“Andre’s not at home,” she said. “Andre’s at Glen Arden. Out past Towson. Curtis drove him up at noon. That’s why the truck was in the driveway. Jayden saw the truck and he thought—” She stopped. “I forgot about the truck. I had a whole plan and I forgot the one thing a ten-year-old was going to see.”
“What’s Glen Arden?”
She looked at him for a long moment, and in her face he saw a thing he had not seen there since she was a teenager: the weighing of whether her father could be trusted with the truth.
“It’s a treatment center, Daddy. Twenty-eight days. Andre’s been drinking.”
Leon heard it, and his first thought was so foolish he was ashamed of it even as he thought it: that she had to be mistaken, because Andre Whitaker did not drink. Leon had sat beside that man at Thanksgiving tables and Fourth of July cookouts and Jayden’s birthday parties for twelve years, and Andre had never once had anything in his cup but ginger ale or sweet tea. Leon had noticed. Leon noticed such things the way some men notice cars. He had approved, privately, in the part of himself that kept its own counsel. A man who did not drink was a man you did not have to watch.
“Andre don’t drink,” he said.
“Andre hasn’t had a drink in nine years.” She took a breath. “Until August. Until after Kevin.”