DAWN STOOD IN THE CENTER OF HER RING OF—FRIENDS. HER MIND churned. This was real, after all. Not a trip or a dream she would wake from.
Mia reached into the back pocket of her jeans and withdrew a folded square of paper.
“Don’t worry, birthday girl. You’ve got it easier than Ms. Crabb. We’ve written everything down for you.” She stepped forward and handed the paper to Dawn. “Here it is. The new F-List, twenty twenty-two edition. All you need to do is read it aloud. And make sure you look straight at the person in question, shall we say, while you’re reading. You’ll know where to look. Trust me.”
Dawn took the paper from Mia and unfolded it, her fingers trembling. It was crowded with printed type, the font too small for her eyes in the dim basement light.
“Go on!” said Mia.
Dawn squinted at the page.
“You can do it, baby girl,” said Reece.
“It’s too dark,” said Dawn.
“Here, let me help,” said Reece. She reached for a candle burning atop a metal storage shelf and carried it over to Dawn. Dawn heard Twyla suck in a breath of disapproval, and she felt a pang of pity for the sweet older woman, remembering how desperate she’d been yesterday for Mia’s approval, how hard she’d tried to make Celestial Ranch a special place of peace.
Dawn understood now, more than ever, that it was impossible to please Mia.
She’d spent most of her life trying.
Reece angled the light from the candle’s flame toward the paper, casting just enough light for Dawn to discern the words.
“I, Dawn Leigh Sanders, am reading these words at the conclusion of the night celebrating my fiftieth journey around the sun. Over the course of the preceding night, my friends created a unique and intense experience for me”—Dawn’s sweat-slicked hands began to shake—“designed to help me learn and grow, so that I may live the third act of my life with greater integrity and awareness. Now that I’ve successfully completed the special challenges of my birthday party, I would like to apologize to each of my guests, to my former fellow members”—her mouth had gone dry, and she paused to swallow—“of the Nurtury Center for Child Development and crr-cree—”
“Speak up, Dawnie!” shouted Mia. “We can’t hear you!”
“—creators of the Project for Vaccine Choice, or simply the Project.”
She stopped, unable to read any more. “Mia, why? What is this? I just want to see my daughter and go home.”
“No one cares what you want, Dawn. That’s not the point of this exercise.”
Reece spoke. “Just keep going, baby girl. You’re almost there. Can someone give her water?”
Joanie leaned forward and handed Dawn a plastic bottle. Dawn uncapped it and took a long drink, almost choking. She’d had no idea how thirsty she was.
“Proceed,” commanded Mia.
“And that they grant me forgiveness for the following transgressions. One. To Summer Hemsworth and Joanie Ahn—”
“Look at them,” Mia commanded.
Dawn looked at Summer and Joanie, nestled together on the floor. They stared back at her, Summer’s eyes blazing, Joanie’s rimmed with tears.
Dawn read on. “I apologize for the financial hardship I caused you, directly and indirectly, and for my failure to mention it over the course of the past eleven years.” She looked up. “What?”
“Unbelievable,” said Summer. “It’s like she still has no idea.”
“So, explain it to her,” said Reece.
Joanie spoke. “Ninety-five thousand dollars.”
“Ninety-seven thousand dollars,” Summer corrected. “That’s what it cost us after you turned us in to the feds. Fines, legal fees, and penalties after our house went into foreclosure.”
“We had to move in with my parents,” said Joanie. “It was humiliating. Summer and me and the girls in one room for eight months. My mom yelled at them constantly, especially Maisie. You know how my mom doesn’t believe in special needs; well, Maisie was traumatized.”
“But, I thought—”
“You didn’t think,” said Summer. “All you wanted was to cover your own ass. Yours, and your precious Quinny-bee. You didn’t even call to—”
“That’s enough, Summer,” Mia snapped. “This isn’t therapy.”
“It’s therapeutic, though,” grumbled Summer.
“Keep going, Dawn,” said Mia.
“To Graham Caldwell, I apologize for the emotional, physical, and”—her cheeks flamed—“s-sexual manipulations I’ve initiated over the years, including during the time of the Project, when such behaviors were devastating to you and your family. I acknowledge that I have hurt you immeasurably over the years, and disregarded your feelings to satisfy my own”—she could hardly finish the sentence—“wh-whims and needs.”
Dawn looked at Graham. He was crying.
“Whoa, bro,” Jax said.
Reece shushed him.
“Sorry, Mama Reece,” Jax said snarkily.
“It’s true,” Graham whispered, his voice breaking. “You hurt me, Dawn. So many times.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered back. Why couldn’t he have told her all of this last night? Why tell her now in this twisted theatrical production?
“Onward!” said Mia.
Dawn found her place on the page. “To Mia Meadows, I apologize for making choices that resulted not only in your incarceration, but in a lengthy separation from your young son and severe damage to your career and finances.”
With great effort, Dawn lifted her face from the page to meet Mia’s wolf-blue eyes. She wondered if her old friend would weep, like the others, but Mia only laughed. “Well, that sure was good to hear! Too bad you’re about a dozen years late, Dawnie. Was that really so hard to say? Keep up the good work, you’re almost there.”
Dawn forced air into her lungs and started the final paragraph. It was the longest on the page.
“And finally, to Reece Mayall—”
The sobs broke through as soon as she said her dear friend’s name.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll keep going. I apologize for betraying your trust and destroying your career and reputation. I apologize for unjustly blaming you for executing the mission of the Project, when in fact, I was as critically involved as anyone. I acknowledge that, in doing so, I bear responsibility for damaging your mental health to such a degree that—”
Dawn’s eyes swam with tears. She turned to Reece, blinking. “I can’t . . . go on.”
“You have to,” whispered Reece.
“But it’s not true. What’s written here—it’s a lie.”
“But honey, it’s not.” Reece looked at her with the bottomless compassion Dawn had relied on in the toughest moments of her life since Quinn was born. “It’s all true. You just don’t want to see it. You never have. That’s how you operate, love. I thought you’d gotten better, I really did. I was ready to forgive you, without all this hassle. But then, you wrote me the letter.”
“Letter? Which letter? I love our letters! They’re the only things that’ve kept me connected to you all this time.”
“I loved them too. But then, you sent me the one about your salon. Your Covid speakeasy, or whatever you called it. How you gave women access to Botox during the pandemic.”
“I was doing what I had to! I was desperate, going broke. And Craig was divorc—”
“I know. It was a hard time. But did you truly believe your illegal vanity business getting busted was the same as what happened to me with the Project? That getting a fine and your license to wax people’s eyebrows suspended was comparable to my entire life getting torn down? Because you said that, in your letter. I understand what you went through. That’s what you wrote. Word for word. Remember?”
“I—I guess. But I was just trying to—”
“To what?” said Reece. Slowly, she lifted her hand and closed it into a fist. Then she raised the candle in her other hand so the light shone on her bare wrist. “To let me know that you were suffering just like this?”
In the candlelight, Dawn saw the ropy crisscrossing of scars that ran vertically from the heel of Reece’s palm to the inside of her elbow.
“Did you try to kill yourself, Dawnie? When you couldn’t fix the rich ladies’ wrinkles anymore? Did it make you do this, like I did after I couldn’t help people’s children anymore, because my therapy license was permanently revoked, and I became a national laughingstock? Was it apples to apples, Dawn, what you did to my life and what that pesky pandemic did to your work as an esthetician?”
“But I thought—I thought you were already depressed,” said Dawn. “That you were struggling before the Project. That you’d founded the Nurtury not only to help parents with the mental health of their children, but to help yourself too.”
“Maybe so,” said Reece, her face lit by a nimbus of candlelight. “But, baby girl, I only tried to kill myself because of—”
“Ouch! Goddammit!”
Jax released Twyla, then doubled over. “She bit me!” he screamed. “That fucking crazy psychic bitch!” He gripped his calf with both hands. “I mean, Debbie! Debbie fucking bit me!”
Sibyl leaped to her feet and darted across the room to Twyla, who had crouched behind a metal shelving unit, groping for something beneath it.
When Twyla rose to her feet, she was holding a long gun, its butt resting on her shoulder, muzzle pointing straight at Jax.
Dawn heard two clicks and a thump.
“Jesus Christ,” said Graham.
“Seriously?” said Mia.
“Hands in the air, everybody,” said Twyla. “No one moves until I know what you’ve done with my husband and my goats. And even if you dodge my bullet, well, I closed the door to this basement, and it’s rather heavy to open in a rush. Somebody better tell me, right this gosh-darn minute, or I’ll pull the trigger. I’m old, but shooting a rifle’s like riding a bike. Also, I’m old, so I don’t have much to lose.”
No one spoke.
She may be holding a loaded gun, Dawn thought, I am one hundred percent Team Twyla.
“Excuse me, Twyla,” Dawn said. “My daughter is all alone in—”
“I don’t want to hear anything about anything but the location of my husband. And my goats.”
“Those goats stink,” Mia said.
“You think I’m joking?” Twyla pointed the gun at Mia. “Do you think this is all one big game, Ms. Meadows? Is this just more play-acting to you, you selfish bi—”
“I’m bleeding!” Jax screamed. “I’m really bleeding.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Twyla.
Sibyl shrugged. “Guess my teeth are sharp.”
“It hurts!” Jax howled, and began hopping around on one foot, lurching forward.
He lost his balance and tumbled, colliding with Reece. The candle she’d been holding flew out of her hand and landed in a crate of papers beside the tower of wicker furniture.
The paper caught fire, then the wicker pile burst into flames.