it, stop whenever I want to.

But, damn, I have a headache now. It's her fault I'm in pain. My mother. She and Margie have betrayed me. That is the cruelest part of all. I expect nothing from my mother, less than nothing, but Margie has been one of the few safe harbors of my life. To have her betray me like this is a blow I can't handle. At the thought, my anger dissolves into a bleak despair.

I roll sideways and open my nightstand drawer and reach for the Xanax.

You think it was a betrayal? Kate says beside me, and her voice brings me out of my memories, pulls me up like a leash snap.

I remember where I really am. In a hospital bed, connected to a ventilator, a hole drilled in my head, watching my life flash before my eyes.

"I was in trouble," I say quietly. And they tried to help me.

How did I not know that? How did I miss the obvious?

You see now, don't you?

"Stop stop stop. I don't want to do this anymore." I roll onto my side and close my eyes.

You need to remember.

"No. I need to forget."

September 3, 2010

2:10 P.M.

In the hospital conference room, the police detective stood with his legs spread far enough apart to hold him steady if an earthquake struck. He had a small notepad open and was reviewing his notes.

Johnny glanced around the quiet room. Most of the chairs were empty, pushed in close to the table. Two Kleenex boxes stood at the ready in the middle of the table. Beside him, Margie was trying her best to sit tall and straight, but this had been a tiring vigil; she kept slumping in defeat. He'd called her early this morning; she and Bud had been on a plane from Arizona by nine-fifteen. Now Bud was at Johnny's house, waiting for the boys to come home from school. Marah was in with Tully.

He and Margie had been in this room before. Here, they'd been told that the surgeons had failed to get clean margins on Kate's cancer and that it had spread to her lymph nodes and that there were quality-of-life decisions to be made. He reached over to hold Margie's cold, big-knuckled hand.

The detective cleared his throat.

Johnny looked up.

"The toxicology report won't be in for a while, but a search of Ms. Hart's residence revealed several prescription drugs-Vicodin, Xanax, and Ambien, primarily. We haven't found any witnesses to the accident yet, but our estimate, based on the crime scene analysis, is that she was driving in excess of fifty miles per hour on Columbia Street, heading toward the waterfront, in the rain. She hit a concrete stanchion at a high rate of speed."

"Were there skid marks?" Johnny asked. He heard Margie draw in a breath, and he knew that this question hadn't occurred to her. Skid marks before a collision meant that the driver had tried to stop. No skid marks meant something else.

The detective looked at Johnny. "I don't know."

Johnny nodded. "Thanks, Detective."

After the detective left, Margie turned to Johnny. He saw the tears in her eyes and regretted his question. His mother-in-law had already suffered so much. "I'm sorry, Margie."

"Are you saying ... Do you think she drove into it on purpose?"

The question stripped Johnny of his strength, left him exposed.