She had fallen asleep on the couch, and for a moment she was back in California, drunk in that garden in Venice Beach. Her muscles ached with that old ghost pain, the need to take her children in her arms, and her heart was bursting with grief that she could not. But it was a dream. The girls in the back bedroom were so close she could almost smell them. She leaned back and rubbed her arms. Her mouth tasted sour. She wanted a drink, she realized. She wanted a drink so bad her need was like a knot in her belly. “Jesus Christ,” Delia whispered to the dark. “When does it stop?” It was going on two years now, two years since she had been drunk that last Thanksgiving in California. But her stomach still rolled and her mouth tasted of bitter cotton and old need. A glass of whiskey would clean it away, wash out the bitter and set her to singing again. Delia curled up and hugged herself. The worst mistake she had made was to put together her singing and her drinking. Now she mourned both of them, and dared not do one for fear of what would come of the other.
