Alcoholism and Addiction

Alcoholism and Addiction is a recurring family crisis in the novel, not a single failing with a single remedy. Richard’s account of drinking connects dependence to pain and estrangement; his later drug use brings the danger into the present, while Hardin’s own drinking makes caregiving and judgment difficult to separate. Across these episodes, recovery depends not just on wanting to change, but on support, treatment, and decisions that other family members cannot make for the person using substances.

Richard’s Drinking and Its Origins

When Tessa asks whether Richard is still drinking, he admits that he is, though he says he drinks less and has had a hard few months. The admission leaves Tessa with some hope that he might be helped to stop. At a bar, Hardin asks how Richard can afford to drink without working. Richard explains that he cleans the place every other day and drinks for free. When Hardin asks why he does not get sober and get paid instead, Richard says he has tried repeatedly. He hopes that seeing his daughter more often will make sobriety easier. His answer presents the relationship with Tessa as a possible source of motivation, but not as a cure he can guarantee.

Richard later describes how his drinking began. While he and Tessa’s mother were in a bad place, he left one night and became so drunk that he could not walk home. He liked the numbness the alcohol gave him, and drinking became a habit. He spent more time at the bar across the street than with his family. Eventually, he says, he could not function without liquor, though he was not functioning with it either; he calls the result a losing battle. He does not identify the pain he was trying to escape, telling Tessa that what matters is that he eventually woke up and got sober. His account gives a history of dependence and recovery while leaving its original emotional cause unresolved.

Drinking Re-enters the Family Relationship

Richard’s renewed contact with Tessa coincides with Hardin drinking alongside him. At the bar, Hardin recognizes a resemblance between Richard’s hooded eyes and his own, and finishes a glass of scotch before the woman serving them pours another. Richard calls himself a bad father. Hardin is too drunk to know whether he has spoken his own self-condemnation aloud, but the exchange makes their drinking more than a casual shared activity: each man’s behavior is placed beside the other’s.

Tessa is alarmed when she finds the two men intoxicated together in the middle of the day. She knows how Hardin behaves when drunk and says she has not seen him this drunk before, not even on the night he destroyed the china. She had hoped to rebuild a relationship with her alcoholic father and perhaps see him become sober; Hardin’s participation seems to undermine that hope. On the drive home, Richard tells jokes and laughs at them, with Hardin joining in. Tessa is disturbed by what looks like a new friendship between the two men, especially because it is formed around drinking.

The conflict does not end with the outing. Tessa tells Hardin that a drink with her father is not an innocent matter: Richard is an alcoholic, and she had hoped he might consider sobriety. She refuses to be soothed by Hardin’s playful response and makes clear that she is not all right with what happened. Richard later asks whether she is upset with him for taking him drinking. Tessa softens, acknowledging what he was like when she invited him in, but says she does not want the incident to become a regular occurrence. Richard promises it will not and reminds her that she is moving. Her restraint reflects the fragility of a relationship with a father she has known again for only two days, not confidence that the risk has disappeared.

Drug Use, Withdrawal, and Treatment

Later, Hardin learns that Richard has been using drugs for about a year. Richard initially denies it, then admits the duration and says he has been trying hard to stop since he ran into Tessa. Hardin knows the disclosure would devastate her and chooses not to tell her at that point. Richard’s promise that he will get better for her sits uneasily beside the secrecy surrounding his use: Tessa’s importance is made a reason for change, while she is excluded from information that bears directly on her father and their relationship.

The physical consequences become unmistakable when Richard attempts to detox at Hardin’s home. He spends the day vomiting, shaking, sweating, and whining; after another bout of vomiting, Hardin brings him water and a sleeve of crackers. Richard is pale and clammy, and Hardin is unsure whether the crackers will help. The scene shifts addiction from a concealed history into immediate bodily distress. Hardin’s care is practical and reluctant rather than triumphant: he provides basic help but recognizes that Richard’s withdrawal has left him facing a problem he does not know how to manage.

Family Responsibility and the Limits of Rescue

Hardin eventually arranges an intervention through Landon rather than confronting Richard himself. After hours spent punching and kicking a bag at the gym, Hardin decides that Richard must enter rehab, with Hardin’s father paying, or lose contact with Tessa. Hardin says he wants to keep Richard’s addiction from burdening her, while also acknowledging guilt that she was not included in the plan. Sending Landon is partly an attempt to prevent the intervention from turning violent.

Tessa objects to Hardin’s father paying for her father’s treatment, saying that it is not his responsibility and that they do not know for sure that Richard is even addicted. Hardin answers directly that Richard is a drug addict and argues that his father might as well pay for treatment. The disagreement exposes competing forms of care: Hardin treats rehab as the necessary boundary between Richard’s addiction and Tessa’s life, while Tessa resists both the certainty of the decision and the transfer of responsibility to Hardin’s family. The evidence establishes the ultimatum and the dispute over treatment, but not the outcome of the intervention. Addiction therefore remains unresolved: Richard’s earlier sobriety shows that recovery is possible, while his later use, withdrawal, and uncertain treatment demonstrate how little a promise or a family member’s intervention can settle on its own.