The Bitterest Pill

Sixty-six

Cole walked into the stationhouse. He hadn’t been there since his first weeks in Paradise. The chip on his shoulder in those days was enormous. His misunderstanding of what had actually happened between Jesse and his mother had eaten at him for years. He had finally come to Paradise to see and take the measure of the man he thought had abandoned him and turned his back on his mother. Jesse was in the final stages of rehab when he came to town and Cole’s frustration at Jesse yet again being absent pushed him over the edge. He had twice been brought into the jail for drunk and disorderly behavior but had never been charged. That was department policy. As Jesse told his cops, he’d seen too many people’s lives ruined by getting fed into the system for no good reason. Cole didn’t know it then, but that policy had saved him. He knew it now.

“Molly,” he said, getting her attention.

Molly looked away from her computer screen. “Cole!” She stood up and came out from behind her desk. She thrust out her right hand. “I hear congratulations are in order, though there aren’t but two Staties I can stand being around. I guess you’ll be the third.”

“Thanks, Molly.” He shook her hand and smiled.

“What are you doing here?”

“Is my dad around?”

She tilted her head toward his office. “Go on in.”

“Thanks.”

Jesse was facing out the window behind his desk, his eyes not focused on anything in particular. He heard the door open and shut but didn’t turn around.

“What is it, Crane?”

“You always speak to Molly like that?”

When Jesse turned around he saw Cole standing by the door, shaking his head.

“Not always.” Jesse pointed to a chair in front of his desk. “C’mon, sit for a minute.”

Cole sat. “I haven’t been here long, but I can tell you’d be in trouble without Molly.”

“I know.”

“Does she?”

“Believe me, she does. She reminds me of it every five minutes.”

Cole smirked. “I doubt that. When you were staring out the window, what were you thinking about?”

“The drug case. Forget that. Why the visit?”

“I need to borrow your Explorer. I’ve got to go to the academy and do some final paperwork. And now, since you know about it and Daisy knows you know, I can’t really keep borrowing her car.”

Jesse threw his keys to his son.

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh. I’ll see you later.”

Cole stood up, waved bye, and left.

Petra, still freaked about the cops and her parents breathing down her neck, and excited by the prospect of another night in the motel, cut her last two classes and drove home. The dose from that morning was wearing off and she was beginning to feel the sick, the kind of sick that had nothing to do with tender loving care or a nice long nap. It was the kind of sick with only a singular magical cure. And that cure was in a vial in her bag. She had been tempted to do a line in school or in her car, but she was pretty paranoid about the cops watching her and forced herself to wait. Besides, she knew that some of the sick was just worry.

Although she had the vial and had taken some pills out of the duffel bag before giving it back, the worry and fear always came with the sick. It came with it because she knew that eventually the day would come when there wouldn’t be a vial from her lover, or stolen pills or any more watches to trade, or another doctor to write a phony script. That someday she would have to turn to heroin and that she was much closer to that day than she was far away from the first time she felt the sick.

She had also come home to escape and be alone. She had put on a brave face for her lover and made promises she wanted to keep, meant to keep, but knew that she couldn’t keep forever. Petra understood she was weak and that even if she were strong, she had a soft spot. All her parents or the cops had to do was keep her away from her drugs for a few days. Petra knew if she got hungry enough for a dose she would say or do anything to get healthy. All addicts knew that about one another. Strength, bravery, and resolve could be measured by the milligram.

So up in her room, Petra laid out a very thin and short little line because she wasn’t sure of the ratio of the drugs crushed up into a powder and a pill. She was sure she was being too cautious, but that didn’t matter. There was no one there to call her chicken or say she was scared and weak. No one but herself. She didn’t bother with a chopped straw or a rolled-up bill. She put her left nostril onto the dresser top and inhaled.

On the road out of Paradise, Cole was blasting a hip-hop station from Boston. He was spitting out the rhymes along with the rapper, bobbing his head, moving his shoulders, thinking about how proud his mom would be of him in uniform. He was so into the music, so lost in his thoughts, that he didn’t notice the white van coming up alongside his father’s Explorer.