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staring at that strip of light coming from out from under the bathroom door. Had she really thought she’d fool herself with that tactic? “Awful. Just awful. I’m just glad her father wasn’t there. But I don’t want to talk about it. I already can’t sleep. I just wanted to see how the group went.”
    “Ah. Well. Nobody found hair in May’s cheesecake bites. Which of course made everyone worry that they’d gone and swallowed it. I swear we all looked like a bunch of cats about to urp on the carpet. I saved you one, by the way. Maybe yours is the lucky one. Sort of like a king cake. I put it in your fridge.”
    “Thanks. I’m afraid I’m not much in the cheesecake mood right now, though.”
    “Are you kidding? You would not believe the amount of restraint it took for me not to inhale it. Especially once Mitzi got rolling with her ‘die-hard’ this and her ‘bleeding-heart liberal’ that. Someone needs to tell her those phrases are oh-so-1990s. And then Dorothy got a phone call from Elan, and it seems one of her boys apparently set a recycling bin on fire at the elementary school, so we decided to just go ahead and call it a day. Seemed like the right thing to do at that point. You are eating this cake.”
    “That’s it? You didn’t talk about our next book at all?”
    “Nope. Just didn’t feel right without you. We thought we might meet again in two Tuesdays. Kind of an abbreviated do-over meeting. What do you think? We can do it here if you’re not up for it. The girls are worried, of course. About you, and about Laura.”
    Jean made some noncommittal noises. Loretta yawned, and soon Jean was sure that if she didn’t get up and turn off the bathroom light, she would be sick. She cut the conversation short, promising to call the next day to let her know how long she’d be in St. Louis, and hung up, practically diving for the bathroom switch and twisting up the knob on the air conditioner so far it rumbled as if it were going to launch itself into the parking lot. The back of her neck was sweaty. But she was tired. So tired. Tired as though she hadn’t slept in years. Surely she would sleep now.
    But she never did. She flopped around on the bed so much she had to stand up and untwist her pajamas three times. She was too hot. She was too cold. She was hungry. She was weary, so very weary, and scared and wracked with guilt over all the times that Laura wanted or needed something from her and didn’t get it. All the times she’d made a mistake as a mother, the memories of each and every one vivid in her mind. Why did mothers do that? she wondered. Why did they carry their guilt around like a banner?
    Jean sorely wished she could offer a hug or a kiss and make Laura all better now. But mostly she longed for just one more girls-only vacation outing with her daughter.
    •   •   •
    By the time Jean arrived at the hospital in the morning, her head so foggy with sleep deprivation she worried that she might nod off in the car on the drive from the hospital to the rehab center, the nurses had long since awakened Laura. Her wrist was set in a cast, and she was wearing her work clothes from the day before. Jean noticed grass stains pressed into the elbows of her tan blazer and some other unidentifiable smudges across the front of her blouse, which also appeared to be missing the top button. Laura hadn’t showered, and the places where her cheeks met the undersides of her eyes were deep and bruised-looking. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, but it looked greasy and stiff. She saw Jean and let out a puff of air.
    “Don’t tell me Curt called you.”
    Jean stepped into the room, careful not to get in the way of the nurse who was removing Laura’s IV. “He did,” she said.
    Again with the puff of air, followed by a wince as the nurse pulled out the needle. “Of course he did,” she said. “He shouldn’t have. It was unnecessary.”
    Jean wasn’t sure what Laura meant by that. He