Page 36 of Boardroom Sins

I shake it off. I can’t think about this right now. Today is about Gideon. And I’m already running late.

I shower again, this time at a normal human temperature. I pick out a comfortable outfit—jeans, a soft cropped sweater, my beat-up sneakers. Visiting hours at Westgate start at ten, and it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive upstate to Saugerties.

I grab a granola bar and my keys, then check my phone one more time. No new messages from Jillian. No mysterious texts from unknown numbers.

Small mercies.

The drive is a straight shot. I go find the Zipcar I’m renting for the day, then take the Thruway north, out of the city, past the suburbs, past the strip malls, into the part of New York that actually has trees. The leaves are well into their turning. Reds and oranges blur past my windows.

Westgate Recovery Center looks more like a fancy bed-and-breakfast than a rehab facility. That’s probably the point. Red brick buildings with white shutters are scattered around manicured gardens. The whole place says,Healing happens here,in the most pleasant voice you’ve ever heard.

I park in the visitor lot and sign in at the front desk. The receptionist recognizes me now, since this has been my Saturday routine for almost two months. She smiles and waves me through without checking my ID.

“He’s in the common room today,” she tells me. “Good spirits today.”

I thank her and head down the familiar hallway. The floors are polished wood. The walls are lined with nature photographs. Everything smells like lavender and fresh laundry.

Of course, it costs a fortune, a kidney, an arm, and a leg. Gideon is only eight weeks into a six-month program, but I’ve already written enough huge checks to make my nose bleed.

But it’s working. At least, Ithinkit’s working. We’ll see for sure in just a second if that continues to be the case.

The common room is at the end of the hall. It’s a beige space with lots of windows to open it up to tons of natural light. Patients and visitors lounge around on couches and armchairs, chatting or relaxing.

Gideon is sprawled on a bean bag in the sun, reading a paperback novel. He looks up when I walk in and grins from ear to ear.

“Rae!”

“Hey, Gid.”

He stands and pulls me into a huge hug. He’s gained weight since he got here. He doesn’t feel like such a skeleton anymore.

“You look good,” I tell him.

He’s twenty-one now, but sometimes, I still see the scrawny kid who used to follow me around the house whining for me to play with him. We have the same dirty blonde hair, though his is shorter and messier. The same brown eyes, though his are lighter and more honeyed. He got Dad’s height—almost six feet—and Mom’s smile. The combination always made him popular with girls, back when he was healthy enough to care about things like that.

These days, he’s clean-shaven and clear-eyed. His skin has color again. The dark circles that used to live under his eyes have faded to faint shadows. He’s wearing a soft gray hoodie and sweatpants, the unofficial uniform of recovery.

He looks like mybrotheragain. Not the hollow stranger who showed up periodically at my apartment last year, shaking and thin, begging for money I knew would go straight into his veins.

I wish I could explain how much that means to me.

He holds me at arm’s length and gives me a once-over. “You look… tired.”

I thump him in the shoulder like the big sister I am. “Thanks a lot, wiseass.”

He grins. It’s the goofy, lopsided, irrepressible grin I remember from when he was a kid. Before everything went sideways.

We sit down on a nearby couch together. “How was the drive?” Gideon asks.

“Fine. Traffic wasn’t bad.”

“That’s good.”

“What about you? What’s new? What kind of voodoo are all these witch doctors doing to you?”

He smiles again and launches into a story about one of his activities. I look at him and listen and try toenjoythis moment of seeing life in his eyes again.

If nothing else, I try not to see the version I found two months ago.