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Bayer that commands it. The way she sits with her ankles crossed. Her size—she’s short, but those glasses make her look like a female Einstein. The way she looks at them with her dark blue eyes and says “Sit down and shut up” without saying a word. And, oh yes, Dr. Bayer also holds the key to their freedom, to their reputations, to their employment, to present and future personal relationships, to the exit door at the very end of the path to forgiveness.
    Now come the rules. Well, most of the rules. Dr. Bayer will save the bombshells for the end, when she can run for cover. She begins to recite. No smoking. No drinking. Come to class sober. No physical altercations. Just one of those and you are out the door and inside a squad car. Be discreet about what happens here. Be respectful. And most important is the last rule.
    “You must try,” Olivia says very slowly. “I must see progress and acknowledgment of what you have done. Do you understand?”
    The women nod their heads up and down, and in this quick pause Dr. Bayer takes a discerning look at each of them. Jane had the guts to wear heels to the meeting. She is, without question, the red dot. The chair arranger, Grace, is the blue dot. Olivia is glad that they all look a little nervous. That’s at least something.
    She now hesitates. She hasn’t rehearsed everything. She often likes to wait and now, sitting in front of these women, she is not sure if she should go easy or hard. In the thirty-three years that she has been a practicing clinical psychologist, Dr. Bayer has never had a group like this, or three clients who, without knowing it, have already pushed her to the wall. And she has never done what she is about to do with these three women.
    “It’s not just a sign of the times,” she told her supervisor when they first discussed the three cases. “These women have issues, obviously, or this wouldn’t have happened. I want to try something.”
    “My gut tells me to throw them in jail, let them learn a lesson,” her supervisor fired back. “This is not a psychology lab, Livie. These women are in serious trouble.”
    “I know that,” Olivia responded. “But look at the damn system we’ve floated in all these years. We treat every offender the exact same way. It doesn’t always work. Not by a long shot. I know who these women are. I know how hard this is going to be. I know the rules society has written for the ways women are supposed to handle anger. You have to let me try. After all this time, I deserve it.”
    “I’ll make you a deal,” he finally said, leaning across his old metal desk. “I will let you have this if you promise you will seriously, and I mean seriously, consider the retirement offer. Unless you screw this up, you’ll be getting the top layer of benefits. It’s past time, Livie. You owe it to yourself and to you-know-who.”
    That conversation had landed her in this room with the blue, red, and green dots, and a game plan that would startle every professor she had ever had. As she watches the dots sit with their arms crossed in the classic “I am not going to cooperate” mode, she decides to open up both barrels. It’s absolutely freeing to be totally in charge for the first time in her professional career.
    “All right,” she starts, gaining confidence. “This is not a book club. It is not an after-work social meeting. This is serious business, and all three of you need help.”
    Jane is biting her lip. Instead of acknowledging that she’s frightened, that her ribbon of fear is stretching yet again, she forces herself to keep from shouting “ Tell me something I don’t know !” and she slips off her left shoe and dangles it on the end of her big toe.
    Olivia, of course, catches the passive-aggressive move and knows that she has to work fast with Jane. If ever a woman was dressed in emotional camouflage, it’s this one.
    “Jane, please tell us why you’re here.”
    “I received a piece of paper in the mail