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Drinking Again

They knew she was drinking again. She hid the bottles, of course, but Lila was good at finding them. They were the little kind, the wine bottles you could buy in four-packs at any grocery store.

Lila sat on the back stoop, waiting for her to come home. She'd found six bottles this time and wondered where the other two were; or maybe there were more, if she'd really gone on a roll. It was after eight o'clock and her mother had been gone for nearly three hours. Lila had gotten home from school after soccer practice, just as her mother was leaving. She'd said she was going to the grocery, and to pick up Chinese for dinner. That was the sign, always the signal that it wasn't a good day.

Lila kicked at the loose brick in the walkway that curved off the stoop and thought about whether she should call their dad. Her little brothers were inside, watching TV in their enormous family room. They hadn't asked about dinner yet, but she knew they would soon. Their father was traveling again, like he did most weeks, and that meant Lila was in charge if their mom wasn't around or or what, Lila wondered to herself. Sober? Yeah, sober. No one in the family liked to use the word, but that was the truth.

Every night was a gamble in their house. Would mom be sober? Able to deal with them, with life? Hard to say. It could be fine, everything normal. Or it could be a crazy world of yelling and fights, accusations of how their father had trapped her into being a stay at home mom, giving up her brilliant legal carrier to raise babies and play corporate wife for him. The ugly words and horrible scenes in front of the children flashed in Lila's brain. It was hard not to believe her mother meant the things she said, even when she apologized afterwards and begged her daughter's and family's forgiveness. Hard not to feel bribed by the new outfits always left on her bed the day after the worst of the outbursts. Harder not to want to run away every night to stay at her best friend's house; she knew she couldn't do that to her brothers, and leave them unprotected.

She thought how much she'd grown to hate Chinese food, and stood up. She went inside to the bulletin board next to the refrigerator where her mother always posted her father's travel itinerary. She looked at the hotel phone numbers and thought about calling him. Her brother's voices suddenly interrupted her thoughts.

"Stop it!" Bradley shrieked.

"OWWW!" She heard David yell, and then there was a crash as one of them fell

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