“Well, I wasn’t there. I don’t know all the details,” I said, thinking, what will they think when they find out that it was really Esme? Please, I thought, please let there be a chance that it was. And then, shamed, I was reminded that, if it was true, another family would be devastated, as mine had been. “Stefan has no memory of that night. Some impressions but no clear memory. He was…he’d taken a cocktail of drugs.”
“He blames the drugs. Your son.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Margo said, “But he’s right to some degree. Drugs wreck lives. Booze wrecks lives. This poor girl’s death, another gift of substance use. My kids are only five and seven, and I can’t see them except for a couple of hours on the weekend with my ex present. I’m not there for them. They need me. I was sober for five years. Why didn’t I try harder to think? Before I went out?”
“You’re thinking now,” said another woman. “Margo, your best thinking got you here.”
Margo turned back to me. “Alcoholics are professional blamers. I blamed everything and everyone else for drinking myself out of a great job and a great family and a great marriage. It sounds like your son’s blaming too. And you? You’re probably mortified by your own actions. But the first step is to admit that you were at fault.”
“I don’t feel we were entirely at fault. At one point I did. But I’m not my son. I’m myself. I didn’t put him in that situation. I didn’t make him kill his girlfriend. I saw that Stefan was obsessed with Belinda. He loved her almost too much. But I didn’t see other things. Stefan was an athlete. He didn’t even drink so far as we could tell. So we didn’t see that coming. As for him, he has admitted he was at fault. He’s admitted he had no power over the drugs he used.”
Becky spoke up then. “There were definitely things with Alice I didn’t let myself see. Because if I let myself see them, then things would have had to change. I would have lost my job. I would have lost her. I tried to convince myself that she would get better.”
Feeling undressed before these strangers, I gripped my cold cup of espresso and gazed down at my shimmering plate of lush custard, the spicy food I had so enjoyed now scalding my guts. I took a bite of the flan. Then I got up and smiled at them all. “You know, I think I need to get going now. Thank you all for a lovely meal. This place is fabulous. I’m tempted to move in!”
“You don’t have the résumé for that,” another of the women said. I didn’t know how much more awkward it could get.
Becky got up with me. “Want to take a little walk before you head home, Thea? I could use some exercise.”
We headed down across a few streets to the Lakeshore Path, where dozens of strollers and bikers were ambling along under the benign moon. After a short while, Becky said, “You know, they were hard on you. I’m sorry, I should have warned you. These are women who have not had the easiest time at the hands of men, as you might imagine.”
“Not for nothing, but The Healing Project is Stefan’s idea. He’s the one who created the charter. He’s the one who picked out your letter. He didn’t even realize how close I was with Alzy. He didn’t make the connection until I told him.”
“When we have our lights-out meeting, I’m going to make the point again about Stefan being behind the idea that’s helping all of them.”
We walked, and talked about Becky’s excitement and hopes for her baby, whom she wanted to name either Julian or Patrick.
“Name him both,” I said. “Let him pick. Patrick Julian. Julian Patrick. Patrick Julian Broom. Those are both names that have gravitas and music.”
“Unless they call him PJ or JP.”
“Are you having that hallucination that makes you think you have any control over your child’s destiny? You need to let that one go.”
Becky put her hand on my arm, then linked her arm through mine and said, “I didn’t realize you don’t really know exactly what happened to Belinda that night, do you?”
“Bits and pieces, but no. Stefan had no memory of that night. He needed our help to navigate the grief, the judgment, the overdose, the addiction, being incarcerated. We thought rehab and prison were the hard work. But it was when he got out that he needed us even more, to overcome his demons and find a way to accept himself and feel accepted. And now, I’ve been over the police reports and…” Should I tell her? I didn’t even know her. “There’s something else. There’s this girl, Stefan’s age, and she’s been calling me for months, on and off for years, really, and she kept saying she was so sorry. She kept saying she couldn’t live with the guilt of what she did, that she was there that night and she knew the truth.”