The Ninth Step Read Online Free Page A

amends . It had been like he’d never seen it before. Couldn’t imagine the concept. That he could make it straight? Make it up? It had to be done directly, the step said, which meant in person, so long as doing it wouldn’t cause further injury.
    It had ripped him open, reading that, the possibility, the hope that glittered, the death sentence that seemed inherent. He might have howled at the way it brought it all back. He was there again, seeing her face, the little girl’s face, expression threaded with panic, chin trembling. He looked into her eyes, gone huge and dark with fright; it was the last brave thing he’d done.
    “Mommy?” she’d whispered to him.
    Cotton had lost it then.
    He’d nearly lost it again at the meeting. He’d never know how he stayed in the chair. He’d wanted a drink; he still did. The voice in his head urged him to it; the voice in his head said he was stupid to think he could go back. What right did he have to bother them? Amends? What the hell was that stacked against their loss?  
    “Cotton, are you there?” Anita prodded gently.
    “Yeah.”
    “You want to say you’re sorry, I get that, but they may not.”
    Cotton shot a glance down the road. He said he knew. He said if that was all it was he’d be inside Judy’s right now drinking with the rest of the f iends . And when Anita  asked what else there was, he said, “That little girl--” and stopped.
    “What about her?”
    Cotton looked away from the glare of passing  headlight. He had her mother’s final message. He had that to give, if the little girl, whom he guessed was not so little now, would let him near enough to tell her.
    He looked up as three rough-looking women came out of the store laughing, knocking hips. “Girl, you crack me up!” one cried. Cotton recognized them from the bus. They’d sat in the back, passing a pint in a paper sack, playing endless hands of five-card stud.
    He knuckled his scalp near his temple. “I have to see if she’s okay; if all of them are okay,” he said. “After that, I don’t know.”
    “You realize Livie may be married now.”
    Cotton said he hoped she was because he’d forfeited his right to hope for anything else.
    “You won’t drink?”
    “I can’t make any promises, ‘Nita.”
     “I’m still your sponsor.”
    “Yeah, and sometimes I even love you for it.”
    #
    It was after two in the morning and raining steadily when the Houston city lights appeared and seemed to float above the horizon, watery smears of color. Around him, the other bus riders slept. Even the women who had been playing cards had shut down their party.
    Cotton sat with his hands on his knees and his gut in a fist beside a window that gave nothing but a view of his own rain-riddled profile. He wondered if he even knew who that was, that sober man. Some guy with forty bucks to his name and a duffel that held a couple changes of socks and underwear and no clue where he’d stay, what he’d do to earn a living. He thought of who he’d been when he’d lived here before: that guy had owned his own company. He’d built houses, whole neighborhoods full of fine, big homes. Planned communities. That guy had had friends who’d have helped him out of a regular jam.
    But the jam Cotton had gotten into here wasn’t regular.
    He couldn’t call on any of those guys for advice with the exception of maybe Nix, who’d been his best friend, his best man at the wedding that wasn’t. Could be Nix would still talk to him. Cotton didn’t know.
    Anything.
    Except the last time he’d been this scared, he’d been leaving this town.
    #
    It was still raining when he left the terminal. The water soaked through his clothes, doused what was left of the fire he’d had in his belly to get here. He kept expecting to see a cop, to be stopped, questioned, identified. He walked on, keeping a constant watch over his shoulder. The city blocks that fell from under his feet were jammed with bars and strip joints and