“What’s going on with the husband?” asked Bernice. I felt my eyes widen. Can they read our minds?

“I think he’s got a girlfriend. When I left he had a work wife. I’m thinking she probably got a promotion. But listen,” I said, suddenly desperate to turn the focus from me to someone else, anyone else. “It’s okay. Dave’s a good dad, and he’s got my mom there to help. I’m sure everything’s—”

“No fine!” the room chorused. I shut my mouth. Bernice’s gold bracelets glinted as she wrote in her pad.

“So are you two . . . estranged? Separated?”

“I don’t know what we are,” I admitted. “I can’t get him to talk to me. He wouldn’t do counseling.”

“Did he know about the drugs?” asked Bernice.

I shook my head automatically before I remembered the envelope he’d intercepted; the receipts he’d brandished, the toneless recital in front of the girl in the cubicle the day I’d arrived, with Dave giving dismayingly accurate estimates of how much and how long. “He knew.” I wiped my eyes. I’d cried more in less than a week in rehab than I had in the previous ten years of my life, and it wasn’t like I had a particularly gut-wrenching story to weep over. “I don’t know. We used to be in love, and then we had Ellie, and it was like we turned into just two people running a day care. He was the one who wanted us to live in the suburbs. He went out there and bought a house without my even seeing it. He was going to write a book, so he had this chunk of money. Then the book contract got canceled, and I started earning more, so I was the one picking up the slack there, but it was never part of the plan, you know? The plan was, I’d stay home with the baby, he’d be the breadwinner. Only he wasn’t winning a ton of bread, and my daughter turned out to be kind of hard to deal with sometimes, and now I just feel so unhappy . . .” I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t understand it. I have everything I want, everything I was supposed to want, so why am I so sad?”

“So you used.” the counselor’s voice was gentle.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“And did it work?”

I nodded, still with my face buried in my hands. “For a while, it felt good. It smoothed out all the rough edges. It made me feel like I could get through my days. But then I was doing so much of it, and spending so much on it, and worrying all the time about where I was going to get more. And I could have hurt my daughter.” I lifted my head. My nose was running; my eyes felt red and raw. I looked at Bernice, her calm face, her kind eyes.

“Allison,” she told me, “you can do this. You are going to be okay.”

“Really?” I sniffled.

“Really really. If you want it. If you’ll do the work. It’ll probably be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. But people do come back. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t see it. I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t see miracles every day.”

I tasted the word “miracle.” More God stuff. But whatever. Just waking up every morning and thinking that my life would be all right without pills, that I could manage work and my parents and Ellie . . . that would be enough.

“Allison W.?” A khaki-bot teenager stood in the doorway. “Michelle wants to see you.”

“Go on,” said Bernice.

“See you tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “I was gonna wait until the end of group to tell y’all, but today’s my last day here.”

Unhappy murmurs rippled through the circle. I sank back in my seat, stunned and angry. I finally had a therapist, a therapist I liked, and she was leaving after my first session? “Where are you going?” asked Shannon.

“I’ll be doing outpatient, over in Cherry Hill.” She smiled. “So I might see some of you on the other side.”

“Wait,” I protested. “You can’t leave! I just got here!”

She gave me another smile, although this one seemed more professional than kind. Of course she couldn’t let herself get attached to women she would know for only four weeks, or, in my case, forty-five minutes. “I’m sure they’ll find someone great to replace me.”

There didn’t seem to be time to discuss it. So I shuffled down the hallway behind the recovery coach, yawning enormously. The night before, I’d dropped off at ten and woken up just after midnight, wide-awake and drenched in sweat. I’d taken a shower, put on fresh clothes, and put myself back to bed, trying to get some more sleep, but it hadn’t happened. My thoughts chased one another until I was so frantic and sad that I was sobbing into my pillow, thinking about getting divorced, and what it would do to Ellie, and what single motherhood would do to me. “Can’t you give me Ambien?” I’d asked the desk drone after four hours of that misery. “I have a prescription.”

“Ambien? In here?” the RC on duty, the one everyone called Ninja Noreen for her habit of sneaking into bedrooms and shining her flashlight directly into their eyes during the hourly bed checks, actually snorted at the thought.

“Okay, then something that’s approved for in here.”

“Most alcoholics and opiate users have disrupted sleep. We don’t believe in sleep aids. You’re going to just have to ride this out. Eventually, your body’s clock will reset itself.” They gave me melatonin, a natural sleep aid, which didn’t do a thing, and a CD of ocean sounds to listen to, which was just as ineffective. I was starting to feel like I was going crazy . . . and nobody seemed to care. Dear Ellie, I would write in the middle of another sleepless night, with my notebook on my lap and a towel next to me to wipe away the sweat and the inevitable tears. I miss you so much. I can’t wait to see you. Are you making lots of treats with Grandma? Are you playing lots of Monopoly and Sorry? I would write to her about baking and board games, telling her, over and over, that I missed her and I loved her, all the while wondering how this had happened, trying to find an answer to the only question that mattered: How does a suburban lady who’s pushing middle age end up in rehab? How did this happen to me?

TWENTY-TWO

“I understand you have a television appearance scheduled for Thursday?” Michelle began.

“That’s right.” I’d made an appointment with Michelle to discuss a visit to Newsmakers on Nine, even though I was was half hoping she would tell me I couldn’t do it. I felt so exhausted and on edge that I wasn’t sure I’d make any sense on the air. I also looked lousy. My skin was pale, my face felt drawn, my lips, even my eyelids, were chapped and peeling, and there were huge dark circles under my eyes and a good inch of dark roots showing at the crown of my dyed-and-highlighted head. If I’d harbored thoughts of emerging from rehab tanned and rested and ready to take on the world, those notions had quickly been dispelled. I wouldn’t be all right in twenty-eight days, or six months, or even a year. On my last day of orientation they’d shown us a video called The Brain Disease of Addiction, from which I’d learned that I could look forward to a year to eighteen months of no sleep and mood swings and depression and generally feeling awful. How could I live through that? I was sure the video wasn’t meant to discourage, but I was also sure I wasn’t the only woman who came out of it thinking, Eighteen months? That won’t be happening. Sobriety’s not for me.

“Well, Allison, the team’s been discussing it, and here is what we can offer.” Michelle picked up a pen between two pudgy fingers. “Being out on your own would most likely be too stressful for you at this stage of your recovery.” I felt myself exhale. “However, we can have a sober coach accompany you to the program.”

I held up my hand. “Excuse me? A sober coach?” I thought those were jokes, invented by the tabloids and stand-up comedians.

She nodded. “Someone who can make sure there’s no opportunity for a slip.”

“Who would this sober coach be? And what kind of training would a sober coach have?”

Michelle’s jowls flushed. “Obviously, Allison, we would send you with someone who has a lot of good clean time under her belt.”

“But not a therapist,” I surmised. “Look, some of the RCs are terrific, but some of them might as well be stocking shelves at Wawa for all they care. And none of them have degrees. In anything.”

Michelle plowed on. “We can arrange transportation to the show and have a sober coach accompany you and then bring you back here.”

“Would this cost anything extra?” I knew, from hearing other girls talk, that Meadowcrest cost a thousand dollars a day, and anything extra, from a thirty-minute massage to a family session, cost extra.

“The cost would come to . . .” She scanned the sheet of paper. “Three thousand dollars.”

I stared at her, too shocked to laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“There’s no need for profanity,” Michelle said primly.

“Three thousand fucking dollars? Yes, there fucking is!”

Michelle gave me a smile as fake as a porn star’s chest. “Why don’t you think about it, Allison?”

I sighed. “I’ll need to call my editor to cancel.”

“Are you eligible for phone passes?”

I had no idea. “Of course I am.”

Michelle scribbled out a pass.

“Just so you know,” I said, “my daughter’s birthday party is on Saturday. I am going to be there.”

Even before I’d finished saying “birthday party,” Michelle was shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, Allison, but the rules are, you need to have had at least six sessions with your counselor before you’re eligible for a day pass. By this Saturday, you’ll only have had three.”