Rita didn't speak her mind on the unsettling thoughts that reality had laid across her back to carry as a burden, but that didn't keep her from reflecting on how everything had changed so dramatically in a week's time.
She knew that she had somewhere to be soon, but the revelation as momentous as the one that troubled her mind floored her—now, she was chained to the edge of her bed, mindlessly shifting her hands across her face as she tried her best to bury her mournful expression in her palms.
No matter how many deep, calming breaths she violently sucked through her mouth, the remaining vacancy in her head slowly but surely succumbed to distant, innocent memories that taunted her with such a bold contrast to the hell that her family was going through.
But a paltry seven days ago, there was nothing to look forward to except for an extended period of vacation—fun, relaxation, and bonding that her husband and children hadn't done in a while. The most challenging part of it all was just trying to make everyone's accommodations accounted for before the big day.
And at the end of the day, even if happiness and anticipation were par for the course, that could've only been a possibility because of everyone's ignorance to Lori's suffering. The sacrifice of such ignorance was worth knowing the true state of affairs—it demanded everyone's attention and the pursuit of what it would take to lead her daughter to recovery.
Soon, the only audience to her troubled display suddenly slid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.
"Rita?" Lynn Sr. asked, almost as softly as his gesture. "You know, you don't have to pick up Lori's prescription if you don't want to. You can just stay here and-"
Rita shook her head reflexively. She only wondered where the sudden urge to do so came from but it became obvious a second later. It was that brief conversation with Leni that not only opened her eyes to the guilt she had had a hand in fostering with her inaction to her concerns, but to how downright crippling it was to feel helpless.
It was why she felt indebted to Leni by giving her the responsibility of taking charge of Lori's medication. Driving to the pharmacy to get it was small potatoes compared to such a proactive duty, but Rita knew that she would've vastly preferred doing that over laying in bed and crying.
To give her husband more assurance in her decision, Rita looked up at him. She wouldn't lie to him with smile, but she could at least convey her genuine need to see her task through.
"No. I'll go. It's fine," Rita replied. "Just promise me that you'll look into hiring a therapist for Lori while I'm gone. We can discuss the matter further once I come back and give the Prozac to Leni."
His furrowed brow and frown didn't dissipate by much, but at least it told Rita that he was willing to let her go.
"Well, alright," Lynn Sr. said. "I'll do as much digging as I can. Just remember what you told me all those days ago—for Lori's sake, we can't fall apart. If that means that you have to take a moment to unwind for a bit, then that shouldn't be off the table."
Rita stood up and gave her husband a kiss on the cheek before she waved goodbye and said, just before stepping out of the bedroom, "Thank you. If you need anything from me, just call and I'll see what I can do."
Admittedly, she wasn't counting on anything amiss going on in her short absence, but if the past week had taught her anything, it was that she couldn't afford to keep her ear off the ground for one second.
She'd be damned if she made that mistake again.
It took about two hours of solitude in his bedroom, lounging in bed while restlessly shifting into different positions, for Lincoln to start questioning his reputation.
Granted, his title as "The Man with the Plan" was self-professed, but it wasn't a moniker that was challenged all that often by either a skeptic of his quick wits and clever scheming or any sort of roadblock that would prevent him from formulating a plan in the first place.
To Lincoln's shame, he was contending with the latter, and no amount of self-reprimanding or pep talk could create a spark of inspiration to ignite and gracefully lead him into mentally mapping out the foolproof stages of what was supposed to be the strategy that would get him what he wanted.
And that ingenuity usually came about because of how the results would be of his benefit—it seemed as if Lori's well-being wasn't enough to stimulate that process.
'And after everything I said to her, too,' Lincoln thought, his back against a wall both literally and figuratively. 'What's...what's wrong with me?'
It didn't matter if the nature of depression wasn't as familiar as the back of his hand and he was trying to get to the heart of a dilemma that was beyond his wisdom—Lori, much like any of his sisters, were not only worth the effort but the guarantee of deliverance. Yet, all he had to show for was failure and the knowledge that he wasn't any closer to cracking this vexing puzzle.
What were hugs and kisses supposed to do someone who couldn't stand the sight of her reflection? How could an "I love you" be anything other than insultingly glib in the mind of someone who scorned their very existence? Dad had already implied that anything that they would do wouldn't foster any substantial results as soon as they would want them. He already experienced that harsh truth firsthand when he and Lori were alone at the hospital.
A frustrated groan tore into Lincoln's throat as he submitted to his ineptitude, at least for the moment. He felt pathetic for throwing in the towel, but he knew he was better for Lori if he wasn't too down on himself to pay her troubles any mind.
In the meantime, he would attend a secondary objective. Honestly, he didn't think he'd get around to it until much later—still, his curiosity couldn't help but have him dwell on Lisa's exit from a few hours ago. She didn't seem distraught enough to make him fret at the time, but that didn't mean that he couldn't be wrong.
A quick visit to Lisa's room, Lincoln thought, would answer the questions that wouldn't leave him alone without a resolution:
'Are you okay, Lisa? And whether you are or you aren't, just what are you up to?'
Lincoln was tipped off to the nature of Lisa's activities from the lack of thick, green fog seeping underneath her bedroom door and the absence of rapping from the other side–it seemed as if she wasn't in a rush to get a lyrical fix from her favorite west coast artists or to create questionable chemical mixtures for heaven knows what reason.
His familiarity with her pastimes told him that she was most likely reading and judging from how he didn't receive an immediate response once he knocked on her door, she was deeply rooted in her studies.
Another session of knocks finally did the trick in beckoning her attention.
"I'll be just a minute, Lincoln," Lisa replied with about half of her outdoor voice.
Her answer only confused Lincoln for a second before he realized who he was dealing with.
'Huh. She must have her surveillance cameras on,' he thought.
Knowing Lisa, she would've either exploited the idiom to its absolute limits and had him wait for her for literally an entire minute or take even longer than that. Unfortunately, unless she was dealing with Mom or Dad, it was always one or the other.
It was an inconsideration that Lincoln had learned to take in stride, but that was usually when he wasn't fretting about her well-being by expecting her to be holding in at least some degree of sadness.
If reading was on her brain, Lincoln could only hope that her indulgence was a matter of temporarily coping with the hand that their oldest sister was dealt and not a means to avoid Lori's sad reality any chance she could get. Something told him that Lori seeing even one of her siblings fall away in seclusion would only make her feel worse.
'She'd probably just think it was her fault.'
He didn't want to even begin to imagine what that would look like, given what he was supposed to be doing here—if Lisa needed a shoulder to cry on, he couldn't afford to show any weakness that his spiraling emotions would scar across his face with cropping tears and shivering frowns.
At last, the door opened. The crack was wide enough for Lisa to poke her head through. The sight of his sister gave him pause, though he still felt relief. His unwholesome expectations made him believe that Lisa would've looked similar to how Leni appeared the night he came into her bedroom to apologize—a smile betraying sadness and puffy, red eyes. Instead, it was her characteristic brand of stoicism, tarnished only by a few loose strands of her shaggy hair filtering over the rim of one of her glasses lenses.
"Hey, Lisa," Lincoln said. "You mind if I come in? There's something I need to...you know what? Hold on a second."
He had tried not to make much of a fuss over her slightly disheveled appearance, but he knew better than to think his "big brother" instincts wouldn't kick in at some point. He swiped his thumb across the tip of his tongue and slicked those bothersome little strands of hair back into place. He didn't mind Lisa's grumbling and indignant frown during the process—if anything, it just made her cuter than she needed to be.
Slipping his hands on his hips and showing off a proud smile, Lincoln said, "There we go. That looks way better."
By way of her rolling her eyes, Lisa showed that she couldn't have disagreed more if she tried.
"Was that really necessary?" she asked dryly.
Lincoln's smile only grew wider. "Yes. Yes, it was."
With a sigh and a shake of her head, Lisa pulled the door back further, allowing Lincoln to look past her and at the surprisingly immaculate workspace at her computer desk. No stray test tubes, chemical puddles, or scattered notes were found. Even if the minute that was spent between Lisa telling him to wait for her and answering the door was spent on cleaning up, there was no way she'd be able to amend the usual mess of her room that quickly by herself.
"Be that as it may," Lisa retorted as she turned on her heel and headed towards her computer, "I highly doubt that you came by just to fret about my appearance."
"Yeah, you got me," Lincoln said, following after her once he shut the door behind him. "I just wanted to see if you were okay."
"Ah, I see."
It wasn't until they both approached the desk and Lisa took her seat on herb that Lincoln had more to think about than Lisa's state of mind—her computer screen was locked on the results of a search engine page, hyperlinks to various websites and sources either coded in blue or purple hues. The page was scrolled halfway down, so he couldn't see what she was looking up. However, the repetition of a certain acronym—shared between the hyperlinks—caught his eye.
'C...B...T?' Lincoln thought. 'Just what the heck does that mea-'
Lisa clearing her throat, clearly an impatient gesture to keep her brother's focus, prevented Lincoln's mind from drifting to where it needn't be for now. He looked down and shot Lisa an apologetic, sheepish smile, but he was cut off from forming an actual pardon when Lisa spoke before he had the chance to do so himself.
"If I had to surmise the origins of your concern," Lisa said, "I'd say you felt as if I was either dangerously susceptible to despondency or already plagued with such emotions immediately after father summoned us to the living room and announced Lori's depression to us. Thus, you felt it necessary to see if I was in the need of your love and encouragement."
Lincoln's eyes, along with his amazement of Lisa's perceptive abilities, widened.
"Uhhh...yeah. That's...that's all true. How'd you know?" he asked.
"Earlier, father checked up on me for those exact same reasons." A small smirk curved along her face. "Like father, like son."
Lincoln couldn't help but smile and chuckle—most of his expression had more to do than appreciating a good joke, though.
"Okay, okay, you got me. Very funny," Lincoln said before professing his hopes. "I guess if you're in the mood to crack jokes, that means you're feeling fine, right?"
And just like that, his heart sunk like a stone through a dark, watery abyss as the levity on Lisa's face evaporated and left a wan, ugly parody of her smile behind.
"If by 'fine', you mean I'm not crippled by overbearing grief that would render me to tears, at least for the moment, then yes," Lisa replied. By now, her grin was completely gone, as if the weight of her oncoming words forced it down into her present frown. "Lori's mental and emotional stability, along with the general well-being of this household, has always made things 'fine'. Without it, however, I can't say that I'm 'fine'. Nothing will be 'fine' until she has made a full recovery."
Before he could even think about doing anything, Lincoln had one of Lisa's hands in his and his steely, determined gaze piercing into her eyes. Her expression couldn't have been more profound—he probably had the same look about him as he paced around his room looking for answers.
But, unlike Lisa, at least he had done enough lately to deserve that burden to bear. Even without anything close to a suitable answer to Lori's happiness, he knew had to assure her.
"We'll get there, somehow," Lincoln said. "I don't care what it takes. We'll do it. All of us."
Lisa sighed. "As much as I don't wish to disparage your optimism, I simply can't hinge my hopes on 'somehow'. Along with checking on me, father asked if I could follow along with everyone else's efforts to invigorate Lori as much as we could. You may find this callous of me to say, but I believe that such measures simply won't cut it. I can't imagine that overly saccharine speech will render much success to someone who believes that they're not worthy of such attention."
It shamed him to concede to Lisa's skepticism so quickly—especially since he was trying to make her feel better—but he had to respect his honest feelings after regarding the rock and the hard place that he had just walked away from not too long ago.
"Y'know, you actually have a point," Lincoln said, slipping his hands away from Lisa's. "Yeah, we can tell her how much we love her all we want, but it wasn't like we haven't told her that all this time. And yet, she still has depression."
"Precisely," Lisa replied. "I'll admit, even though I said I wasn't racked with sorrow, I'm still displeased with how my scientific affinities have never branched into areas that could've afforded me with extensive knowledge in psychology."
She took a break to pause and push her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"My curiosity has always leaned towards fields of human anatomy and physiology, zoology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, and biology." Lincoln's stomach churned nauseously when Lisa's hands shook and she pushed a sharp breath into her body through her nostrils. "Perhaps if I had always taken interest in psychology, I could've noticed Lori's depression symptoms and gotten our parents notified of her condition before it led to her getting brutalized in a car crash."
The quivering tone her last few words took nearly broke Lincoln's heart, and it was all he could do make himself from shedding tears. As much as he tried to hold himself together, his sadness wasn't subtle enough to keep Lisa from commenting on it.
Thankfully, there was enough strength behind them to tell Lincoln that she wasn't about to start bawling in despair.
"I'm not blaming myself, if that's what you suppose. It's regret, not guilt, that passes over me periodically. Even then, I know it'd be unwise to allow it to consume me. For Lori's sake, my research musn't be abated by misplaced angst."
Lincoln couldn't pass up on the segue in front of him, especially since he had assurance that Lisa wasn't contending with any deep-seated gloom—he had come all this way to figure out what Lisa was up to, after all.
"So, exactly what are you researching?" he asked.
When Lisa let out another sigh, he knew what it meant—frustration at the lack of progress.
"I must admit that I haven't unearthed a starting point from which I can begin to dedicate my laser-focus on just yet," Lisa said. "Although I've been acquainting myself with the finer details of depression and some therapeutic practices that deal with such mood disorders, I've yet to come across a solution that I can work with.
Keep in mind that I'm attempting to confront this matter with sensitivity. A more invasive method would require directly interacting with Lori's brain and...well, I'd rather not consider that option. Even a low-risk procedure would be inappropriate, given that her life would undoubtedly be in jeopardy."
Lincoln nodded. A quick fix that has Lisa's well-intended but haphazard touches thrown in wasn't what Lori deserved.
"Rest assured," Lisa continued, "I won't deny Lori the love and support she needs. However, I have to commit to this task with everything that I have. You have my word as a scientist that I'll..."
Lisa shook her head. "No. No, you have my word as her sister that I'll bring her out of this."
Her confidence in her abilities wasn't as bombastic as her declarations of her amazing scientific breakthroughs usually were, but it still spread through Lincoln like a virus.
"I think you've got a pretty good shot, Lisa," Lincoln said, smiling as he brought his hands to Lisa's shoulders. "But don't think that you have to do this all by yourself, okay? If you need me for anything, I'm just a door down. Remember, your big brother's always got your back."
Lisa smiled back at him. "I'll be sure to remember that."
Lincoln was surprised when Lisa beat him to the punch and pushed forward first for a hug, but he wouldn't play the fool and fight back. Instead, he let her snuggle her face into his stomach while he wrapped his arms around her head.
Much like that hug he had with Leni a few days ago, he really needed this. He could only hope that everyone's hugs would have the same effect on Lori.
All good things had to come to an end, though, and their hug wasn't anything different. But rather then feel total loss once he let go, the sight of a familiar irregularity made him smile bemusedly.
"Oops," Lincoln said, his eyes looking over a strand of Lisa's hair that had, once again, flipped over the rim of her eyeglasses.
Lisa quirked an eyebrow. "What have you done to warrant an 'oops'?"
"Your hair got all messy again. Guess it was my fault for hugging you too hard."
Lincoln's growing smile made Lisa cringe knowingly.
"Lincoln, I can assure you that..." Her will to fight of his imminent affection all but crumble. "Oh, very well. Make it quick."
Lincoln laughed and got to work fixing her hair back into place in the same manner as before. He capped it off with a peck on her cheek before he headed towards the door.
"See ya later, Lisa. Good luck."
But just as the thought of tending Lisa's feelings exited his mind as soon as he left her room, another matter unexpectedly entered. Once again, he had another troubled heart on his heart, though this one was a three-hour drive away.
'Shoot!' Lincoln thought, his teeth barred in a panicked expression as he clutched his temples. 'I totally forgot to tell Ronnie Anne what's going on with Lori!'
It was a testament to her relatively good nature that she hadn't called him sooner—looking to give Lori and earful—but Lincoln wasn't about to take her patience for granted by not giving her all the details about Lori's condition as soon as possible.
But just as he was about to make a beeline for his bedroom to retrieve his cellphone off his dresser, his motions were halted by the grumbling of his stomach.
'Okay, fine. I'll tell Ronnie Anne what's going on right after I get myself a snack. I can't smooth things over on an empty stomach.'
LATER THAT EVENING...
"Okay, Leni, I think Lori's gotten enough rest. Could you run up to her room and tell her we're about to eat dinner?"
Leni's intuition had been on the money—it wasanother Lori-centered responsibility, after all. And what Mom had called her to do still left her body tingled with spurts of bleak uncertainty as she carried herself up the stairs, towards her bedroom.
Whether she knew it or not, Mom had evoked an inner conflict within her. Leni wasn't willing to lose that swell of confidence that Mom drew out of her when she tried to prop her up as someone that Lori needed in her life more than ever. It felt wrong to toot her horn, but Leni had to admit that Mom had a point—even if she only had an inkling to what Lori was crippled with before today's appointment had dragged everything to light, at least that was better than what anyone else's perceptions could pick up.
But even her assurance had their limits. It was one thing to embrace the task of handling the Prozac. There wasn't any experience to make her question herself, to second guess her usefulness. But there was a considerable gap between where she stood now and getting Lori to come out of her shell.
She had tried to call out to her once before.
And she failed miserably.
The day after the babysitting incident might have been months ago, but passing through the remembrance of standing outside her door—her heart buzzing with reverberating aches and her throat swelling from choked sobs after trying to reach Lori—quelled Leni's enthusiasm somewhat.
There was a chance that she'd have to relive that isolation and defeat in just a few moments, except the stakes were even higher now. There was no room to leave things the way they were if, or when, Lori would cling to her separation and ask to be left alone, no excuse not to try harder and break down her barriers with everything she had.
With nothing left to uncover from Lori's conduct, all Leni could see were wires that she had to diffuse, whether Lori could feasibly appreciate her intervention or not.
Now, there was only a matter of finding the right approach.
"Lori?" Leni's question was spoken in a gentle plea, almost as soft as the knocks on her bedroom door that followed. "Lori?"
Her words were swallowed up by the unnerving silence of the hallway, and no response rang out to comfort her. That was the worst part about all of this—in the midst of her wariness for a good outcome, she couldn't even get Lori to acknowledge her. Leni expected a higher degree of difficulty versus the last time she was in this position, but she always hung onto the thought that there would be actual words to reply to. Whether they were something as brute and ugly as "Go away, Leni," at least there was emotion she could appeal to, could reason with.
But this? The longer Leni dwelt on the stillness on the other side of the room, the more she couldn't bear to stomach it. She couldn't believe that she was still asleep after she had made her light disturbance, and it ultimately meant the worst out of anything she could've dreaded.
Lori...was ignoring her.
When she knocked again, her motions had more force behind them, and the rattling noises of the pounded door drilled in Leni's ears even harder than her quickening heartbeats.
"Lori, it's time to eat dinner."
In a reflex—a desperate bid to counter the mocking quiet that greeted her efforts—she latched her fingers around the cold steel of the doorknob and twisted it roughly. Her distress fogged the memory of trying to open the locked door in vain before she started knocked again.
The gusts of choppy, ragged breath in her inhales and exhales choked her up before she could call out to Lori again, but she eventually found the strength to pull through. "Lori, could you please..."
The last word caused her to stop and the tension in her body to dissipate from roaring flames to slow-burning blaze that centered in the middle of her chest. Fear led the charge, but all it took was a quick recollection of her last words to mitigate the wild panic but replace it with a more, grounded yet equally as palpable sensation: self-disgust.
Her begging? Her weak appeals? What had any of that earned the last time? Feelings of hopelessness? A misplaced sense of resignation from her post after a few "good attempts" at trying to tend to Lori's broken emotions?
And now, she was going through the motions after she gave her mother her word, after she promised herself that she wasn't going to be a helpless bystander anymore.
Slowly, the deep breathing returned, and it accompanied a stern glower. Just as the strain in her curled fist rose, so did the volume of her voice. "You have to come out now, Lori. You have to eat something."
This time, the lack of a reply only gave way for her assertiveness to rise to new heights as she considered the quandary from a new angle. She'd be depriving Lori of some semblance of dignity by forcibly barging in, but her older sister's belligerent response would just be something she'd have to get over.
Without a second thought, Leni removed her hand from the door, slipped its fingers through her hair, and yanked out one of her bobby pins. With a tight grip between her thumb and pointer finger, it was easy for Leni to insert the pin through the crack of the door and give a few well-placed rotations of her wrist before she wedged the tip between the tumbler's plug and its holding place.
Taking her other hand, she worked the knob while she used her pick-locking hand to deftly unlatch the plug with a *click*. Doing so forced the door to hinge back slightly, emitting tiny creak.
Her nerves steeled and her conviction supplemented by a boost of adrenaline, Leni dropped the bobby pin as she quickly pushed the door aside…
...and found, not a tirade from a taken aback, flustered Lori as she sat in bed, but of a peacefully sleeping Lori whose snoring cut through the semi-darkness of the room.
Suddenly, the boldness that thrummed through her veins with the rhythm of tribal war drums mellowed out as Leni took in the serene, peaceful scene. Thanks to the open window, moonlight was able to guide her vision to the most illuminated spot—with her head and back slightly propped against the headboard, Lori laid supinely in slumber, seemingly undisturbed by Leni's actions.
It was more than enough to make Leni reconsider her priorities. All she wanted from Lori was peace of mind. And as much as she would've enjoyed seeing a breakthrough as soon as tonight, with her wide awake and willing to accept her family's loving embraces, there wasn't a need for disregarding a compromise—she could leave Lori to rest for as long as she could throughout the night and spend the whole day with her tomorrow.
But as lovely as that sounded, she couldn't leave things at that and go back to the dining room. At least, not yet.
"H-hey, Lori. Sorry if I disturbed you," Leni said softly as she leaned against the doorframe. "But Mom told me to get you so you can come downstairs for dinner."
She didn't expect an answer, given how quietly she greeted her sister. But as silly as it was, she couldn't help but want to leave Lori with some words of encouragement. Even if there was a good chance that Lori wouldn't hear them, she was still pressed to make her mission known out loud.
"Mom and Dad told us everything about you. And...well, I still don't get it. I still don't get how someone as pretty and sweet and loving and caring as you can feel so bad all the time. But just because I don't get it doesn't mean that I don't wanna help. Everyone in this house means the world to me, and you're no different."
At this point, Leni had a good idea of what she wanted to see out of Lori the next day, but the part that resonated in her mind the most concerned her eating.
"I'll tell Mom and Dad that you still need to sleep," Leni continued, "but tomorrow I have to make sure you get plenty to eat. I'll even ask Dad to make your favorite omelet. Doesn't that sound nice?"
It took Leni a few seconds for the silliness of her actions to finally dawn on her. None of what she said implied that she was looking for a direct response, but a question did.
"Oh, that's right," Leni said, letting out a few sheepish chuckles. "You're asleep. My bad..."
With that, Leni reached out and grabbed the doorknob, ready to shut it. Before she did, though, she allowed her most important words to be spoken louder than anything she had said before:
"See you later, Lori. I love you."
Leni wouldn't mind if Lori had been broken out of dreamland to hear her say that.
THE NEXT DAY...
As far as Lynn Sr. was concerned, this was an unexpected but vital part of Lori's breakthrough—so much so that he felt like a fool for not thinking about it sooner.
Presently, he and his wife were in their bedroom. While he stood idly by the door, Rita sat on the bed while she talked on the phone. All Lynn Sr. could do was make out what the person on the other end was saying based on how Rita replied to him. He'd get answers soon enough, but not being immediately "in the loop" never felt worse than nowadays—if there was anything pertinent to Lori's health, good or bad, he had to know right away.
At last, Rita gave the caller a farewell and dropped the phone by her side. Besides his antsy nerves, it was the neutrality on her face that compelled him to ask, "What did he say, dear?"
What could've made her look like that? Good news? Bad news? A mixture of both?
Rita's eyes, which had been glued to the carpet, remained affixed as she replied. "He'll be coming by in a few days."
Lynn Sr. blinked and frowned confusedly. "Uh...that's all? Honey, that's great news, isn't it?"
For reasons he couldn't discern, his response was what caused Rita to turn her head towards him. Lynn Sr. swallowed as a lump coiled in his throat. He had severely underestimated Rita's so-called neutrality—there was much more grief to be seen with the angle he had of her now.
"It was awful. I could tell he was trying to keep it together, but he could hardly pull it off."
It only took that one little tidbit of information to somber Lynn Sr.'s spirits.
"I can only imagine," he replied.
He said it, but he didn't really mean it. He had his own hell to walk through. Living through someone else's version, even for a second, might've been too much to bear.
But still, there was something to be thankful for. Lori would be getting help in a matter of days.
Speaking of help...
"By the way," Lynn Sr. said, "when are we gonna go back to hunting for an affordable therapist?"
It didn't surprise him when his wife let out a frustrated groan. Yesterday's afternoon was filled with nothing more than hours of tireless web searches and phone calls that led to dead end after dead end.
"Soon," Rita replied. "I just hope we're luckier than we were yesterday."
Lynn Sr. nodded and said, "Yeah. Me too."
Needless to say, love was the most important ingredient with Lori's recovery, but a dash of luck couldn't be overlooked, either.