There had been a time in her life when she didn't want to see Rob, when she was young and stupid and going to frat parties and bars and getting loaded on whatever substance she could get her hands on. He would always find her though, drag her home, hover over her until she was sober enough to lecture, at least until the next time. These days her drug use was over, thanks to an overdose that damaged her heart, and her drinking had seemed to have diminished into functional alcoholism. Now she dragged herself home, but she still had her brother looking out for her. He'd been the one to take care of her after the accident, settle things with the cops and insurance, cancel her lease and shut down her legal practice, while she was at home recovering. He was back home now, but still looking out for her - finding her an apartment, scouting law firms who might take on another lawyer. Still taking care of her, after all these years.
"I do," she said, sounding a little more sober for those two words. "He's all I have left in the world, I think," she said, looking down into her whiskey with a smile that was almost a grimace. "Our parents are gone, our sister is gone, my fiancee is..." she swallowed back that last 'gone' before it could slip out. "I need him."
And that was all it took for her emotions to swing back again, away from exuberant talkative drunk and right into tearfully regretful drunk. "You're right," she said, nodding at Julia's assessment of her. "I should have left a few weeks ago, but I just...didn't." She frowned down at her whiskey for a second, and then downed the rest of it in one. She sighed, blinking back the tears that had formed. "The truth is, I'm just so fucking lonely I latched onto the first person I saw here. I just lost the one person who meant the most to me in this world, and I'm trying to fill the hole he left behind with...a street urchin." It took a few seconds to realize what she'd said, and then to feel horrible about thinking that about Sadie. Her features crumpled, and she struggled to keep from going so far as to break down in front of this stranger. "And now I actually care about her," she finished miserably.