Falling for Heaven (Four Winds) - By Anne Conley Page 0,3

it. Barely. But I’m not going to keep enabling you, Tiff. You’ve got to go into rehab.” Trying to keep her voice calm, Heather had a hard time stifling her frustration.

“I will, soon. I just need to get myself together first.” Her sister's noncommittal voice came from the foreign body sitting in front of her.

“That’s what rehab is for, honey.” Heather reached over to smooth her hair.

“I need an intervention.” Tiffany mumbled into her pillow.

“You need to get yourself there. You are responsible for yourself, Tiff.”

“I need somebody to make me go.” The whiny tone grated on Heather's nerves. This was all part of the justification of the addiction. If somebody forced Tiffany to do it, then she could blame them when she didn't succeed.

Heather sighed with irritation. “So you can say that you don’t want it? You’re giving yourself an out, Tiff.”

“No, I’m not. I do want it. I just can’t make myself go.”

“You have to.”

“Why can’t you do it, Heather?”

Heather remembered the last time she had tried and the reason she had vowed not to force her sister again. Tiffany had morphed into a raging beast, kicking and screaming. It had shocked Heather, because Tiffany said she wanted to get clean, and they were just following a plan already set in place. Now she didn't trust her sister to be cooperative. “Because last time I tried to make you go, you broke my arm, and I couldn’t dance for two weeks. And I didn't make any money for almost a month after that. Nobody wants lap dances from a girl in a cast.”

Tiffany looked at her sister with pain in her eyes, before she burst into tears. “I’m so sorry that I did that, Heather. You know you’re the most important person in the world to me.” Tiffany threw herself into her sister's arms. Heather smothered the urge to vomit from the overwhelming smells of body odor and urine. And underneath that was the smell of drugs and death -- that was something she wished she couldn’t identify.

“You’re killing yourself, Tiff.” Heather said, quietly.

“I know, but I can’t stop it. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Yes, you do.” Heather said reassuringly. “Go to rehab. Get yourself clean.”

“I can’t!” Tiffany pulled away from her. “I should just end it. I’m no good to anybody, anyway.”

“Shut up, Tiffany.” Heather pulled her back into a fierce hug. “Don’t say things like that. You don’t mean them.” She had heard it before, and Heather knew her sister was too chicken to actually take her own life. Still, hearing the words made her panic a little. Heather could only imagine the level of hopelessness the drugs gave Tiffany every time she hit the low point in the cycle.

“Yes, I do. I hate living like this.” False bravado steeled Tiffany's voice.

“Tell you what. I’ll try to get somebody to help me come get you. I love you to death, but I don’t trust you anymore with this whole intervention thing. Not after last time. Okay?”

“I don’t want all of your stripper friends to know what I am.”

Heather sighed heavily. “I won’t tell my stripper friends. I was thinking of Robbie, one of the bouncers. He’s got experience handling belligerent people.”

“No. I want it to be just us. The Invincible Identicals.” She said softly.

“I can’t do it alone, Tiff. I’m sorry.” She watched her sister carefully for the explosion that she expected to come.

“Then get the hell out of my apartment.” Heather sighed. This was the cycle they went through, each time she came to visit her sister. It wasn't always pretty, but at least it was predictable. Tiffany would ask Heather for something that she didn't have the power or the will to give and then get angry with her for not succumbing to her whims.

“Okay. But promise me you’ll eat something, okay?”

Tiffany mumbled something unintelligible as she covered herself back up with the blankets.

Heather grabbed Taco and let herself out.

After leaving Tiffany's place, she took Taco to the park, a daily ritual that she loved almost as much as the Chihuahua. As she walked around watching Taco chase birds and lift his leg on anything that he could, she thought about her sister.

There wasn’t much that she hadn’t done for her. She paid the rent and utilities in that abysmal building so that her sister wasn’t homeless. She took food to her regularly. Heather tried everything she could to get her to go to rehab. The only thing was, her sister wouldn’t