“Honesty, willingness, and open-mindedness,” said Nicholas. “You’re being honest already, telling me what’s scaring you. Are you willing to try? And keep an open mind about twelve-step fellowships?”

I looked out the window—gathering clouds, trees stretching their budding branches toward the sky, shadows flickering across the grounds. Girls strolled along the path, carrying what I now knew were copies of The Big Book, and they didn’t look like drunks and junkies, just regular people, leading ordinary lives.

Across the desk, Nicholas was still looking at me, waiting for my answer. “I don’t think I believe in God,” I finally said.

He smiled. “How cheesy would it sound if I told you that God believes in you?”

For what seemed like the first time since I’d landed in this dump, I smiled. “Pretty cheesy.”

“For a lot of beginners, their Higher Power is the group itself—it’s the other people working toward the same goal, supporting your sobriety.”

I pointed out the window at a guy I’d glimpsed from the waiting room. He had pierced ears and a tattooed neck, and wore a baseball cap pulled low over his brow. His sweatshirt hung midway down his thighs, his jeans sagged off his hips, and his enormous, unlaced basketball shoes looked big as boats. “Does he get to be my Higher Power?”

Nicholas followed my finger. “Maybe not him specifically.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Lunchtime,” he said. “Hang in there. I know this part is hard. Just try to keep an open mind. Try to listen.”

I nodded as if I was listening, as if I believed every word he’d told me, and walked back across the campus, taking care to stay on the women’s path. Inside Residential, all the women were lined up again, in front of a window from which a small, plump, dark-skinned woman with bobbed black hair and big, round glasses was dispensing medications.

“Boy, did you miss all the fun,” said Mary. “We had to figure out a way to get the horse to jump over a puddle.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Aubrey muttered. “How is leading around a horse on a rope supposed to help me not shoot dope?”

“You are a poet!” said Mary. “I bet you didn’t know it!”

Aubrey snorted, then gazed down balefully at her mud-caked feet. “These fucking boots are ruined.” In front of the window, a woman gulped her pills, then opened her mouth wide and waggled her tongue at the nurse.

“How desperate do you have to be,” I wondered, “to convince someone to save their saliva-coated pill for you?”

“Just wait,” Aubrey said. “When you’ve only slept for two hours a night six days in a row, you’ll give anything for that pill.” She banged a boot heel against the wall, sending a shower of flaked dirt onto the carpet.

“Aubrey F., that’s a demerit,” called the teenage boy behind the desk. I wondered what it meant, and made a mental note to find out later. Aubrey rolled her eyes and, when he turned back to the desk, shot him the finger. Mary giggled as the cafeteria doors swung open, releasing the smell of detergent and deep fryer, and we filed in for lunch.

TWENTY

“So listen,” said Aubrey, after we’d gathered our chicken fingers, Tater Tots, and canned corn and taken a seat at one of the long cafeteria tables. “Do you think . . .” She twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

“No,” Mary said immediately. She was cutting her chicken fingers into cubes, dipping each cube into ranch dressing, and then popping them in her mouth, one after another.

“But he’s in rehab, too!” Aubrey stabbed an entire chicken strip, doused it in ketchup, and held it aloft on her fork as she nibbled. “If I think he’s not gonna stay sober, doesn’t that mean that I’m not gonna make it, either?”

“I’m not saying you can’t give him a chance,” said Mary. “Remember what they said back in the Cold War? ‘Trust but verify’?”

Aubrey dunked her chicken back into the ketchup slick. “Like I remember the Cold War.”

Mary turned to me, the light glinting off her glasses as the chain swung against her bosom. “Aubrey’s boyfriend is in rehab, too. She’s trying to decide whether to see him again when she’s done here.” Over the younger woman’s head, Mary mouthed the words Bad idea.

I looked at Aubrey’s bruised arms. “This would be the guy who did that to you?”

Aubrey gave a shamefaced nod.

“Oh, Aubrey. Why would you even think of going back to someone who hurt you like that?”

She mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“What?”

She raised her head. “We’ve got a kid,” she said defiantly. “A little boy.” She flipped her white plastic binder so I could see a snapshot of a toddler centered in the plastic cover, a beaming toddler with fine blond hair and two bottom teeth and a slick of drool on his ruddy red chin.

I felt my heart clench. This child, who couldn’t possibly be a day over eighteen, had a baby? She’d had a baby with a drug addict who beat her?

Mary reached for her hands across the table. “What kind of life is that for Cody?” she asked. “Do you want him to grow up thinking that men push women around? Choke them? Hit them?”

“It only happens when he’s high,” Aubrey protested.

“But you told us he’s high all the time,” Mary said.

“Well, but maybe if he goes to rehab and takes it seriously this time . . .”

“Who’s got the baby now?” I asked.

“Justin’s mom. That’s who we were living with. Me and Justin and Cody.”

A recovery coach—I’d learned that’s what the khaki-clad teenagers who seemed to be running Meadowcrest were called—tapped Aubrey’s shoulder. “They need you in Detox,” he said. Aubrey cleared her tray. We watched her go.

“I’ll pray for her,” Mary said, and touched the gold cross around her neck before returning to her chicken. “Not that I’m judging,” she said, “but I’m not sure Aubrey has the equipment she needs to make better choices.”

Another recovery coach, a girl with elfin features and delicate, pointed ears exposed by a cropped haircut, tapped my shoulder. “Allison W.? There’s a phone free, if you want to make your call.”

I hurried out of the cafeteria, clutching the card Nicholas had given me, the bright, coppery taste of pennies and fear in my mouth as I dialed.

“Hi, Mom. It’s Allison.”

“Oh, Allie . . .” She sounded—big surprise—like she was going to cry. “Hold on,” she said, before the sobs could start. “Ellie’s been wanting to talk to you.”

I waited, sweating, my heart beating too hard, my lips creased into a smile, thinking that if I looked happy, even fake-happy, I would sound happy, too. Finally, I heard heavy breathing in my ear.

“Mommy? Daddy says you are in the HOSPITAL!”

My insides seemed to collapse at the sound of her voice, everything under my skin turning to dust. Keep it together, I told myself. At least “hospital” was better than “rehab,” even if it wasn’t as good as “business trip,” which was what I’d been hoping for. “Hi, honey. I’m in a kind of hospital. It’s a kind of place where mommies go to rest and get better.”

“Why do you need to REST? You sleep all the TIME. You are always taking a NAP and I have to be QUIET.” She paused, and then her voice was grave. “Are you sick?”

“Not sick like that time you had an earache, or when Daddy had the flu. It’s a different kind of sick. So I’m just going to stay here until I’m all better and the doctors say I can come home.”

“How many days?” Ellie demanded.

“I’m not sure, El. But I’m going to try very hard to be there for your party, and I’ll be able to talk to you on the phone, and I can send you letters.”

“Can you send me a present? Or some candy or a pop?”

I smiled. Maybe it was good that she didn’t seem shattered—or, really, fazed in the slightest. Or maybe this was just her typical compensation, the way she’d try to make my father, and Hank, and now me, feel better about our screwups.

My job, I decided, was not to scare her. Let her think Mommy had some version of an earache or the flu, something that wasn’t fatal and that the doctors knew how to fix.

“What dress are you wearing?” I asked.

“New Maxi.” New Maxi was a pink-and-white-patterned maxi dress, not to be confused with Old Maxi, which I’d bought her at the Gap last summer. “Grandma does NOT make my dresses FIGHT. She says they’re supposed to all get along. But I ask you, where’s the fun in THAT?” Ellie demanded.

I smiled and made a noise somewhere between laughter and a sob, then sneezed three times in a row. “Not much fun at all, really.”

“But she said we could get a pedicure. AND that I could get a JEWEL on my toes.”

“Well, aren’t you lucky?”

“Grandma is AWESOME,” Ellie said . . . which was news to me. “And she let me have noodles for two nights!” The recovery coach tapped my shoulder and, when I looked up, pointed at her watch.

“I love you and I miss you,” I said. “You are my favorite.”

“I KNOW I am,” she trumpeted. “I KNOW I am your favorite!”

“Is Daddy there?” I asked.

Ellie sounded indignant. “Daddy is at WORK. It’s the middle of the DAYTIME.”

“I will call you when I can, and I’m going to write you a letter as soon as we say goodbye. Listen to Grandma and Daddy, and eat your growing foods, and make your bed in the morning, and floss your teeth.”

“I have to go now. Sam & Cat is on!” There was a thump, the muffled sound of voices, and then my mom was on the line.

“How . . . how are you doing?”

“As well as I can, I guess.”

“Don’t worry about anything. Everything here is going well.”