Page 35 of The Flame

“You’re right,” I conceded. It would be childish to expect any version of our world to be perfect, and I was no longer a child.

I glanced at the time on my wristwatch and groaned. “I really have to go.”

Mom wrapped me in a hug. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said, aware of all the chances I’d missed to tell her just how much I did.

I pulled myself together on the long cycle to the rehab center. I had to get my head into the game. Now that we’d settled on a definitive plan, I wanted to inspect each part and plug any holes.

As we did each morning, Belinda and I shared a coffee in the staff lounge and then checked in with Janice. This morning, we received a new set of patient cases. Yellow binders for Ward Y. The serious and serial offenders. Or the way I saw it, the womenwho’d been seriously and serially failed. Some were broken by the system and the rehab program. Some of them still had a spark in their eyes.

One woman confounded me.

Lauren Allbright was twenty-six years old. She had a pleasant face, wore a serene expression and smiled gently. Her husband was a research scientist in the Quantum Zone and she had two children, boys aged five and three.

We were seated in a small communal lounge in Ward Y. She perched on one end of a two-seater couch and I pulled up a hardback chair right in front of her, her file open on my lap. I’d already read both her admissions forms. This was her second stint in rehab.

“It says here…” I glanced between her and the top admission form. “The first time, you were apprehended at the Blue Fish at 9 pm. You walked in and went right up to the bar counter.”

It was unthinkable for a woman to enter the rowdy bar, let alone on her own and after the curfew hour.

The look in her eye turned prickly. “I was thirsty.”

“I’m not judging you,” I assured her.

I really wasn’t. I was thinking of Beth, the woman I’d tried to help not too long ago. Her abusive husband had made her stand outside the Blue Fish, in the bitter cold and rain, while he drank inside. I needed to determine if Lauren’s home situation had somehow forced her reckless behavior.

“Were you looking for your husband?” I asked, scribbling down notes as we spoke.

“I was looking for a gin and tonic.”

I blinked. “But surely you knew the bartender wouldn’t serve you.”

She smiled and shrugged, the prickliness gone. “You can’t blame a woman for trying.”

Was she just defiant by nature? I could totally appreciate that. “So, your husband wasn’t inside the Blue Fish?”

“Jackson was home with the kids.”

“Did he know you’d left the house?”

“Possibly.” She shrugged again. “The first few times I broke curfew, he came after me and brought me home. By then, he’d probably given up.”

“He didn’t send the Guard after you?”

“Jackson?” Her brow creased. “He never did before. That’s why I had to go into the bar…to make sure.”

To make sure of what? “Is there anything you’d like to share with me about your home life? Is Jackson a good man?”

“He tries his best.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

Her eyes widened. “Why would I be afraid of my husband?”

“I don’t know,” I said gently. “You tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

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