Author's Note: Welcome back! A quick couple of notes before we start. First, this is my disclaimer that, like the field of medicine, I am not a legal professional either, so much of what I'm discussing in this chapter comes from a combination of personal experience and research regarding child custody and estate logistics. If I am mistaken in anything, please let me know and I'll be happy to fix the issue! Also, much of the points from the present day section of this chapter and the next couple of chapters to follow are heavily inspired by Abby's character arc on "ER," which takes place one or two seasons before the character's exit from the series if you're curious. Once again, the title of this chapter comes from the Green Day song "Jesus of Suburbia." Please let me know what you think, and enjoy!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Chapter 30 - The Son of Rage and Love, Part 2

Erik

How do you leave the past behind
When it keeps finding ways
To get to your heart
It reaches way down deep
And tears you inside out
Till you're torn apart
- "Rent" - Jonathan Larson, 1996

LOYALTY

Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit and other Soldiers. Bearing true faith and allegiance is a matter of believing in and devoting yourself to something or someone. A loyal Soldier is one who supports the leadership and stands up for fellow Soldiers. By wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army you are expressing your loyalty. And by doing your share, you show your loyalty to your unit.

DUTY

Fulfill your obligations. Doing your duty means more than carrying out your assigned tasks. Duty means being able to accomplish tasks as part of a team. The work of the U.S. Army is a complex combination of missions, tasks and responsibilities - all in constant motion. Our work entails building one assignment onto another. You fulfill your obligations as a part of your unit every time you resist the temptation to take "shortcuts" that might undermine the integrity of the final product.

RESPECT

Treat people as they should be treated. In the Soldier's Code, we pledge to "treat others with dignity and respect while expecting others to do the same." Respect is what allows us to appreciate the best in other people. Respect is trusting that all people have done their jobs and fulfilled their duty. And self-respect is a vital ingredient with the Army value of respect, which results from knowing you have put forth your best effort. The Army is one team and each of us has something to contribute.

SELFLESS SERVICE

Put the welfare of the nation, the Army and your subordinates before your own. Selfless service is larger than just one person. In serving your country, you are doing your duty loyally without thought of recognition or gain. The basic building block of selfless service is the commitment of each team member to go a little further, endure a little longer, and look a little closer to see how he or she can add to the effort.

HONOR

Live up to Army values. The nation's highest military award is The Medal of Honor. This award goes to Soldiers who make honor a matter of daily living — Soldiers who develop the habit of being honorable, and solidify that habit with every value choice they make. Honor is a matter of carrying out, acting, and living the values of respect, duty, loyalty, selfless service, integrity and personal courage in everything you do.

INTEGRITY

Do what's right, legally and morally. Integrity is a quality you develop by adhering to moral principles. It requires that you do and say nothing that deceives others. As your integrity grows, so does the trust others place in you. The more choices you make based on integrity, the more this highly prized value will affect your relationships with family and friends, and, finally, the fundamental acceptance of yourself.

PERSONAL COURAGE

Face fear, danger or adversity (physical or moral). Personal courage has long been associated with our Army. With physical courage, it is a matter of enduring physical duress and at times risking personal safety. Facing moral fear or adversity may be a long, slow process of continuing forward on the right path, especially if taking those actions is not popular with others. You can build your personal courage by daily standing up for and acting upon the things that you know are honorable.

- The Seven Core Army Values, United States Army

Twenty-Five Years Previously, Memphis TN - We'd always smoked in my apartment. At that point, I had more or less considered that small allowance to be as much of a courtesy as it was a gesture of gratitude, though I use that term loosely. By that juncture in my life, I had very few friends, fewer now that I was out of foster care and taking college courses.

Nadir was an excellent mentor, and I found myself more willing to speak to him beyond that capacity as time went on, slowly but steadily breaking away the barriers that both childhood and adolesence had taught me to build in self-preservation; but regardless, I wasn't yet sure if I trusted him enough to extend his role further, even as we saw one another often through the mentorship program in school. But where the others I hung around with had either already dropped out or hadn't bothered to enroll in the first place, my attendance was alienating for them, and I admittedly held it over their heads, making a point of contention of my coming and going to the junior college campus each day while they worked at jobs they hated and drank themselves into oblivion. The drinking, I was already well-acquainted with myself; but even then I knew that I wanted something more fulfilling for a career, still eyeing music and composition as potential avenues to pursue, and I wasn't above sharing that fact when pressed, regularly inviting somewhat heated arguments in turn. At any rate, aside from what I was doing in school, otherwise I tended to be considered too young at seventeen to be integrated into the more established groups, whether on-campus or off. I was surrounded by people, but alone all the same, and it wore down my already tenuous judgment - I took company, took feigned companionship, wherever I could find it.

But the friends I'd had, in the most basic use of the term, that had stuck around all bore one trait in common - they were significantly older than me, which, in my mind, largely just meant that they were old enough to take my money to buy my cigarettes and booze for me until I could do so on my own. And, incidentally, none of them cared enough about me, or even themselves, to actually worry over the substantial risk of purchasing those things for someone that was clearly underage. It didn't matter to me either way, any of it. Just a year out of high school, I was frustrated by my situation - legally emancipated the previous year, not even eighteen yet and I still had all the rights and responsibilities of an adult, though more often than not, I chose to gloss over those responsibilities. At that age, I had a chip on my shoulder that wouldn't be moved, and it showed in everything I did. The only thing that I took seriously was school; everything else, I'd decided, was expendable. I was more than capable of taking care of myself, in the sense that I could cook and clean and survive on my own, and yet there were still so many things that I just couldn't do. Feeding my worst habits were only a few items on that list, but altogether, the circumstances drove me insane.

So, in order to curb my irritation, I smoked too much, and I drank too much, and I spent what little free-time I had anymore with people that sincerely didn't give a fuck about anything, least of all their youngest tagalong friend. Yet that apathy served me in the end, to the fullest extent that I could see in my inexperience - hence why friends and whoever else came along were allowed to smoke inside. The novelty of my own apartment - while it was only a studio and nearly falling down around me at that - was one that I lorded over my peers, many of which still had to share their space with family members or roommates, but that we all took advantage of just the same.

One of these friends, in particular, liked to hang back well after the others had gone, and ultimately, he brought out the worst in me whenever that happened. Alex Jordan was, out of all the rest in our misfit group, probably the only one that possessed a worse attitude than the one I carried, and he was decidedly more aggressive when showing it; but he was also the one that I had known the longest, and therefore perhaps let him get away with more than I would have otherwise. Like me, he had spent the majority of his childhood in the foster care system, and had fallen through the cracks at one point or another almost immediately after he'd turned eighteen. There was no real safety-net for the children that aged out, nothing consistent or concrete, at least - most of us just disappeared, unknown even to each other, rarely given any lasting guidance about how to properly make the transition from ward-of-the-state to functional-member-of-society. It wouldn't be fair, or even accurate to say that this was always the case, but statistics weren't on our side, either; I knew too many fosters that had simply vanished, it seemed, before anyone or anything could reach them. Alex was one such case, but a rarity as well - we had never been placed in the same home, but had encountered each other off and on over the years, and had kept in touch when he aged out and I graduated.

Still, whether as a result of his upbringing or by some flaw in his nature, he wasn't an easy person to spend any extended periods of time with - he had no warmth or sincerity about him at all, compensating instead with a recklessness that always somehow managed to spur me on one way or another, I'd realized too late - and there were more than a handful of occasions where his company left me feeling incredibly uneasy, an unnerving sensation that I did whatever was possible to rid myself of, however high or low the cost. Best case scenario, I'd find myself looking for excuses to make him leave my apartment, and the relief I'd find in his absence was stark even before I would come to understand why. The night we'd managed to bring our lives crashing down around us had proved to be just such an occasion, and looking back, one of my most relentless regrets was not forcing him out the front door long before he'd convinced me to leave with him.

He was stoned, and I was trying to finish a homework assignment that I'd been putting off. It was due the following day, but it was only math - intermediate algebra, something that had never bothered me before - and so I'd assumed when the assignment was initially handed out that I could rush through it in less than an hour and not have to think about it again until it was traded and corrected in class. But as it turned out, I'd been wrong about the level of difficulty I was dealing with, and I was paying for my cocky approach then. While I worked - hunched over the milk-crate table that I had once been so proud of throwing together when my grants from school had barely covered rent, nevermind actual furniture - Alex had settled himself into a corner of the small room, nursing a blunt on his own that could have easily knocked three grown men over. He had invited me to smoke it with him, to be fair, but I really didn't want to get high that night; wherever he'd gotten his weed, it smelled like dirt, and it gave me a headache. I had too much homework to focus on as it stood, and I wasn't interested in adding one more issue to a steadily growing list of problems. But he hadn't bothered me about it, hadn't cajoled me or tried to get a rise out of me as he had in similar situations in the past, and I was grateful that he'd had the good sense to shut the hell up and occupy himself quietly.

That was, until I'd made the mistake of leaning away from my textbook and graph papers to light a cigarette, needing the mental break from my work almost desperately, even though I was only about halfway through everything that still needed to be done, and the equations were becoming more complex. It was past midnight by then, and I distantly wondered how much longer I would need to dedicate to the task, if I'd get any sleep at all before having to set off to the early-morning class it was for. I had kept those concerns to myself, but it seemed that just my movement alone was enough to bring Alex's full attention to me once again even so, and he was already speaking before I'd taken my first drag.

"I don't get why you bother with that," he said slowly, almost contemplatively, though I knew that this had to do more with the weed than with any deeper thought.

"Why I bother with homework?" I asked, not truly needing to clarify before I explained, "If I fail my classes, any classes, I lose my grants."

"Then get a job."

"School is my job. Why risk a sure thing for crappy work, especially when no one's hiring? Besides, I want to be there. Believe it or not, I like school. I'm good at it."

He rolled his bloodshot eyes, "You've had that bug in your ass ever since you started over at that college."

I groaned wearily, knowing exactly where this conversation was heading, but also knowing that he wouldn't let the issue lie even if I didn't engage - better just to get it out of the way sooner rather than later, "What are you talking about?"

"You act like you're better than everyone else now."

"Bullshit."

"It's just funny," he shrugged, though any humor he'd alluded to with his words was completely absent in his gesture, his tone suddenly turning challenging, likely hoping that I'd fall for his bait, "People go to school and get wussified and think they're hot shit, all while the rest of us work real jobs so the college kids and everyone else can function every day - "

" - At least I'm trying to do something with my life, I'm not over here bitching about every fucking thing like you - "

" - It doesn't matter what you're trying or ain't trying, you got all book-smarts and no street-smarts. Hot shit."

"If I'm acting like I'm hot shit, you don't have to be here," I said, bristling even as I attempted to stand up for myself, gesturing toward the studio's entrance off to my side as I said, "If you're offended, you can leave, I don't give a fuck. The door's right there."

He shook his head, his voice strained as he tried to keep the thick smoke that he'd just inhaled deep within his chest while he responded, "Relax, I'm just busting your balls," then he coughed hoarsely, the smell of cheap marijuana overwhelming the small space we were sharing. It took a moment for him to catch his breath before he spoke again, attempting to shift gears quickly with a dismissal, "Don't be sensitive, it was a joke, man."

"Right."

"We should leave for a while, though," he went on, "Both of us. I'm bored."

"I'm busy. But again, you can leave."

"Seriously, come with me. I need your help."

I sighed, once again looking away from the work in front of me, watching the cigarette smoke rise and dissipate from the glowing cherry in my hand as I asked flatly, "With what?"

"I'm getting my car back from Alisha."

Tensing at such an outwardly casual mentioning of his ex-girlfriend, I still didn't miss the underlying resentment that painted his tone when he'd said her name. The two of them had absolutely no business interacting with one another, no matter how seemingly uneventful the interaction was presented to be; they had a baby together, a little boy that was barely a year old yet, I remembered, but the child was in Alex's grandmother's custody indefinitely, and for good reason. Neither of the biological parents were in anything even remotely resembling a stable living-situation, neither of them had the maturity or the drive to better themselves for the baby's sake, and so in the bigger picture, the poor kid was far better off living away from them, just as they were better off avoiding each other altogether for the foreseeable future. I didn't know the details of their relationship, nor did I want to, but I recalled that the end of it had been ugly, and that Alex's behavior had been the main catalyst to that end. If nothing else, I didn't expect him to change any time soon, and this instant was only further evidence of that idea. His unexpected decision to go out in the middle of the night just to get his car back was fueled by spite, I was sure - the suggestion immediately set alarms off in my mind, some unnamed instinct nearly screaming at me not to agree to a single word he said, because nothing good ever came from him before.

But by then, I was so fed up with him taunting me - over school, over everything that he held a grudge against - that those alarms were easy enough to ignore; although a part of me knew that something was likely very wrong here, the rest simply didn't care to listen. I honestly was just a child, despite what the courts had determined, and in my complete unfamiliarity with the real world - unfamiliarity with any true notion of sensibility or skill at judging another person's character entirely - I still believed that it was better, even safer to stop fighting, grit my teeth, and give in to Alex's whims, to get his immediate attention away from me, rather than confront a backlash that could turn out worse on my part.

So, sighing once again, I caved, "Fuck it. Let's go."

The rest of the night unfolded in a fairly straightforward manner, though I never cared to think about any of it for longer than was necessary. Some of the basic details had blurred over time, many cast aside by the traumas I'd undergone in adulthood, but I could never forget the elements that brought the most trouble. I would learn later that the car wasn't Alex's at all - though I'd seen him driving it a handful of times before - but Alisha's mother's instead. But since Alex had somehow managed to hang on to the spare key, once we'd arrived after the short walk from my apartment, I hadn't thought much about taking the car right from the driveway without once actually speaking to Alisha in-person. I wasn't wholly blameless in everything that had taken place from beginning to end, but I was young and already jaded to a degree, and incredibly stupid, so anything that didn't add up just hadn't registered in my mind when it should have. That alleged genius IQ of mine had nothing on common sense - I had certainly found that out the hard way. It was a manual transmission, but I had only ever learned to drive automatic, and I was a relatively new driver at that, but Alex was so unbelievably toasted even with the weaker strain he'd been smoking that he posed a very real risk to others behind the wheel; his reactions were slowed dramatically, and his concentration was completely shot, and I didn't want blood on my hands if he happened to hurt someone.

Unsurprisingly - between breaking the speed limit from the insane rush of adrenaline that I'd experienced after finally figuring out the clutch, but still barely being able to control the vehicle I had no business driving to begin with - I was eventually seen by a state patrol car and pulled over. And then I had tried to run, because in my adolescent mind, that had made the most sense, though even now I really can't say whether or not I'd genuinely believed at any point in the chase that I would get away successfully. In those moments, I was only aware of fear and desperation and little else. It wasn't until I felt the officer's knee pressed into my back as he fought to keep me pinned to where he had tackled me to the ground - all while he was putting me in handcuffs, yelling Quit fucking resisting! as I struggled and leveled every swear word at him that I knew - that I realized the gravity of my actions that night. More than anything in those fragmented instances that followed, I knew that saying that I'd made a mistake would be an understatement. For God's sake, I was doing my goddamned algebra homework not two hours before this; but even so, it would prove to be the first of so many mistakes that I would make throughout my life, a series of missteps and senselessness that would continue to repeat themselves, and all because I had allowed them to, directly or otherwise.

I never saw or heard from Alex after our final court dates so many months later - the same ones that would ultimately see me sent to North Carolina and into the Army instead of prison, the ruling made and agreed upon with the notion that I would be saved with creative sentencing - nor did I find a sense of loyalty for the years we'd known each other to care what became of him. He was toxic, manipulative; looking back, that much should have been clear to me from the start. At any rate, he wasn't someone that I'd wanted to allow to continue as a permanent figure in my life, especially when I witnessed for myself the distinct differences in friendship and sincerity between him and Nadir. And with Alex away, once I had settled down in Durham, had wrapped my head around basic training and transferred my college credits and finally felt the freedom to just breathe, there was a time shortly afterward that I could bring myself to believe that the worst of it all was behind me - that I had and could still change, that everything would be fine and that would be the end of it. I'd made a nearly irreversible mistake, but was sure that I had learned my lesson, and - entirely unable to anticipate then what waited for me in the future - by the time I'd turned eighteen, I was determined that I would never put myself in another situation inviting so much self-destruction and trouble again.

~~oOo~~

Present Day, Schaumburg IL - Apparently, not quite as much about me has changed for the better over the years - certainly not as meaningfully, or in any lasting manner - as I would formerly liked to have believed.

When I'd once again relapsed and started drinking after losing Gene - after I'd been confronted with a legal conflict with my father that was impossible to reconcile with - in many ways I felt like I was seventeen years old again. I felt as if I was sitting on the floor of my studio apartment, isolated and desperate and too young to find a way out of my situation, only to make the shortsighted decision to trade one source of pain and frustration for a known risk - all with the hope that doing so would at least help to relieve even just a fraction of the problems and unease steadily unfolding for me, inside and out. Back in my hotel room in Memphis after Gene's funeral and the initial meetings with the lawyers about his estate, I had stubbornly insisted to myself that the drinking would end there, that as soon as I returned home to my wife and daughter, to the life we shared, I wouldn't allow the drive to alcohol to follow me there. But against my better judgment and everything that I had built - everything that I'd finally done right - I was severely mistaken in the effectiveness of my own insistence. I'm an alcoholic, and I always will be - it's something that can only ever be managed, never cured. I am what I am, and so I should have known better than to order that drink in the bar with Nick to begin with, regardless of how needled I'd felt by him; I should have known better, plain and simple, and I was paying for that lapse in judgment in spades.

I recognized that my ability to make good choices, to practice sound reasoning, was virtually nonexistent, at least concerning my wellbeing - nevermind stepping back and remembering those around me, those that care about me. As a surgeon, I worked well under pressure, could always maintain a presence of mind that ensured the survival of my patients - when I was in the Army, that ability was much the same, whether we were under fire or facing some other danger; professionally, I was always alert and ready to come to my decisions logically, and that skill typically proved itself worthy when it counted. But for myself, I was consistently a hopeless cause when I needed to be the exact opposite, as if there existed an unseen barrier deep within my mind that barred the thought process necessary to determine a harmful path long before it was taken, a path that would almost certainly lead into overwhelming darkness. And although in the past I had always tried to act in my own best interest before it was too late, my outcomes varied, rarely going in my favor in time to prevent the fallout. Lately, I had stepped back into just such a dark place, spiraling downward indefinitely, and as such I'd felt that very little separated me from the person I was when I was young - young and incredibly fucking irresponsible - and whoever the hell I found myself playing now. I resented myself and my failure, that much more so when I considered that I could have acted differently.

There was absolutely no excuse for breaking my sobriety; I'd wanted an escape from both the past and my new and mounting concerns, and nothing more, but I'd gone about it in the worst way imaginable, all things considered. And in attempting to achieve oblivion from one aspect of myself, I'd invited in another, and one that I could safely argue was considerably worse than dealing with Nick and his threats and the estate. Yet even so, the relapse and return to regular drinking didn't happen all at once - this time around, while the first moment itself that found me drinking again had been abrupt, its effects and their damage were slower, less insidious than past occurrences of the same nature. Rather, it was opportunistic, and there were plenty of chances for it to take hold. For the foreseeable future - the next two or three months or so, according to the attorneys - I was obligated to travel to Tennessee to deal with the estate at least every other week, because some matters simply had to be addressed in-person, and I was appointed as the only one that could do so. There was no way around that, certainly not if I wanted to settle the estate and relieve its related stresses relatively quickly. And so I would drink then, only in Memphis at the hotel, only at night after the phone conversations with Christine that I always attempted to hold as long as possible.

But soon enough, what was only a handful of occasions steadily had more such instances crowd between them. By the middle of September, I was drinking even beyond my trips out of state, using the unaccounted for time after my overnight shifts at the hospital as my cover, and either hedging or omitting altogether how many hours I was actually working whenever it came up with Christine.

Early on, I was able to mask the relapse well enough without alerting her - or anyone else, for that matter - that it had even happened in the first place, but doing so all the while with more than a little effort on my part. By my design, those closest to me hadn't noticed that anything was wrong, and although I wasn't proud of the decision, I intended to keep them in the dark regardless while I sorted it out. At any rate, I'd been either travelling too often or trying to bring in more hours at work to make up for my frequent absences for anyone to have been able to take a closer look at all; if they had sensed that something was off about me, about my behavior, that difference could easily be attributed to grief from my recent loss, but nothing more. Nadir in particular had extended his understanding on that front, for the fact that losing Gene had made such an impact that my demeanor was altered in turn, or so I'd led him to believe was the only problem. That much was true enough, the mourning process was still very much entangled in my mind and the way I carried myself even several weeks after the fact. But the drinking held its stronghold as well, yet remained completely in the shadows, because I simply wasn't willing or ready to confront it yet - not with everything else that I needed to handle in the immediate future. So I continued to hide, continued to isolate.

Hell, it was only through a stroke of dumb luck that my schedule was aligned the opposite of Christine's for the time being, but with our present work arrangement, I could effectively avoid her, drink myself into a semblance of calm when my unease inevitably wound its way through me, and sober up again in time to settle myself back into my life once more. If she'd noticed that anything was wrong, then she would certainly have said something; she would have fought for me to find my way back, but I couldn't forfeit. So while the guilt ate at me relentlessly for everything that I was doing, everything that I was hiding from her, I counted the small victory as a sign that I could continue on this way for however long I needed to, and then figure out where to go from there when all was said and done - how to take back what I'd broken. Once again, as it had been countless times before, denial was my greatest ally, and my most destructive enemy. I knew that I couldn't keep allowing its existence to influence my decisions, yet I did nothing to stop it, either - nor did I stop anything else that was unraveling in me. And by the end of October that year - just months after losing my grandfather and arguing with Nick over my daughter and taking those first grief-addled steps backward - the frequency of the drinking had increased that much more.

On and on it went in that manner.

And although it wasn't yet every day at that point, it was still often enough to pique my concern well beyond what fear I'd felt at the beginning, and make me realize that one misstep would reveal everything that I wasn't ready to face - or, worse, would descend into something that I couldn't control, that would come back around to cost me everything and everyone that I loved and needed the most. But a relapse, once invited and no matter the form it takes, comes about in an impossibly steady process, yet a deceptively convoluted and sharp slope at that - I was falling fast, and losing my grasp on the drinking itself even faster, and yet always entirely able to keep up the facade that I was fine, and that false bravado, in part, compelled me to continue. I was an expert in that dual-existence, even in this new territory; never before had I been in the role of husband and father when I drank, never had to balance the two while the alcoholism was in full-swing, but somehow I was managing to do just that day in and day out. It was a dangerous game for me to play - I was well aware of that fact - and one that I engaged in on my own, incapable of reaching out for help all the while. That hurtle had grown higher for me in the intervening years, it seemed, but acknowledging its existence - acknowledging the overlying problems - did nothing to solve a damn thing for me even so, and therefore, instead I just gave in to the most destructive parts of myself.

The situation was made that much worse in November when Nick finally followed through with his threat to legally claim what he considered his right to see Josephine. At that point, so many months had already passed without any formal action from his side that I was beginning to believe that he truly was bluffing, just as I had accused him of doing back over the summer when this had all come to a head. But in the end, he had apparently only been biding his time and gathering his resources - namely, seeking off-the-record counsel with his colleagues from the law school at U-Pitt. Thanksgiving that year would be the first since Josie was a baby that we would not be travelling to visit Gene in Tennessee for the week of the holiday, and knowing that this was the start of many long years ahead without him was difficult enough to cope with on its own; but hearing from Nick's lawyer under no uncertain terms what was happening - having the fears that Christine and I were finally starting to put away thrown in our faces once more - was jarring. All at once, she and I found ourselves having to bring in our own family law counsel on retainer, and although we were able to find someone that came well-recommended, and although we quickly saw his competence and felt assured in trusting him upon our initial meeting, under the present context it was a decidedly unsettling experience just the same.

Legally, Nick and his wife could sue for visitation any time they wanted. And so, beyond negotiating and interpreting how the laws communicated and differed between Pennsylvania and Illinois, their task was to prove in court that they had what the lawyers on both sides had outlined as "clear and convincing evidence" that being a part of Josie's life was in her best interest, and that withholding visitation from Nick and his wife would ultimately be harmful to Josie's development or emotional state. As far as I knew, they barely had a case to begin with; they could argue for their part, but it was well-established that they had shown no real interest in Josie from the time she was born until recently, and those five-plus years would very likely work against them. At least, that was what I was relying on, but the circumstances were no less stressful regardless of what might be counted in our favor.

It was crucial that I keep my drinking under control for my daughter's sake in general, to ensure her wellbeing, but now it was imperative; any misstep on my part could work against us in court, and I'd be damned if I let my own recklessness lead to her having to spend any substantial amount of time with someone that she clearly disliked, someone whose only motivation, when he wasn't putting on a show for his lawyer and colleagues, was to get back at me for more than two decades of contention. Josie had seen Nick and Gene's funeral, and he made her uncomfortable. She'd always responded positively to the warmth and sincere affection that she'd received from Gene, and even though Christine and I had explained that Nick was her grandfather as well, neither he nor his wife had attempted to reach out to her the day they saw one another, and I knew that grief wasn't the cause of their distance. Josie had picked up on that tension almost immediately, and when questioned later about whether or not she would want to see more of him - that conversation brought up at the behest of our family law advocate should the need for an in-person mediation come about - her response was immediately and insistently in the negative.

But Nick was relentless, and even though we were no longer speaking to him directly - another point of advice from family law instructing us to only let the lawyers communicate with one another instead - I knew that he wouldn't let the visitation case drop any time soon. Mediation was almost a guarantee, and if nothing could be agreed upon there, then family court was the next step. Christine and I didn't even know yet if that would take place in Pittsburgh or Schaumburg, nevermind every other unknown at play. As it stood, I was still travelling back and forth between home and Memphis regularly to manage Gene's estate, and not for the first time, I truly wished that his house had been sold off long before his death. It was the main issue that held up everything else, and so that brought on visits to an entirely separate set of lawyers, trips to the old house and a host of other tasks related to it that fell solely upon my shoulders, and the stress of that - on top of travelling, on top of Nick's visitation suit - was grating at me more and more each passing day. As the weeks went on and the weather turned colder, with no end in sight for my duties as the estate executor - thus disrupting my homelife and my work schedule and everything else in between - I found myself drinking somehow more often, which I continued to hide, and nearly chain-smoking, which I had no reason to hide, but in turn worried Christine endlessly, and I felt my patience and control worn down further at nearly every moment.

My only real relief was the handful of hours I was able to spend with Christine and Josie anymore. And between the instances that I was fortunate enough to have that happen, I found myself looking forward to listening to Christine talk about her day, perhaps more so than I'd been able to appreciate in the past. I looked forward to simply laying beside her in bed on the nights I was actually home, and could reach out to her sleeping form in the dark and take her hand in mine when my anxiety overwhelmed me again; I looked forward to watching Josie animatedly recount everything she had learned or done in her kindergarten class any given day, and even when I felt at my lowest, for her sake I did everything that I could to comply whenever she led me into the backyard to collect rocks and spin in circles and search the sky for signs of the first snow of the season, because I needed that escape as much as she enjoyed our interactions. Mentally, emotionally, I was in a bad place, felt it all around me but entirely without hope of rescuing myself - but some days, those rare occasions that witnessed me hidden away at home with my wife and my daughter, I felt...better. Not necessarily good, but better, and those instances of freedom gave me genuine faith that everything would return to normal again, given some time, and that I could recover eventually on my own; I only needed to settle down once more, needed the issues that Nick had brought about to be resolved, but that was all.

When the drinking inevitably kept escalating, though, I knew that I had expected as much all along. Because no significant changes toward recovery ever come without deliberate effort, and I had wasted all of my energy avoiding anything even remotely resembling that kind of effort. And so, anticipating what would come next, I just continued to make a point of staying a step ahead, tackling it in a way that would let me keep taking the edge off without disrupting anything else more than I already had. I am an alcoholic, and I'd accepted that I was allowing it to take its traditional course again; and even at the risk of my family, of my health and safety, it would still run that course until something finally gave, but I refused to think for too long about what that might ultimately turn out to be.

And in the meantime, I would remain hidden.