The Traveling Tea Shop by Belinda Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

would it be to focus on a disappeared dad? Shouldn’t we be glad for the good things?
    Instead Jess seemed hell-bent on finding a way to make us suffer as deeply as she supposedly was. She needed to bring us down to her level. At least, that’s how I saw it.
    Of course you can look at the drugs as a cry for help or a means of escape. And we certainly tried to put an empathetic spin on it when we first found out. Our initial instinct was to help her through this, to get her back on track. My mother and I even went to a “family skills for drug abuse prevention” workshop. But I must confess I struggled with their insistence that we had to let go of any judgment.
    I wanted to thrust my hand up and say: if addiction is a disease, how do you first catch it? I mean, if you’ve never tried a single sodding drug in the first place, how could you become addicted? You couldn’t. It wouldn’t be possible. You are making a choice that first time. You are volunteering for the addiction. You know it’s wrong and self-destructive but you do it anyway.
    Alcoholics I understand better. Alcohol is everywhere. Alcohol is foisted on you at every turn in every walk of life. Even in church communion.
    I don’t mean to be deliberately controversial. This stuff just gets me
riled up.
I think more than anything it’s the waste—the waste of life. Of your life. Of other people’s. The toll it takes is so far-reaching. So insidious.
    “Why did you do it?” I wanted to ask Jess, over and over and over. “Why did you even begin? You knew no good could come of it and you did it anyway. You wreaked havoc on all of us. And you don’t even seem sorry.”
    I feel the emotions flare within me again. I mustn’t let this overwhelm me. I mustn’t let frustration take hold because when I do it throws off everything in my life. And I need the next few days to flow smoothly.
    That being said, if Ravenna thinks I’m going to look the other way while she depletes and dishonors her mother, she’s mistaken. I don’t have my mother to defend anymore. I didn’t do a good enough job of protecting her.
    I heave a sigh.
    It’s one of those situations you replay in your mind, trying to force history down a different path, to a different outcome.
    It should have been the other way round.
    I can’t get this thought out of my head—it should have been my sister the drug addict who died, not the mother who loved her too much to ever give up on her.
    I’m mad at Ravenna for bringing up these feelings in me but, to be honest, it doesn’t take much. I have no idea how to lay this to rest. I’ve become quite skilled at squishing down the tears and the raging sense of injustice out of necessity. But I can’t seem to make peace with my mum being gone. How can I? There’s no “everything happens for a reason” platitude that can make sense of this.
    Once in a while, Jess will try to get in contact. But I’m not convinced her motive is remorse. I just think she’s coming for me next and I need to stay away. Right now I cannot even contemplate being in her presence. Ever again.
    Okay. Enough. I just have to block her out and focus on where I am now. She can’t get me here. I’m safe, nestled amid the skyscrapers—she finds them intimidating and threatening. To me, they are like bodyguards.

Chapter 7

    Perhaps you’ve seen
Maid in Manhattan
—the movie where Jennifer Lopez plays a hotel chambermaid who borrows a socialite’s Dolce & Gabbana ensemble and catches the eye of senatorial candidate Ralph Fiennes? Or
Scent of a Woman
? Or
Serendipity
?
    If so, you know the Waldorf Astoria—its art deco frontage, the sleek silver-gray stone contrasting with the luxe gold lettering, the legendary Starlight Lounge with its retractable roof.
    I barely gave the property a second glance yesterday, so today I got here half an hour early so I can drink in the understated swank and class. Before the Lambert-Leighs arrive and ruin it all.
    I had prepared a little