It took me a week to call Matilda. A week of the same old thing, of walking to work and of walking home, of not shaving my legs, of yanking my hair into a ponytail, of feeding Dixie, of watering the plants, of ordering takeout, of drying dishes, of sleeping, and then of waking and doing it all over again. It was a week of looking out over Marigny at dusk from my third-story window, realizing that loneliness had blotted out any other feeling. It had become to me like water to a fish.

If I had to describe what propelled me to call Matilda, I guess I could say it felt as if my body was having none of this anymore. Even as my mind was reeling with the idea of asking for help, my body forced me to pick up the kitchen phone at the Café and dial.

“Hello, Matilda? This is Cassie Robichaud, from Café Rose?”

Five Years pricked up its ears.

She didn’t seem at all surprised to hear from me. We had a brief conversation about work and the weather, and then I made an appointment for the next afternoon at her office in the Lower Garden District, on Third, near Coliseum.

“It’s the small white coach house next to the big mansion on the corner,” she said, as though I’d know exactly where that was. In fact I always avoided the tourist spots, crowds, people in general, but I said I’d have no trouble finding it. “There’s a buzzer at the gate. Give yourself a couple of hours. The first consultation’s always the longest.”

Dell entered the kitchen as I tore the address off the back of the paper menu on which I wrote it. She peered sternly over her reading glasses at me.

“What?” I barked.

What kind of help was this Matilda woman going to offer? I had no idea, but if it was the kind that would end with an ardent man sitting across from me at a table, it was the kind of help I welcomed. Still, I worried. Cassie, you don’t know who this woman is. You’re okay on your own. You don’t need anyone. You’re fine. That was my mind talking, but my body told it to shut up. And that was the end of that.

The day of our meeting I left my shift early, instead of waiting for Tracina or Will. As soon as the dining room died, I yelled goodbye to Dell and headed home to shower. From the back of the closet, I pulled out the white sundress I had bought for my thirtieth birthday. Scott had stood me up that night, and I hadn’t worn it since. Five years in the South had darkened my skin and four years of waitressing had toned my arms, so I was shocked to see that it actually looked better on me now. Standing in front of the full-length mirror, I kept a hand over my nervous stomach. Why was I nauseous? Because I knew I was letting something into my life, some element of excitement, maybe even danger? I tried to recall those steps from the journal, Surrender, Generosity, Fearlessness, Courage. I couldn’t remember them all, but pondering them this last week had created such an incredible pull, straight from the gut, that making that phone call had been more a compulsion than a decision.

The Magazine Street bus was packed with tourists and cleaning ladies heading to the Garden District. I got off at Third, stopping in front of a bar called Tracey’s. I contemplated putting back a couple of shots to steel my nerves. Scott and I had done the Garden District tour when we first moved here, gawking at the colorful mansions, the pink Greek Revivals, the ones with Italianate architecture, the wrought-iron gates and the obvious money oozing everywhere. New Orleans was a study in contrasts. Rich neighborhoods next to poor ones, the ugly next to the beautiful. It frustrated Scott, but I liked that about this city. It was all extremes.

I headed north. At Camp Street, I got confused. Had I gone too far in the wrong direction? I stopped abruptly, causing a small pileup.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, to an alarmed young woman behind me holding the hands of a child and a dirty-faced toddler. I continued up Third, staying closer to the houses to let a group of tourists pass me.

Turn around, Cassie, and go home. You don’t need help.

But I do! One meeting. One, maybe two hours with Matilda. What could it possibly hurt?

Cassie, what if they make you do awful things? Things you don’t want to do?

That’s ridiculous. That’s not going to happen.

How do you know?

Because Matilda was kind to me. She peered into my loneliness and didn’t laugh at it. She made me feel like it was a temporary condition, perhaps even curable.

If you’re so lonely, why don’t you just go to bars like everyone else?

Because I’m afraid.

Afraid? And this is less scary?

“Yes, frankly it is!” I mumbled.

“Cassie? Is that you?” I turned around. It was Matilda on the sidewalk behind me, a line of concern across her brow. She was carrying a plastic bag in one hand and a clutch of gladiolas in the other. “Are you all right? Did you have trouble finding the place?”

I was absently clutching a wrought-iron gate, using it either to hold me up or to hold me in place.

“Oh my goodness. Hi. Yes. No. I guess I’m a little early. I thought I’d sit for a bit.”

“You’re right on time, actually. Come, let’s go in and I’ll get you something cold to drink. It’s a hot one.”

I had no choice now. I couldn’t turn back. All I had to do was follow this woman through the gate, into which she was now punching an elaborate security code. I glanced down Third and watched Five Years slink off without looking back at me.

I followed Matilda through a lush courtyard with overgrown vines and trees. My mind was still holding on to my mother’s legs like a scared toddler. We were heading for the red door of a quaint, white coach house to the left of a massive mansion that had been barely visible from the street. A wave of dizziness rolled over me.

“Stop. Wait. I don’t know if I can do this, Matilda.”

“Do what, Cassie?” She turned to face me, the red flowers framing her face, setting off her red hair.

“This, whatever this is.”

She laughed. “Why don’t you find out what this is and then make up your mind—how about that?”

I stood still, my palms soaked in sweat. I resisted wiping them on my dress.

“You can say no, Cassie. I’m only offering. Ready?” She seemed bemused more than impatient.

“Yes,” I said, and I was. Enough equivocating. I shut off my reluctant mind, or rather, I opened it.

Matilda led. I followed. My eyes were drawn back to the ivy-covered mansion and its riotous garden. April in New Orleans meant vines and flowers in full bloom. Magnolia trees blossomed so quickly it was like they had thrown on ornate ’50s bathing caps overnight. I had never seen a garden this lush, green and vivid.

“Who lives there?” I asked.

“That’s the Mansion. Only members are allowed inside.”

I counted a dozen dormers, ornate ironwork suspended over the windows like lace bangs. The turret was topped with a white crown. Though it was all white, it had an eerie feel, like it was haunted, but perhaps by very attractive ghosts.

After we reached the coach house and Matilda entered yet another security code, we passed through a big red door and were inside. I was hit by a blast of air-conditioning. If the exterior was nondescript and blocky, the coach house interior was a study in mid-century minimalism. The windows were small, but the walls high and white. On them hung several stunning floor-to-ceiling paintings of vivid reds and pinks, dotted with yellows and blues. Tea candles flickered on the windowsills, giving the place the atmosphere of an expensive spa. I relaxed my shoulders, which had been hunched up to my ears. Nothing bad could happen in a place like this, I thought. It was so pristine. At the end of the room stood a set of doors that must have been ten feet tall. A young woman with a sharp black bob and black thick-rimmed glasses stood up from her desk and greeted Matilda.

“The Committee will be here shortly,” she said, rushing around the desk to grab the groceries and flowers from Matilda’s hands.

“Thanks, Danica. Danica, this is Cassie.”

Committee? Was I interrupting a meeting? I felt my heart fall into my stomach.

“So nice to finally meet you,” Danica said. Matilda gave her a stern look.

What did she mean by finally?

Danica hit a button below her desk and a door opened behind her, exposing a small brightly lit room lined in walnut, with a round plush pink rug in the center.

“My office,” Matilda said. “Come in.”

It was a cozy space, facing a lush courtyard, with a glimpse of the street just visible beyond the gate. From her office window I could also see the side door of the imposing Mansion next door, a maid in uniform sweeping the steps. I took a seat in a wide black armchair, the kind that makes you feel like you’re being cradled in King Kong’s palm.

“Do you know why you’re here, Cassie?” Matilda asked.

“No, I don’t. Yes. No, sorry. I don’t know.” I wanted to cry.

Matilda took a seat behind her desk, rested her chin in her hands and waited for me to finish. The silence was painful.

“You’re here because you read something in Pauline’s journal that compelled you to get in touch with me, is that right?”

“I think so. Yes,” I said. I looked around the room for another door, one that could lead me to the courtyard and away from this place.

“What is it that you think compelled you?”

“It wasn’t just the book,” I blurted out. Through the window I noticed a couple of women entering the courtyard gate.

“What was it, then?”

I thought of my couple, their arms entwined. I thought of the notebook, of Pauline backing towards the bed, and the man—

“It was Pauline, the way she is with men. With her boyfriend. I’ve never been like that with anyone, not even my husband. And no one has ever been like that with me. She seems so … free.”

“And you want that?”

“I do. I think. Is that something you work on?”

“That’s the only thing we work on,” she said. “Now, why don’t we start with you. Tell me a little bit about yourself.”

I don’t know why it all felt so easy, but my story poured from my mouth. I told Matilda about growing up in Ann Arbor. How my mother died when I was young, and how my dad, an industrial fence contractor, was rarely around, and when he was, he was by turns sour or overly affectionate, especially when he was drunk. I grew up cautious and alert to how the weather in a room could change. My sister, Lila, left home as soon as she could and moved to New York. We barely spoke now.

Then I told Matilda about Scott, sweet Scott and sorrowful Scott, the Scott who slow-danced with me to country music in our kitchen and the Scott who hit me twice and never stopped begging forgiveness I couldn’t give. I told her how our marriage deteriorated as his drinking escalated. I told her how his death hadn’t liberated me but rather had relegated me to a quiet middle ground, a safe corral of my own making. I had no idea how badly I needed to talk to another woman, how isolated I’d become, until I started opening up to Matilda.

Then, I said it. It just kind of spilled out: the fact that it had been years since I’d had sex.

“How many years?”

“Five. Almost six, I guess.”

“It’s not uncommon. Grief, anger, resentment play awful tricks on the body.”

“How do you know? Are you a sex therapist?”

“Sort of,” she said. “What we do here, Cassie, is we help women get back in touch with their sexual side. And in so doing, they get back in touch with the most powerful part of themselves. One Step at a time. Does that interest you?”

“I guess. Sure,” I said, as squeamish as the time I had to tell my dad I had started my period. With no woman in the house growing up, except for my dad’s listless girlfriend, I’d never actually spoken about sex out loud with anyone.

“Will I have to do anything … weird?”

Matilda laughed.

“No. Nothing weird, Cassie, unless that’s your thing.”

I laughed then, too, the uncomfortable laugh of someone past the point of no return.

“But what do I do? How does this work?”

“You don’t really have to do anything but say yes to the Committee,” she said, glancing at her watch, “which, my goodness, is assembling as we speak.”

“The Committee?” Oh my God, what had I done? It was like I’d fallen down a deep hole.

Matilda must have sensed my panic. She poured me a glass of water from the jug on her desk.

“Here, Cassie, take a drink, and please try to relax. This is a good thing. A marvelous thing, trust me. The Committee is simply a group of women, kind women, many of them just like you, women who want to help. They recruit participants and design the fantasies. The Committee makes your fantasies happen.”

“My fantasies? What if I don’t have any?”

“Oh, you do. You just don’t know it yet. And don’t worry. You will never have to do anything you don’t want to do, nor will you ever be with anyone you don’t want to be with. S.E.C.R.E.T.’s motto is: No judgments. No limits. No shame.”

The water glass shook in my hand. I took a big gulp and choked.

“S.E.C.R.E.T.?”

“Yes, that’s what our group is called. Each letter stands for something. But our whole reason for being is liberation through complete submission to your sexual fantasies.”

I stared into the middle distance, trying to shake the image of Pauline with two men …

“Is this what Pauline did?” I blurted out.

“Yes. Pauline completed all ten steps of S.E.C.R.E.T., and now is living in the world, fully, sexually alive.”

“Ten?”

“Well, technically there are nine fantasies. The tenth Step is a decision. You can either stay in S.E.C.R.E.T. for one year, recruiting other women like you, training fantasy participants, or helping other members facilitate fantasies. Or you can decide to bring your sexual knowledge into your own world, perhaps into a loving relationship.”

Over Matilda’s right shoulder through the courtyard window, I could see more women of various ages, colors and sizes filing by twos and threes through the gate. I could hear them entering the lobby, laughing and chatting.

“Is that the Committee?”

“Yes. Shall we join them?”

“Wait. This is all moving a little too fast. I need to ask: if I say yes, what exactly happens then?”

“Everything you want. Nothing you don’t,” she replied. “Yes or no, Cassie. It really is that simple.”

My body was all in, but my mind finally freed itself from its temporary restraints and unleashed its doubts.

“But I don’t even know you! I don’t know who you are, who those women are. And I’m supposed to sit here and tell you my deepest, most private sex fantasies? And I don’t even know that I have any, let alone nine, since I’ve only ever slept with one man, my whole life, ever. So how can I say yes or no to any of this?”

Matilda remained placid through my little rant, the way a good mother will stay present during a toddler’s tantrum. Nothing I said could turn my body around and take it home now, and I knew it. So did she. My poor mind was losing this fight.

“Yes or no, Cassie,” Matilda said again.

I looked around the room, at the bookshelf behind me, the antique windows facing the courtyard, the wall of hedges, then back to Matilda’s kind face. I needed to be touched. I needed to let a man loose on my body before it died a slow and lonely death. This felt like something that had to be done to me. With me.

“Yes.”

She gently clapped her hands once.

“I’m so glad. Oh, and it’s supposed to be fun, Cassie. It will be fun!”

With that, Matilda removed a small booklet from her desk drawer and slid it in front of me. It had the same burgundy cover as Pauline’s journal, only it was longer and thinner, like a checkbook.

“I am going to leave you alone so you can fill out this brief questionnaire. It will give us a sense of what you’re looking for, of what you … like. And where you’re at. You will write down specific fantasies later. But this is a start. Take fifteen minutes. Just be honest. I’ll come get you when you’re done. The Committee is assembling. Tea? Coffee?”

“Tea would be nice,” I said, feeling very tired.

“Cassie, fear is the only thing that stands between you and your real life. Remember that.”

After she left, I was so jittery that I couldn’t even look at the booklet. I got up and walked over to a bookshelf at the back of the office. What I thought was a set of encyclopedias turned out to be bound copies of The Complete Kama Sutra, The Joy of Sex, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, My Secret Garden, The Happy Hooker, Fanny Hill, and the Story of O, some of the books I used to find at the homes where I babysat when I was a teenager, books I’d scan and that would leave me confused as I was driven home by the parents late at night. They were bound in the same burgundy leather as the booklet and journal, the titles embossed in gold. I ran a finger across them, took a deep breath, and then went back to my seat.

I sat down and opened the booklet.

What you have in your hands is completely confidential. Your answers are for you and for the Committee only. No one else will see your responses. For S.E.C.R.E.T. to help you, we must know more about you. Be thorough, be honest, be fearless. Please begin:

What followed was a list of questions, with space between each for the answers. The questions made me dizzy with their specificity. Just as I tested the pen, there was a soft knock at the door.

“Come in?”

Danica’s black bob peered around the door. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Matilda said you wanted some tea?”

“Oh, thanks.”

She entered and gently placed a silver tea set in front of me.

“Danica, have you done this? This thing?”

She smiled a big smile.

“Nope. See?” she said, holding up her bare wrist. “No bracelet for me. That’s how you know. Matilda says I may never need to join if I play my cards right from the start with my boyfriend. Plus, you have to be, like, old—over thirty. But I think it’s really cool,” she added, every inch the twenty-one-or-two-year-old she probably was. “Just answer honestly, Cassie. Everything after that will be easy. That’s what Matilda always says.”

Then she turned and walked out, closing the door behind her and leaving me alone again with the questionnaire and my racing mind. You can do this, Cassie. And so I began.

1. How many lovers have you had? Who is your ideal lover physically? Please specify height, weight, hair color, penis size and any other physical preferences.

2. Can you reach orgasm through vaginal sex?

3. Do you enjoy oral sex (getting)? Do you enjoy oral sex (giving)? Explain.

4. How often do you masturbate? Preferred method?

5. Have you ever had a one-night stand?

6. Do you tend to make the first move when you are attracted to someone?

7. Have you had sex with a woman, or with more than one partner at the same time? Explain.

8. Have you had anal sex? Did you enjoy it? If not, why not?

9. What type of birth control do you use?

10. What do you consider your personal erogenous zones?

11. What are your thoughts on pornography?

And on and on and on. Do you enjoy sex on your period? Dirty talk? S&M? Bondage? Lights on or off? … This was what I had been most afraid of: feeling over my head. It was like those awful dreams of surprise quizzes that I was plagued by after I left university. I had had exactly one sex partner. I had no idea about penis preference, and anal sex was an exotic, remote idea, up there with tattooing my face and shoplifting. But I had to answer honestly. What’s the worst thing that could happen? That they would discover my complete sexual ineptitude and usher me to the door? Thinking about that made the rest of the exercise seem ludicrously fun. After all, what did I have to lose? After all, wasn’t I here because of my sexual inexperience?

I started with the simplest question, the first one, which was easy enough—One. I have had one lover. Scott. One. And only one. As for my physical type, I thought of all the movie stars and musicians that I found attractive and surprised myself by filling the entire space with names and ideals. Then I moved on to the next question: vaginal orgasms? I skipped it. I had no idea. The one about erogenous zones almost had me scanning the bookshelf for a dictionary. I couldn’t answer that. Nor the next one, nor the one about being with women. I answered the rest as best I could. Finally I turned to the last page in the booklet, where there was a blank space for me to add any other thoughts.

I am trying hard to answer these questions, but I have only had sex with my husband. We mostly did it missionary style. Maybe two times a week when we first got married. After that, maybe once a month. The light was often off. Sometimes I had an orgasm … I think. I’m not sure; maybe I was faking. Scott never went down on me. I have … touched myself now and again. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, though. Scott always wanted me to put him in my mouth. I did it, for a while, but I couldn’t do that again after he hit me. I couldn’t do anything with him after he hit me. He died almost four years ago. It has been longer than that since I last had sex. I am sorry, but I can’t finish this test, even though I’m trying my best.

I put down my pen and closed the booklet. Even writing what I had made me feel a little unburdened.

I didn’t hear Matilda slip back into the room.

“How did you do?” she asked as she returned to her desk and sat down.

“Not very well, I’m afraid.”

She picked up the booklet. I had the strongest urge to rip it from her hands and hold it to my chest.

“You know, it’s not the kind of test you can fail,” she said, a sad smile crossing her face as she quickly scanned my answers. “All right, then. Cassie, come with me. Time to meet the Committee.”

I felt welded to my big comfortable chair. I knew that if I crossed the threshold of this room, another chapter of my life would unfold. Was I ready?

Strangely, I was. With each gesture, it felt more doable. Maybe that’s what the ten steps would feel like. I kept reminding myself that nothing bad was happening to me. Quite the opposite. I felt like layers of ice were falling away.

We left the room together and crossed the reception area, where Danica hit another button beneath her desk. The giant white doors at the end parted to reveal a large oval table made of glass, around which about a dozen women sat chatting loudly. The room was windowless, and also white, with a few colorful paintings similar to the ones in the lobby. There was a portrait at the far end, above a wide mahogany console, of a beautiful dark-skinned woman with a long braid falling forward over her shoulder. We entered the room and the women fell silent.

“Everybody, this is Cassie Robichaud.”

“Hi, Cassie,” they sang.

“Cassie, this is the Committee.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Sit here next to me, my dear,” said a small Indian woman, easily in her sixties, wearing a vivid sari and a very kind smile. She pulled out a chair and patted it.

“Thank you,” I said, and sank into the seat. I wanted to look everyone in the face, and at the same time to look at no one. I alternated between clasping my hands tightly in my lap and firmly sitting on them, trying hard to keep myself from fidgeting like a teenage girl. You are thirty-five, Cassie, grow up.

As Matilda introduced each woman, her voice sounded far away and underwater. My eyes floated from face to face, lingering, as I tried to memorize their names. I noted how each was a different kind of beautiful.

There was Bernice, a red-headed black woman, round, short and busty. She was young. Maybe thirty. There were a couple of blondes, one tall named Daphne, with straight long hair, and the other named Jules, with short perky curls. There was a curvy brunette woman named Michelle, with an angelic face, who clasped her hands over her mouth like I had done something adorable at a dance recital. She leaned over and whispered to a woman sitting across from me named Brenda, who had a toned, athletic body and was dressed in gym clothes. Roslyn with the long auburn hair was next to her. She had the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. There were also two Hispanic women sitting side by side, identical twins. Maria had a look in her eyes that was determined; Marta seemed more serene and open. It was then that I noticed each of the women at the table wore a familiar gold charm bracelet.

“And finally, next to you is Amani Lakshmi, who has been on the Committee the longest. In fact, she was my guide, as I will be yours,” said Matilda.

“So very nice to meet you, Cassie,” she said with a slight accent, lifting her slender arm to shake my hand. I saw that she was the only one in the room wearing two bracelets, one on each wrist. “Before we start, do you have any questions?”

“Who’s the woman in the painting?” I heard myself say.

“Carolina Mendoza, the woman who made all of this possible,” Matilda said.

“Who still does,” added Amani.

“Yes, that’s true. As long as we have her paintings, we have the means to continue S.E.C.R.E.T. in New Orleans.”

Matilda explained how she met Carolina more than thirty-five years earlier, back when she was an arts administrator for the city. Carolina was an artist, originally from Argentina. She fled in the ’70s, just before the military crackdown made it impossible for artists and feminists to create and speak freely. They met at an art auction. She was just beginning to show her work, large vivid canvases and murals that weren’t typical of the paintings women were doing at the time.

“Are these her paintings? And the ones in the lobby?” I asked.

“Yes. Which is why security is so tight here. Each is worth millions. We have a few more in storage in the Mansion.”

Matilda explained how she and Carolina began to spend time together, something that surprised Matilda because she hadn’t made a new friend in a long time.

“It wasn’t a sexual relationship, but we talked an awful lot about sex. After a while she trusted me enough to share her world with me, a secret world where women gathered to talk about their deepest desires, their most hidden fantasies. Remember, it wasn’t common back then to talk about sex. Let alone how much you liked it.”

At first Carolina’s group was informal, Matilda said, a gathering of artist friends, and local offbeat characters, which have always been aplenty in New Orleans. Most were single, some were widows, a few were long married, some of them happily so, she said. Most were successful and over thirty. But there was something missing from their marriages, their lives.

Matilda became her exclusive art broker and Carolina’s paintings began selling for sky-high prices. Eventually she sold several to the American wife of a Middle-Eastern oil sheik for tens of millions of dollars. She bought the Mansion next door, then put the rest of her fortune into a trust that funded their burgeoning sexual collective.

“Ultimately we realized we wanted to experience our sexual fantasies—all of them. And these scenarios cost money. Finding men, and sometimes women, the right men and women, to fulfill these fantasies, required recruiting. And … training. That’s how S.E.C.R.E.T. began.

“After we all helped one another experience our sexual fantasies, we began recruiting one person every year upon whom we would bestow this gift—the gift of complete sexual emancipation. As current chair of the Committee, it was my duty to choose this year’s recruit. According to our mandate, she must, in turn, choose us.”

“That’s your cue, Cassie,” said Brenda.

“Me? Why?”

“For several reasons. We have been watching you for a while now. Pauline made the suggestion after seeing you at the restaurant. She didn’t leave her notebook on purpose, but we couldn’t have planned it better. We had already discussed you a couple of times. It all worked out rather well.”

This stunned me for a moment, that I’d been watched, checked out … for what? Signs of abject loneliness? I felt a flash of anger.

“What are you saying exactly? That you saw I was some pathetic, lonely waitress?” I looked accusingly around the room.

Amani reached out and held my arm, while some of the women murmured reassurances: “No” and “It’s not like that” and “Oh, honey, that’s not what we meant.”

“Cassie, it’s not an insult. We operate from a spirit of love and support. When someone shuts down their sexual self prematurely, it’s often not noticeable to them. But other people pick up on it. It’s like you’re operating with one less sense. Only you don’t know it. Sometimes people in that kind of retreat need an intervention of sorts. That’s all. That’s what I meant. We found you. We picked you for this. And now we’re offering you a chance at a new beginning. An awakening. If you want it. Do you want to join us and begin your journey?”

I was stuck on how they had been monitoring me. How? I had always thought I camouflaged my loneliness, my accidental celibacy. Then I remembered my brown clothing, my messy ponytail, my awful shoes, my slouch, my cat, my trudge home at dusk to my empty apartment. Anyone with a set of eyes could have seen that a brown-colored aura had settled over me, like a dusting of defeat. It was time. Time to make a leap.

“Yes,” I said, shaking the remaining doubt out of my head. “I’m in. I want to do this.”

The room erupted in applause. Amani nodded encouragingly.

“Consider the women in this circle your sisters. We can guide you back to your true self,” Matilda said, standing up.

My chest tightened with emotion. I was feeling so much at the same time—joy, fear, confusion and gratitude. Was this really happening? To me?

“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked, tears pooling in the corners of my eyes.

“Because we can,” said Bernice.

Matilda reached under the table and pulled a zippered folder. She placed it in front of me. It looked like real alligator skin and it was embossed with my initials, CR. They knew, on some fundamental level, that this was not something I could turn down. I opened it, exposing the two sides of the folder, each filled with ornately embossed papers. On the left was a linen envelope with my name on it in calligraphy. Even my wedding invitations weren’t this beautiful.

“Go ahead,” said Matilda. “Open it.”

I carefully ripped the seal. Inside was a card.

On this day, Cassie Robichaud is invited by the Committee to take the Steps.

________________________ Cassie Robichaud

Beneath that was another line:

____________________ Matilda Greene, Guide

Tucked into the right side of the folder was a small journal, exactly like Pauline’s, also with my initials.

“Cassie, would you read the Steps aloud for us?”

“Now?” I looked around the table and couldn’t see a single face that frightened me, and I knew that I could walk out the door at any time—but I didn’t want to. I stood up, but my legs felt frozen. “I’m scared.”

“Every one of the women around this table has felt the same thing you’re feeling right now,” Matilda said, and the women nodded. “Cassie, we are our sexual lives.”

The tears were flowing now. It felt, at long last, as though all the grief I’d stored up in me was finally finding its way out.

Amani leaned closer to me and said, “The ability to heal ourselves has made it possible for us to help others. That’s why we’re here. That’s the only reason we’re here.”

I stared down at the diary. I gathered every ounce of strength and courage I could muster. I wanted to come alive like these women. I wanted to feel pleasure, and to live in my body again. I wanted all of it. I wanted everything. I opened to the Steps and read all ten, the same words I had read in Pauline’s diary. When I finished, I sat down and a great sense of relief moved from my feet, through my body, and out my arms.

“Thank you, Cassie,” Matilda said. “Now I have three important questions for you. One, do you want what we have?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Two, within the boundaries of complete safety and security and the guidance we offer you, are you willing to take these Steps?”

I looked back down at the Steps. I wanted this. I really did. “Yes. I think so.”

“And three, Cassie Robichaud, do you accept me as your guide?”

“Yes. I do,” I said.

The room burst into more applause.

Matilda squeezed my hands in hers. “Cassie, I promise you that you’ll be safe, you’ll be cared for, you’ll be cherished. You have total autonomy over your body and what you want to do with it. You can decide how to proceed at all times. You will never be coerced. That’s not to say you won’t be afraid, but that’s what we’re here for. What I’m here for. Now I have one more thing to give you.”

She walked over to the console, above which hung the portrait of Carolina. She opened the slender top drawer and carefully removed a small purple box. She carried it to me like it was the most fragile thing on earth. But when she placed it in my hands, the box felt surprisingly heavy.

“Open it. It’s for you.”

I lifted the velvet top, and under a downy bit of fluff lay a pale gold chain nestled in silk. It was identical to the one everyone else in the room was wearing. But this was only a bare chain—no charms were attached.

“It’s mine?”

Matilda lifted it out of the box and fastened it around my trembling wrist.

“For every Step you complete, Cassie, you will receive a gold charm from me commemorating its completion. This will continue until you have received all nine charms. The tenth charm comes after you make your choice to stay in S.E.C.R.E.T. or to leave. Are you ready to begin your adventure?”

The bracelet made it all feel real, its very weight grounding me, making me conscious of the magnitude of what had just occurred, and what was about to.

“I’m ready.”