“He told me about your father, yes. And the incident at your daughter’s school?” His voice lifted, turning the sentence into a question.

I winced, feeling my face go pale at the memory. “That was awful. I had a glass of wine with a friend after I’d taken my medication.” I congratulated myself for the use of the phrase “my medication,” even though I knew the pills I took had been bought online rather than prescribed.

“I’m sure you know that David is very concerned. About your safety, and also your daughter’s.”

“That was a terrible day. What happened—what I did—it was awful. But I would never do anything like that again.” My sinuses were burning, my eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I love my daughter. I’d never hurt her.”

“Sometimes, in our addiction, we do things we’d never, ever do if we were sober.” His voice was low and soothing, like the world’s best yoga teacher. “David also said there was an incident with your business? The misappropriation of some funds?”

I sat up straight. How did Dave even know about that? “Th-that was a clerical error,” I stammered. “I was just being careless. It was the end of a week from hell; I was trying to get my parents’ financial stuff over to our accountant so they could admit him at the assisted-living place . . .” I shut my mouth. The thing with Ellie had been a mistake. The thing with the money—another mistake. The word “unmanageable” was floating around in my head with dismaying persistence. I pushed it away. I was managing. I was managing fine.

“Have any authorities been involved?” asked Nicholas. “The police? The Department of Youth and Family Services?” I shook my head. “Teachers are mandated reporters, and normally, in a case like that, they’d be obligated to tell someone at DYFS what was going on.” He gave me a serious look. “You’re very lucky that no one got hurt . . . and that you still have custody of your daughter.”

I felt sick as I nodded numbly, accepting the reality of how badly I’d fucked up. They could have taken Ellie away. I could have gone to jail.

“You’re an intelligent woman,” said Nicholas. “I think that if you’re here, if you agreed to come here, even if there were extenuating circumstances, probably a part of you thinks you need to be here.”

I opened my mouth to say No way. Then I made myself think. An intelligent woman, Nicholas had said. What would an intelligent woman do under these circumstances? Would she resist; would she fight; would she argue and continue to insist that she didn’t have a problem and that she didn’t belong? Or would she fake compliance? Would she nod and agree, march to meetings and activities with the rest of the zombies, eat the crappy cafeteria food and drink the Kool-Aid? If I did all that, if I toed the line and recited the slogans and—I glanced at the poster on Nicholas’s wall—made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, I could probably get out of here in a week. Two weeks, tops.

“You know what?” I said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there was a part of me that knew it was time to stop. I was concerned about how many I was taking. I was concerned that I needed to keep taking more and more to feel the same way. Then I was worried about having to take them just to feel normal, and always worrying about whether I had enough, and if I was going to run out, and which doctor I could call to get more. And I didn’t . . .” I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat, letting Nicholas hear the catch in my voice. “I didn’t want to be all spaced out around my daughter. She deserves a mom who’s there for her.”

“Had you made attempts to stop before?” Nicholas’s voice was so calm, so quiet. Did learning to talk that way require special training?

I shook my head, thinking about that afternoon at Stonefield, Mrs. Dale wrestling the car keys away from me, telling me that I wasn’t safe to drive my own daughter, and how I’d sworn to myself that I would quit, or at least stop taking so much. I thought about that terrible AA meeting the next morning, and how by noon that day I’d been right back in the bathroom, staring at my face in the mirror as I shook pills into my hand. In spite of my best intentions, and the very real threat of being exposed or shamed or worse, I hadn’t even been able to make it halfway through one day without a pill.

Nicholas pushed a box of tissues across the desk. “What are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and swiped at my face. “I’m not feeling well.”

“That’s completely understandable. You’re still going through withdrawal.”

“I feel so stupid,” I blurted. “I’ve never been in trouble my whole life, you know? I’ve been successful. I’m good at my job. I have a beautiful little girl. I had everything I wanted. And now . . .” Now I’m a drug addict. The words rose in my head. I shoved them away. I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I was just having a little problem. I was experiencing technical difficulties, like they said on TV.

“I’m worried about being here,” I said. I figured this was exactly what someone who’d come to a place like this would say. It also happened to be the truth. “My mom is staying with us, but, really, she’s not going to be much help. My husband works full-time, and I’m the only one who can write my blog posts. There’s not, like, a substitute I can call in.”

“You’re going to be surprised at how people step up,” said Nicholas.

I shook my head, brushing tears off my cheeks. I made myself take a deep, slow breath. What was the stupid slogan I’d seen on the church basement wall? “One Day at a Time.” I would get through this place, one day at a time. I would fake contrition, pretend acceptance, act like I bought every bit of the Higher Power hooey, and sort out the rest of it when I was back home. I sniffled, wiped my face again, and gave Nicholas a brave look. “I don’t suppose you have massages here,” I said, feeling the tiredness, the sickness of withdrawal, the sadness that had colored everything gray settle inside me.

“Every other week, we have someone come in.” He leaned forward to match my posture and kept his voice low. “I can’t promise you it’s going to rival what you’d get at Adolf Biecker.” I suppressed a smile. Somehow he’d landed on my favorite Philadelphia salon, the one I never told my mother I patronized, because she operated on the assumption that anyone named Adolf was a Nazi.

“And in our common room, you’ll find any number of board games.” He smiled, then made a show of looking around, making sure we were alone. “You haven’t lived until you’ve played Jenga with someone having DTs. We’re talking guaranteed victory.”

I smiled in spite of myself. Then I remembered my mission. “I want to make a phone call,” I said. “Michelle said I needed permission from my counselor, but I don’t have one yet, and I need to tell my daughter . . .” I felt the lump swelling in my throat again, remembering how I must have looked in the throes of withdrawal. “I want to tell her that I miss her, and that I’m thinking about her. I want her to know I’m okay.”

“I don’t think that should be a problem,” he said, and scribbled something on the back of a business card. “You can use the phones behind the main desk back in Residential. And you have my permission to skip drum circle, if you’re still feeling woozy.”

Drum circle? “I am,” I said, grateful that not everyone here was a robot who’d treat me like a junkie. “Two other things. I’m supposed to be on TV next week.” I tried to sound casual, as if I were the kind of woman who was on TV so regularly that mentioning it was akin to saying that I was the snack mom for that weekend’s six-and-under soccer game. The Newsmakers on Nine people, perhaps unsurprisingly, had asked me back, this time to talk about abstinence-only sex ed in public schools. “And my daughter’s birthday party is on the fourteenth, and I can’t miss it.” That, I decided, would be my endgame. I’d be out of here in time for Ellie’s birthday party. I would meet her at BouncyTime, where she’d asked to have her party (in hindsight, she had decided the giant slide was the most fun she’d ever had in her entire life), and then, when the party was over, I’d load the trunk of the Prius with presents and leftover pizza, and we’d drive back home.

Nicholas steepled his fingers and rested his chin on top of them. “That,” he said, “might be a problem.”

“I can skip the TV thing,” I said, eager to show that I was a reasonable woman, able to compromise. “But I can’t miss Ellie’s birthday.”

“Normally, twenty-eight days is twenty-eight days. It’s your time to focus on yourself.” When he saw the look on my face, his voice softened. “Your daughter is going to have other birthdays. She probably won’t even remember you weren’t at this one.”

I gave him a thin smile. “You don’t know my daughter.”

“Well, I won’t tell you we’ve never made exceptions.” He turned to his computer, tapped at the keyboard. “It looks like you’re going to be in Bernice’s group. Why don’t you mention it to her, see what she says.”

“Okay. When will I meet her?”

“Monday.”

Monday? I blinked in disbelief. Today was Thursday, and I wasn’t seeing a therapist until Monday? I filed that factoid away for the letter to the director of Meadowcrest that I was already composing in my head.

“All I’d suggest is that you keep an open mind,” Nicholas said. “I know you’re not in the best place physically to process a lot of new information, but just listen as much as you can.”

I got up, with the card in my hands . . . and then, before I could stop myself, I blurted the question that had kept me awake for months. “What if this doesn’t work? What if I can’t stop?”