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women inside freeze in place.
    They turn only after they hear her clogs hit the rough wooden threshold, and see a woman in her mid to late sixties with salt-and-pepper hair, tiny dark eyes, and dressed in swaying cotton from head to toe. The half-spectacles resting on her nose look as if they have been there since the beginning of time and if Jane had the courage to speak out loud she would say, “She’s an old hippie, for God’s sake.”
    “Hello, ladies,” Olivia says quietly, looking from face to face. “I’m Dr. Bayer. Thank you for coming.”
    “Did we have a choice?” Kit asks and then, as always, realizes she should have simply said hello.
    Dr. Bayer ignores the comment but knows immediately that Kit is the green dot. “Thank you for setting up the chairs. Let’s take a seat and settle in.”
    Olivia has thought long and hard about what to say to these women. All the ideas she has never been allowed to try as a therapist during her long career are moments away from being put into practice. Damn tradition and damn protocols. Damn the way it’s always been done and damn the parts of the system that too often fail people, because people are not all made from cookie cutters.
    Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that her supervisor has thrown up his hands and told her that if she fails it will all be on her. No one will back her up. No one will rise up and agree with what must surely be an outlandish way to counsel angry women. She may lose her pension, professional respect, any chance at post-retirement work. “Everything, and I mean everything, is on the line,” Olivia was told when she begged for this chance. “There’s a reason we’ve always done group therapy and have a set way to treat angry people,” he went on. “Talking, writing down what causes the anger, opening up in a group setting. And you think you have better ideas?”
    Olivia knows that three women like these, “nontypical offenders,” could have been thrown into the mix with everyone else. The moment Dr. Bayer saw their files she knew that could not happen and she forged what she hopes will be enough courage to help put their lives back on course. She knows that if she can’t, these three women will be balancing on a cliff much steeper than the one they are already on. They must pass this class or they will end up serving jail time. Their jobs will be affected. Their names will go into a registry. No one will ever look at them the same again. Instead of their lives being changed in the positive ways Olivia believes they can be changed, they will be ruined.
    “Have you all met?”
    Three heads shake.
    “All right. Please, tell us your names. First names are fine. But they should be your real names. I know there is not a Fifi or a Brittney here.”
    “Good one,” Kit says, laughing. “I’m Kit.”
    “Kit?” Olivia looks hard at Kit. “Please, I don’t have a file for a Kit.”
    “Oh, shit,” Kit says without thinking. “Sorry about that shit. You need my legal name?”
    “Just for starters. I need to know the right person is here. After that, we can call you Kit.”
    Kit turns red, which is something to behold, considering her skin is a lovely Mediterranean olive. She closes her eyes; she’s obviously trying very hard not to swear again, or possibly to throw her chair through the window.
    “Agnes,” she manages to say without opening her mouth.
    “Seriously, Agnes?” Jane has never met anyone named Agnes. Who would name a baby girl Agnes? Thankfully, she manages not to laugh.
    Before Kit can respond, Olivia quickly, and with her voice a few octaves higher and louder, asks Jane for her name, and then Grace.
    Then she asks each of them for the slip of paper with their court orders, which she must sign, and which they must then photocopy and send back to the courthouse. She’s not surprised that all three papers look as if they’ve been through shredders.
    The women are sitting like statues. There’s something about Dr.