“She’s going to break your back soon, Raff. She’s growing like a weed.”

“Don’t I know it, Tommy. She’s a chunky monkey.”

“But a cute li’l chunky monkey. Yes you are! Yes you are!”

It was weird to hear Tommy talk in such a high, sugary tone, but Raff was used to it. He was wearing Elizabeth in the backpack carrier, and the patients of the rehab center loved to talk to the tot whenever Raff brought her to work.

Tommy was a former heroin addict. Even though he’d only been clean and sober for sixty days, Raff insisted on emphasizing that Tommy and the other patients were former and not current addicts. He felt that it gave them power over their addiction. Tommy still looked the worse for wear—scrawny, with dark circles under his eyes—but he had put on a few pounds and no longer had scabs on his face. It was a difficult process, and Raff respected Tommy’s determination.

Elizabeth giggled at the young man when he told her that he “got her nose”, so Raff stood still for a moment. It was good for Elizabeth’s social development to meet new people and good for Tommy to enjoy the simple pleasure of interacting with a child. It was also good for Raff to stand still for a moment. The rehab center was constantly busy and he needed to take a deep breath.

Raff wasn’t a therapist or a doctor, of course, so he didn’t counsel the patients. Instead, he worked with the doctors, therapists and patients to create a comfortable place for healing. If the patients couldn’t sleep, it was not because the mattresses were thin or lumpy. If the patients lost weight, it was not because the food wasn’t good, and if they gained weight, it was not because they didn’t have access to a gym or the outdoors. Every dorm had memory foam mattresses and cotton sheets. There was an actual executive chef in charge of the kitchen. And the gym had state of the art machines as well as yoga and kickboxing classes. It wasn’t the fanciest or most expensive facility in the States, but it was well-regarded by medical professionals and patients alike.

Of course, Raff knew these things were important because he had been addicted at one time. It wasn’t heroin, however, it was alcohol, and alcohol was easier to kick than heroin.

“But if I needed help for alcohol, you need even more support for what you’re going through,” he told each new patient. “I admire your strength.” He truly did.

Thus, he held frequent meetings with both the staff and the patients to make sure everyone was happy and to see if there were suggestions for improvements. Most recently, they began bringing in a few massage therapists to do ten-minute chair massages, a small meditation garden was planted, and the chef was working on implementing a daily vegan option for the evening meal.

When Tommy and Elizabeth were done catching up, Raff brought the baby with him to the meeting room. She had a playpen set up in the back, with a variety of books and toys, and she almost seemed to look forward to the one-hour sessions that she spent here playing quietly. This was where recovery meetings took place, and Raff sat here as a former alcoholic and not as the rehab director. He was the same as all of the other men and women who were gathered together to share their stories and their struggles.

Around the circle, they each introduced themselves. I’m so-and-so, and I’m a former addict. I’ve been clean for sixteen years, or thirty days, or one day. Some in the group looked scared, while others looked hopeful, and a few even just looked bored. But Raff liked to start his work days off like this. It reminded him of the struggle and to be thankful that he had found a way out of addiction.

Today, Raff shared his recent experiences of riding through the beautiful Alaskan wilderness with his husband on their motorcycles. He explained the unexpected and hilarious dilemma of selling his bike at the same time Chris was buying another. Fortunately, Raff was able to buy his own bike for the same price.

The air against his face was warm during the day and cool at night. The sky above and the trees so close that he could almost touch them. The sounds of the forest whenever they stopped for a break to stretch their legs or enjoy a casual picnic or watch the stars . . . none of that was a reality when Raff was drinking. It was all a blur. A man like Chris, a good man with aspirations and who wanted a family, would never have married someone like Raff before he quit.

“But I had to find a way to deal with the pain; the reason I was drinking. Therapy helped. The meetings helped. I wasn’t perfect. I’m still not. But I no longer need alcohol. If I feel pain, I go for a ride and I think about my family.”

After everyone shared their triumphs and challenges, the group disbanded and Raff swooped Elizabeth up to grab a quick lunch in the cafeteria and then spend a few hours in his office where he made calls and paid bills.

Raff loved his job. He loved his life. And now that he and Chris were bonding again, there was a dream-like quality to it all; a feeling that he had in the beginning but that faded ever so briefly when they were struggling.

He looked over at Elizabeth and, as he expected, she had fallen asleep. She was a very reliable napper, always catching a few Zs right after lunch. He decided to put off the rest of his phone calls until she woke up, and instead worked on some budget issues.

The messenger app on his computer popped up with a message from the reception desk.

“Your brother is here to see you, Raff.”

Raff was caught off guard. He didn’t have a brother.

Except.

He got up from his desk. Was it one of the guys from the home? In Alaska? What a great surprise! His heart skipped a beat as he went to find out.

“Hey, Angela, can you keep an eye on Elizabeth?” he asked his administrative assistant and, when she agreed, he headed to the front of the building.

Who could it be? Buzz? Leo? Vick? Raff’s face split into a huge grin as his mind raced. His loping pace brought him to the reception area quickly and, as he pulled open the door, his eyes sped across the room, looking for a familiar face.

But then his heart dropped.

A man sat in one of the waiting area seats, flipping through an old hunting magazine nonchalantly. It took him too long to look up, as if he had been here before and stopped by often. But when he did meet Raff’s eyes, he smirked knowingly with kind of a gotcha look.

Raff was suddenly filled with the urge to vomit, but he took a deep breath and then moved across the room to where the visitor was slowly getting up. Raff tried to keep a professional smile on his face, but his lips did not seem to want to cooperate. They quivered ever so slightly and he wondered if anyone else could see.

“Well. Trick Daniels. What a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Raff held out his hand; a mannerism that he learned long ago when he was desperate to impress potential foster parents, and it was one that could not be suppressed even now.

The man took it and shook, but he didn’t have a firm handshake. Raff hated that.

“Raff Rivera! You’re a hard guy to track down. And look at this!” Trick held his arms out and nodded, as if impressed. “Director, huh? Fancy!”

Raff got the feeling that Trick was mocking him, but he couldn’t be sure.

“It’s just a job, Trick, but I like it.”

“C’mon, show me around, man. I’m impressed. I can’t wait to tell the fellas back home.”

Raff chose to ignore that. “What brings you up this way, Trick? All the way from, where, New York? I haven’t seen or heard from you in nine years.”

The grin left Trick’s face when he realized that Raff wanted to keep it strictly business.

“Something’s come up, man. It’s about the, uh, trial.” Trick mumbled the last word softly, but still Raff looked around to make sure no one had heard. The receptionist was on his headset, taking a call, and no one else was around. That was a relief, at least.

“Not here. Give me five minutes. You got a car?”

“A bike. A rental, I guess.” Trick’s greasy grin was back.

“Wait for me out front.” Raff’s words and look must have been fiercer than he intended, because Trick’s hands flew up as if to say he had no other intentions. Raff made sure Trick was headed out the front door before he went back to his office.

Raff’s administrative assistant loved watching Elizabeth, but it wasn’t part of her job, so Raff insisted on paying her extra. Once he was certain that the baby would be looked after, he headed to the parking lot where Trick was waiting on a motorcycle.

Within minutes, they were on the road; Raff leading the way on his bike.

Raff’s mental wheels turned as fast as the literal ones, thinking of a private place to have a discussion with Trick. He didn’t want anyone to see them, but he also wasn’t sure that he wanted to be alone for long with the man.

The last time he had seen Trick was right before Raff was arrested for the art theft. Trick was a part of the bike gang that Raff hung with. And while, sure, Trick was one of his “brothers”, the two men were never close. In the gang, there were the good guys in the group, the ones who didn’t quite fit in with the “norms”, but who believed in doing the right thing. Raff was closest to them. And then there were the sketchy ones that seemed to have no conscience when it came to what they perceived to be minor infractions and victimless crimes. Trick hung with those guys and Raff had never cared for him.

There was also something much more concrete than just not caring much for him.

While Raff truly was innocent of stealing the Merelda Mercier painting—just a naïve kid in the wrong place at the wrong time—the painting was stolen, and Raff knew that some of the sketchy guys were involved somehow. He didn’t know how and he never wanted to know, because Raff wasn’t a snitch. So when he was charged with the theft, his defense team didn’t point fingers at particular individuals, but instead crafted a fine case of reasonable doubt.

After Raff was found not guilty and the case was over, he stopped hanging out with the gang, deciding to distance himself from that kind of drama. There were several of the good guys that he kept in touch with, but he did so by phone and email for the most part.

That’s why seeing Trick was so shocking. Trick wasn’t someone he kept in touch with.

Raff decided on a small park that was right off of the highway about thirty minutes from the center. The likelihood of someone he knew seeing them was slim, but cars and trucks passed constantly, and he thought that might prevent Trick from doing anything.

What am I afraid of? Raff didn’t have any reason to suspect that Trick might hurt him for any reason, but his mind kept going there. Is he dangerous?

When they parked and took their helmets off, Trick cackled. “Where the hell did you bring me, man? That was quite a ride.”

Raff gave him a tight smile. “I just thought you might want to see some of the countryside. Have you seen much? How long have you been in Alaska anyway?”

“First day, actually. Flew in this morning and had a bike waiting. There’s a friend of a friend with a bike shop in Fairbanks, and he sorta—” Trick paused to snicker. “He sorta lent this one to me. The owner won’t even know. No harm done, right?”

Sketchy little prick.

“Right. So, Trick,” Raff said, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s this about?”

Trick cleared his throat and looked down at his feet. Distaste—that’s the emotion Raff was feeling at that moment. Raff was a man’s man; a true alpha, who knew when it was important to give a firm handshake and when to look someone in the eye. It was loathsome to him that Trick couldn’t do so now.

“I’ve got the cops snooping around, man.”

Raff shrugged. “So?”

“They never believed you didn’t steal the painting, but they had to drop that bone. Instead, they started looking at the rest of us. Now that the statute of limitations is almost up, they’re hungry. They brought me in for questioning.”

“What do you want me to do about it? I was let go.”

Trick held up his left hand, with a shiny yellow-gold ring on it. “I’m married now, Raff. Got a baby on the way. I can’t go to prison for grand larceny. It’s a C felony.”

“So it was you, huh? Who else? Motor Mike? Kasey?”

Trick just grinned. “Don’t matter, man. I heard you and your attorney hooked up; got yourself a kid these days.”

Raff felt his body turn cold. “You leave them out of it, Trick.”

“Hey, man, I’m not a monster. I’m just sayin’, I want to be there for my kid, just like you do. If I go to prison, my baby’s going to grow up without a daddy. You remember that as well as I do. You were in foster homes like I was. And you can help me prevent that.”

“How?”

“You were charged and found innocent. They can’t try you again. Double jeopardy or whatever it’s called. If you go to the press and say that you did it, you stole the painting, and your only accomplice was Kawasaki Kev, they won’t be able to come after me.”

Kawasaki Kev was another one of the bad dudes, and Raff heard that Kev died a few years ago in a pile-up on the Taconic State Parkway.

“No fucking way, man. I was found innocent because I was innocent. Even after that, I had to work hard to rebuild my life. You think I’d be able to work at a rehab facility if they thought I was a criminal? Would my husband be able to keep practicing law if the bar thought he was married to an art thief? How would we support our child?”

“What about if they—your husband, his boss, your boss—found out you maimed a man?”

His words were so soft that Raff almost didn’t hear him.

“What did you say?” Even before Trick said it again, Raff’s huge hands were balled into fists and he felt his face turn hot with anger.

“When you were sixteen, you were driving your bike drunk, you caused an accident, and you maimed a man. Do they know about that?”

Raff felt the world spin around him. He put his hand out onto the seat of his bike to steady himself, and forced himself to breathe through his nose, just like the patients at the center were advised to do when shit got real.

When he could finally speak, Raff said, “How’d you find out about that?”

***

2001.

Music was shit that year, according to Raff’s older “brothers”. Raff occasionally turned up the radio to listened to Linkin Park or Incubus, and his buddies would scoff and turn the station to the classic hard rock station that still played AC/DC and Sabbath. It was cool, though—Raff liked that stuff too.

He was newly free. Once he found employment—helping out at a construction site—and got a roommate, it was easy to become a legal adult. The foster care system was overwhelmed as it was, and he was basically already taking care of himself in the group home. He applied to be legally emancipated and now the State didn’t have to pay for him. It was scary but thrilling.

Raff no longer had to be home by eight and in bed by ten; he didn’t have to finish high school, and he didn’t have to hide his alcohol in a Ziploc bag in the toilet tank. His roommate was an older guy—a friend of a friend—who was quiet but also liked to drink, so as long as Raff kept the volume of his stereo down, paid his half of the bills and pitched in for beer, everything was great. He even had a pet goldfish; his first pet ever.

The only bad thing was that the roommate had a family. No, not a wife and kids but folks and siblings and even a grandmother, all of whom he went to see during the holidays. Once, he invited Raff to a Sunday dinner and, while it was a delicious meal and everyone was very kind, it just made Raff feel worse for having no one. Holidays soon became days reserved for drunkenness.

Most of his “brothers” felt the same way about the holidays, and that made things a little less lonely.

It was Thanksgiving Day. Raff swung by the group home to drop off candy bars for his younger “brothers” and beer for the older boys. A church group was there, serving turkey breast—that pressed kind that came in a bag and had weird gelatinous strands running through it, tubs of mashed potatoes, cans of brown gravy, and Stove Top. The kids always hated the pity that church groups showed them and the way that they spoke slowly and loudly as if foster kids were dumb. The food wasn’t bad though. But this year, Raff was stopped before he could take a plate.

“Sorry, Rafael,” the caseworker said. “We only have enough for the boys who live here.” He did look genuinely sorry.

Raff nodded like it was no big deal, and took off shortly after. There was a lump in his throat and he knew the only thing that would make it better was a cold one. He headed to his friend Buzz’s trailer. A few years older than Raff, Buzz had looked out for him at the group home and after. He would probably even have pizza.

But Buzz wasn’t home. He’d been seriously dating someone. Perhaps he’d been invited to her parents’ house for dinner.

Good for Buzz, Raff thought. He meant it. But the lump in his throat grew.

He didn’t have a cell phone and didn’t feel like wasting gas driving around to his other buddies’ homes, so instead he stopped at a bar on the way back to his place. They had shitty food, but they also had no qualms about serving minors. Raff sat down at the bar, ordered a burger and a Bud, and focused on the television above the bar for the next few hours.

“Hey sweetheart, last call,” said the middle-aged woman who’d been serving him all night. She had a pleasant face but looked like she’d been drinking whiskey in the sun for years. Raff ordered a shot of Jameson because he knew he would be home before it “kicked in”, slammed it and paid his tab.

She raised her eyes in surprise when she saw her tip and wished him a Happy Thanksgiving. He mumbled the same back to her.

It was a nice night. One never knew if a New York Thanksgiving would be hot or snowy, but the wind felt good as he headed back to his place. Just two miles. He felt a warm buzz but his head was clear and he felt almost optimistic. He had made it through a holiday without getting shitfaced or in a fight with one of the gang, and tomorrow he would go back to work.

But the next thing he knew, he was waking up on a gurney in an ambulance. The ride was bumpy and loud, and the EMT was saying his name over and over. Searing pain roared through his left arm.

“What happened?”

“You were in a wreck on 17th. What’s your name?”

“Rafael. What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

The other EMT spoke up. “He’s trashed. I can smell whiskey from here.” He sounded disgusted.

“Don’t worry, Rafael. You’re going to be fine. How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Was anyone else hurt?”

“I don’t know. We’re only concerned about you right now. It’s a good thing you were wearing a helmet.”

Raff focused on the ceiling of the ambulance; the bumpy pattern on the steel above him. His eyes swam. The Jameson had kicked in.

“I’m going to—”

His neck was in a collar so the EMT had to work quickly to help him vomit and then make sure his airway was clear. The small enclosed area filled with the smell of beer. Raff started to cry.

“Did I hurt anyone?”

“Tell him, man,” said the angry EMT.

“Shut up, Rick. It’s going to be okay, Rafael.”

***

“Believe me, Raff, I don’t want to do it this way, but I gotta protect my family.”

Trick was still smiling that greasy smile.

“How much time do I have to think about it?”

“When do you come back to New York?”

“Three weeks.”

“Make up your mind by then. Otherwise, I’ve got some emails to send.”

Raff turned without another word and got on his bike.

The dream had just turned into a nightmare.