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The kids and Theresa laughed as they joined Mick, and then I watched as, one by one, everybody in the bus picked up the tune. Even Doug choked his way through a lyric or two, his emphysemic rock-tumbler throat singing sounding like Keith Richards.

So, there I sat and wondered why I felt like an idiot. Why was participating in this song fest so difficult for me? I couldn’t allow myself to act silly even when there would be no real or lasting consequences. Though in my impulsive, spontaneous moments of the past, I’d be loud or brassy, like when I started “Second Lining” at one of the company dinners. Carl had reminded me of the definition of low profile. But in three weeks, I’d never see these people again.

When I drank, I imagined myself like Julie Andrews singing on a mountain top, twirling and twirling, facing the heavens, arms outstretched. I could be delightful and deliriously goofy when I filled myself with enough beer or wine or vodka or whatever. The alcohol bashed the self-imposed emotional straitjacket the sober Leah would be terrified to remove. Drunk Leah felt light, almost ethereal. Eventually, I had the best of both worlds—a fun-filled Leah who, the next day, couldn’t remember the havoc she wreaked or the embarrassing improprieties.

But no booze, no coping mechanism. I didn’t know how to act like a truly sober person. And I didn’t know I’d have to actually start feeling—feeling scared and angry and sad—and I’d have to start remembering.

Less than an hour ago, I had to be coaxed onto the bus. Jan's voice echoed Mom's when she had scrunched her body on the floor to peer under her bed, negotiating with Edison, our neurotic thunder-shy cat. Mom's fleecy-warm voice belied the verbal assault.

“Edison, if you don’t crawl from under this bed in the next thirty seconds I’m going to shave all of your hair and pierce your ears.”

Now Mom was gone, Edison was hundreds of miles away, probably looking over his shoulder for Mom, and I was the one who wanted to stay under the bed. All dressed up, my neatly creased khakis and my white button-down Gap almost starched blouse. My white canvas backless sneakers. And I couldn’t, wouldn’t, budge. My body froze. I didn’t want to leave the center. I didn’t want to walk through those doors. I wasn’t afraid of going to the AA meeting. I wasn’t afraid of getting on the bus. I wasn’t even afraid of coming back. I simply couldn’t leave what had come to mean security. I was safe here. No one could hurt me or force me to do anything.

The only other time I experienced this terror was when I woke up and found Alyssa, so still in her crib, so agonizingly still. They pulled her away from me, and she never returned. The overwhelming frightfulness of that moment gouged my soul—emptiness I tried to fill with Robert Mondavi and Johnny Walker and Miller Light.

When Jan said it was time to leave, my legs refused to transport me. I scratched the back of my hand, watching those familiar snail-like welts return. Maybe Carl felt tiny shifts in his universe with every motion of my fingernails urging the redness on.

“What will happen to me? How will I know I’m coming back? What if there's an accident? Please, please don’t make me go. I want to stay. I’ll stay in my room. Just don’t make me go.” Thankfully, everyone else had been escorted to the bus, missing my unscripted, irrational performance. How did she know to send everyone away? What had she seen in me? What part of myself had I unknowingly given away?

I pleaded with her. I grabbed her hand. She pried it loose, leaving the indentation of a halo pressed into my palm from her diamond ring.

I made her promise nothing bad would happen to me. That I would come back.

“Leah, breathe. You can do this. Just put one foot in front of the other.” Jan pointed me in the direction of the bus. She walked so closely behind me that our bodies made one lumpy shadow.

I felt like I was in one of those recurring dreams where I’d end up in school without wearing my Peter Pan collared button-down