Dying Breath. Wendy Corsi Staub

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      But never more than that.

      Something would eventually trigger her to have an extra glass of wine one night, or to chase it with vodka, and the next thing she knew, she was back to her old habits.

      She won’t let it happen this time, though.

      Cold turkey.

      That’s what it takes.

      Cold turkey. Twelve steps. One day at a time, with her sponsor, a woman named Kathy, promising to guide her along.

      Now the stakes are higher than ever before.

      Now she has to stay sober, for her baby’s sake, and for Tess’s, because Cam is on her own. Mike is no longer here to pick up the slack, to pick up the pieces…to pick her up—quite literally, at times.

      That’s okay. I don’t need him. I’m strong enough now. I can do it, Cam thinks resolutely, setting the empty milk glass in the sink beside the two bowls from their meal. She’ll load the dishwasher later. Or tomorrow.

      She puts the milk carton back into the fridge, noticing the World’s Best Mom shopping list pad stuck to the door. Tess gave it to her on Mother’s Day, apologetically saying it came from the dollar store—along with a box of drugstore chocolates Cam pretended she couldn’t wait to eat when in reality, just the picture on the lid—sickeningly sweet white cream oozing from a half-bitten chocolate—made her want to gag. They could have been Godiva and she’d have felt the same way.

      She must not be that great an actress, because Tess said, “Sorry I didn’t get you something better. I would have if I could have.”

      What she meant was, she would have gotten something better if her father had taken her Mother’s Day shopping as he had in years past. Last year, Mike and Tess gave Cam a designer handbag; the year before, tickets for the three of them to see Jersey Boys on Broadway. There were always flowers, too, delivered from the florist on Saturday: pink tulips, her favorite.

      This year, Mike didn’t even give her a “To My Wife on Mother’s Day” card.

      Did you really expect that from him?

      Too bad Hallmark doesn’t make “To My Estranged Wife on Mother’s Day” cards.

      Back at the stove, she ladles the hot chicken soup into a Tupperware container. She’s going to need a couple; there’s so much left over.

      Once upon a time, she—being a model wife and mother, of course—made this whenever Mike or Tess came down with a cold. There’s something so comfortingly familiar, so homey about the distinct savory scent of chicken soup.

      Maybe that’s what I’m craving now, more than the soup itself, she tells herself. Comfort. Familiarity. Home.

      There was a time when she believed this two-story brick Colonial would fit the bill. A time when she, like Mike, believed that by moving to this affluent, desirable suburb, they could somehow reclaim whatever it was that had gone missing. The trust. The security.

      Not the love, though. Never the love. That was always there, right from the start. Through everything, there was never a doubt in her mind that she loved Mike, that he loved her.

      We still do.

      That’s what makes all of this so damn hard.

      As she inhales the fragrant steam wafting up from the Tupperware container, she begins to feel vaguely light-headed.

      Dizzy.

      Oh, God.

      Oh, no.

      Cam closes her eyes and finds herself abruptly staring at the unfamiliar, tear-streaked face of a child. A girl.

      And now, mingling with the milky aftertaste in Cam’s mouth is the unmistakable, familiar taste of terror.

      Not her own.

      It’s the girl’s—the girl is in danger. She’s far from home, Cam senses. Afraid.

      And so it has begun again.

      Plugged into her iPod, Tess sits at the desk in her room, blatantly violating one of her mother’s dozens of rules.

      No music while doing homework. And no TV, no phone calls, no Internet unless it’s homework-related, and even then, only with explicit permission.

      Dozens of rules? Ha! More like hundreds, when you think about it.

      Tess is definitely thinking about it, instead of about her English homework on a Shakespearean tragedy.

      If she was to write it all down to prove a point—which is tempting—the list of things Tess is forbidden to do would dwarf the list of things that are allowed.

      Homework, healthy food, sleep, exercise…that’s about all that has Mom’s stamp of approval lately.

      As a result, Tess’s life is agonizingly boring.

      Especially when she compares it to her friends’ lives.

      She taps her yellow pencil—which she just overzealously sharpened to a needle point—against the blank lined notebook page before her, where she’s supposed to be writing an essay about Shakespeare’s theme of fate versus free will in Julius Caesar.

      No wonder she can’t focus. What does she know about free will?

      Everyone at school has more freedom than Tess Hastings has; as a result, their lives are much more interesting.

      You’d think now that Dad has moved out, Mom would relax the rules to make up for screwing up Tess’s life, instead of the opposite.

      That’s the way it works with other parents. Her friend Morrow Exley said her mother stopped enforcing curfews after the divorce, and Lily Chen, whose parents split when she was a baby and who has had two stepfathers since, has never had a curfew at all.

      Neither Morrow nor Lily has to earn their spending money doing chores around the house like Tess does. Morrow’s mother has a live-in maid; Lily’s, a live-out housekeeper. Tess’s mother has a bimonthly cleaning service and a live-in slave: a fourteen-year-old daughter who picks up all the slack.

      Granted, if Mom didn’t enforce the rules, Tess would probably keep things orderly by choice. She’s always liked to clean and organize. But the house never needed as much of her attention as it has lately.

      Not that Mom was ever a neatnik—but lately, she’s gotten really lazy. She spends an awful lot of time resting, dozing off in front of the television or even, Tess suspects, taking afternoon naps. Lately, Mom’s always upstairs when Tess gets home from school, and Tess has noticed that the bed is usually rumpled.

      There could be another reason for that, but she doesn’t even want to consider it.

      “I guarantee you one of them is having an affair,” Morrow said, rolling her dark blue eyes when Tess told her and Lily about the separation that awful day in March. “My dad was having one.”

      “My СКАЧАТЬ