Read Online Luke's #1 Rule by Cynthia Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

maybe four or five fitful hours. Still so tired. But she dressed and combed her hair. One good thing about Spence being out of work, they could have coffee together. Except no caffeine for her for the duration of her pregnancy. Decaf tea, then. Maybe she’d speak to Spence about giving his sponsor a call. He claimed that he could handle a few beers. He had a moderation program. But Bettina had read his prescription bottles, and they all said not to mix with alcohol. Now that she was home, everything would go back to normal.
    Spence didn’t hear her come into the room. His head full of greasy hair bent over the kitchen table snorting lines of something white with a tiny glass tube.
    “What…” She couldn’t speak. The words wouldn’t come. And the fear she’d managed to hold back while at work hit her like a hurricane. Spence’s addiction was loads worse than she’d thought.
    Spence’s eyes darted up. He pinched his nose and inhaled deeply. His gaze rocketed from the table to her and back again. “Oh hon,” he said, “it’s not what you think.” He got up and poured her a coffee and grabbed a beer from the fridge for himself.
    She didn’t bother telling him she couldn’t have caffeine. Clearly he would not hear her. She glanced at the clock. 9 a.m. Probably even a little earlier. He popped the top on his bottle and drank from it, nothing amiss at all.
    He sat, so she did too. Too sad to cry, and she didn’t think of herself as a weak woman. As a school principal, she had stood up to male teachers and parents, and a few female bullies as well. But when it came to Spence, her precious love, she had been weak. She felt it now, all energy draining from her. Her heart skidding and skipping. Would it just stop? No. Because she wouldn’t let it.
    “Just the new meds.” Spence slurred the words. “Taking it out of the capsule and snorting it makes it work faster. But this is a pill, so I had to crush it between two spoons to stop the panic attack.”
    Okay, clearly he was in denial. As had been she.
    She couldn’t look at him. Instead she inventoried the things on their table. The tube. A few bottles of pills. Two spoons. The cup of untouched coffee Spence had set in front of her.
    He didn’t put his beer on the table. He held it and took steady sips until he finished it off. His eyes were closed, and he had a stupid grin on his face. She wanted to slap it off.
    Chloe moving the boys to Seattle. Spence had not taken that well. Things had gotten worse, not better, when he saw a doctor to deal with his depression over the boys moving.
    Bettina’s sadness went deep under the skin. Soon they’d have their own child. They had planned it: he the stay-at-home dad, taking care of the baby and working on polishing his Realtor skills as the economy slowly began to rebound.
    The baby kicked. As if telling Bettina to get in gear. Handle this problem. Spence tried to reach the fridge without getting out of his chair and fell to the floor. He laughed. Tempting to blame Spence’s relapse on Chloe, but the only person to blame was the guy doing the drugging. He did not have to say yes to Chloe. Bettina still wasn’t sure why he had. He hadn’t consulted her or talked it over with her. One day, it just happened. Spence’s soft snores lifted to her ears. At least he wasn’t dead.
    She got out of her chair, which in her condition took a minute or two. Then she went into Spence’s “office” where he “worked.” He hadn’t bothered to hide his stash. She found it in the first drawer she opened.
    He claimed to have a prescription for medical marijuana, but the pint jar came from her summer strawberry jam making. Somehow, she didn’t think she’d be making any jam this summer. She kept to her inventory. Two bags of loose pills, many pills, maybe fifty in each bag, with no prescription label attached. Six bottles, some for sleep, some for anxiety, one for ADHD. Also two more prescriptions, from two different doctors,