“That’s great!” For a minute, I wanted to tell her about the talent show, and I felt a pang of unhappiness as I realized it was probably over by now.

“How are you feeling?” My mother’s eyes were on the cupcakes as she waited for my answer.

“Physically, I’m okay. Mentally . . .” I sighed. I couldn’t think of how to explain what I was feeling. Most days, I barely knew myself.

Mrs. Hank came breezing into the kitchen, along with a few other mothers whose names, thankfully, I knew. Holly Harper was Amelia’s mom, and Susan van der Meer belonged with Sadie. “How can we help?”

My mom picked up Mason jars filled with marshmallows and penny candy and carried them into the dining room. Mrs. Hank turned to me with a conspiratorial look on her face. “Listen,” she said, “we promise we won’t tell a soul.” I felt the muscles in my torso clench. Somebody knew. Somebody knew, someone had found out, someone had told, and now all the moms knew exactly what was wrong with me . . . and they wanted details.

“But here’s the thing,” Mrs. Hank continued. “My high-school reunion’s coming up, and Holly’s got an—”

“Anniversary,” said Holly. “And it was Jeff’s big idea to go back to Hawaii. He’s got this picture of me from twenty years ago in a bikini, and then he went online and actually found the goddamn thing on eBay—I should have known he was up to something when he asked what size I wore, and of course I lied, because, seriously, like I’m going to tell him the truth?”

Laughter all around. I laughed, too, and wondered how fast they’d grab their little darlings and dash out of my house if I told them what I’d been lying to my husband about.

“Just tell us,” Carol/Kara whispered. “If it’s a trainer . . . or one of the food-delivery things . . .”

“Oh, guys, really. I wish it was some big secret. But I just haven’t been that hungry lately.”

There was a beat of incredulous silence while the three of them just stared at me. Holly Harper started laughing first, and then the other two joined in.

“Oh! Good one!” said Kara/Carol. She mimed wiping tears from the smooth skin beneath her eyes. “Okay, seriously. Is it a juice fast?”

I opened my mouth to provide another jokey denial, and for a single terrifying instant I was sure that what would tumble from my lips would be the truth, the tale of what had really happened, possibly in the rhyming lyrics of one of the talent-show songs: Vicodin, and lots of them! OxyContin, pots of them! Chewing pills up by the peck . . .. Allison was bound to wreck!

“Allison?” My knees trembled in relief as Janet came into the room, a wrapped gift box in her hands. By the time she crossed the kitchen she’d assessed the situation, setting down her gift and grabbing me in a hug. “How are you?”

“She’s thin,” said Susan van der Meer, in a tone just short of accusatory.

Janet kept one arm around me as she turned to face my interrogators. “Her dad’s been sick,” she said. “Allison and her mom had to move him into assisted living a few weeks ago.”

I saw surprise on their faces, heard sympathetic murmurs. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Susan, and Holly said, “Isn’t it the worst? We went through it last year, after Jeff’s mom had an aneurysm.”

“Excuse me for a minute,” I said. I made myself breathe until the dizziness went away, then led Janet up the stairs and down the hall to my bedroom. She closed the door behind us, then looked me up and down.

“Okay, you look . . .”

“Thin!” I said, and started making some shrill noises that approximated laughter. “I’m thin, can you believe it! What’s my secret? Do you think I should tell them, or would they just fall over dead from the shock?” I sank down on the bed and put my face in my hands. “I went rogue,” I confessed.

“Wait, what?” Janet ducked into my bathroom. I heard drawers and cabinets opening and closing. A minute later, she came out with her hands filled with concealer, brushes, my flat iron, and a comb.

“I don’t actually have a day pass. They told me I couldn’t go. It was some big red-tape nightmare. I was supposed to have a certain number of sessions with my counselor, only they didn’t even assign me a counselor until I’d been there almost a week, and then she left, and they weren’t going to let me leave . . .”

“Okay. Deep breath. You made it. You’re here now. Want some water?”

Downstairs, I could hear the door opening, and my mother, suddenly transformed into the gracious lady of the manor, greeting Ellie’s other grandmother, Doreen. If I’d stayed at Meadowcrest, if I’d gone to the talent show, then to Circle and to Share, the party would have gone off without a hitch. I wasn’t indispensible. I wasn’t even sure Ellie would have missed me.

“We should go downstairs.”

“Here. Wait.” Gently, Janet dabbed a sponge dipped in foundation on my cheeks and chin. She tapped powder onto a brush and swiped lipstick onto my lips, either undoing or redoing Aubrey’s work. “When are you getting out?”

As I started to explain the logistics, there was a knock on the door.

“Allison?” called Dave. “We’re going to get started.”

All through the afternoon, through the games, through the cupcakes and ice cream and the inevitable gluten-free versions that the allergic and intolerant kids’ mothers had sent, I felt like a fake, like this was a show someone else had written, and I’d been assigned the role of wife and mother. And, louder and louder, like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, I could hear a voice whispering, Pills. While I negotiated the rest of the night with Dave, assuring him that I was free until eight o’clock, pleading with him to take me to Han Dynasty for dinner “so I can eat something that tastes like something” before he sent me back, I thought, Pills. Handing out the goody bags, packed with candy necklaces my mom and Ellie had strung and handwritten notes that read “Thank You for Coming to My Party,” I thought, Pills, pills, where am I going to find pills?

The plan, which Dave reluctantly agreed to, was to drive Ellie to Hank’s house for dinner with Hank’s family. My mom would get a break, Dave would take me out for Chinese food, we’d have our talk, and then, depending on how the talk went, either he’d drive me back to Meadowcrest or I’d convince him that I could come home.

By the time Dave, Ellie, and I got to Hank’s house, I could almost taste the familiar, delectable bitterness on my tongue. I got out of the car as soon as it stopped, led Ellie inside, and asked Mrs. Hank—her name, I finally remembered, was not Kara or Carol but Danielle—if I could borrow a tampon. She waved toward her staircase. “Master bathroom. Everything’s in the cabinet under the sink.”

Up in the bathroom, I locked the door, put a tampon in my pocket, then opened the medicine cabinet above the sink. Beside the half-used bottles of antibiotics and Advil and Tylenol PM, there were Percocet, five and ten milligrams, both with refills, and an unopened, unexpired bottle of thirty-milligram OxyContin, prescribed for Hank’s father.

“Mommy!” I heard Ellie yell from downstairs.

“Hang on!” I called back, and began opening the bottles, shaking a few pills into my palms, stashing them in the pockets of my jeans.

“Mommy?” Ellie sounded like she was right outside the bathroom door. For once, she wasn’t yelling.

“Just—” Hang on, I was about to say, when I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My eyes were enormous and frantic. My face was pale, except for two blotches of red high on my cheeks. I looked like a thief, like a junkie, like Brittany B., who’d come to Meadowcrest from jail after she and her boyfriend had robbed the local Rite-Aid . . . and all I could think of, all that I wanted, was for Eloise to go away, to go to Hank’s room or the playroom or the basement or the backyard, anywhere that I could have five minutes and get myself a little peace.

What happens if you get caught? a voice in my head whispered. It seemed like a crazy thought—there had to be dozens of bottles in here, all of them (I’d checked) with refills on the labels. No way would Mrs. Hank miss a few pills, if I selected judiciously. There’d be more than enough to carry me through rehab, if I decided to return, or through my first few days home.

And then what? my mind persisted. Then I’d have to go back to my old rounds, my old sources, days of counting pills, worrying and wondering if I had enough . . . and, if I didn’t, how I’d get more.

“Mommy?” Ellie sounded like she was crying. “I am sorry if I am a bother.”

“What?” I sank down to the floor, my ear pressed against the door, a bottle of Percocet still in my hand.

“If that’s why you went away. Because I am a bother.”

It felt like a knife in my heart. “Oh, El. Oh, honey, no. You’re not a bother to me. I love you! I’ll . . . just give me a minute, I’ll be out in a minute, and we can talk, I’ll explain about everything . . .”

I put the first pill under my tongue and got that first blast of bitterness. Then it hit me. This was it: the moment they talked about in those stupid AA handouts and alluded to with those mealy-mouthed slogans, delivered with an earnestness suggesting they had been freshly minted in that moment. Half-measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. One is too many and a thousand is never enough. It didn’t matter that my turning point didn’t involve turning a trick in the back of a car, or looting my parents’ retirement fund, or sticking a needle in my arm. This was it. My hand in a stranger’s medicine cabinet, my little girl on the other side of a locked door, needing a mother who only wanted her to go away. Congratulations, Allison Rose Weiss. You’ve finally made it all the way down.