Now I looked at Rebecca. “Does she have a right to do that?” I asked. “Is she allowed to talk to you about me?”

“She can tell me anything she likes,” Rebecca said. “But I won’t share anything about you in response, so you don’t need to be concerned about that. I’d like to hear your side of the story, though. What happened last night?”

I shut my eyes, remembering back to the night before. It was all still very, very sharp in my mind. This is what happens when you don’t drink, I thought. Things stayed sharp and crisp. Not like after the accident, when everything had been a cloud of blood and fear in my memory. I told Rebecca the whole story. The only thing I left out was that I was falling in love with Oliver. At least, I was pretty sure I was. I didn’t completely trust myself when it came to love. Did I even know what it was? I didn’t think I’d ever felt love from another human being. Not the real thing, anyway. Not from Trey, no matter how many times he’d said those words to me. Certainly not from my parents. Sitting there, I could actually picture the huge empty space in my heart where love was supposed to be. The only person I could see in that space was Oliver—a little image of him tucked down in a corner.

“That was very risky for you, going there.” Rebecca brought my mind back to her office.

My eyes suddenly burned, surprising me. I was so tired after last night, and so tried of feeling criticized. “Everyone from the gallery was going,” I said. “I knew I could go and not drink. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I still don’t.”

Rebecca looked down at my ankle in its walking boot. “What did they say at the ER?” she asked.

“A mild sprain, though it doesn’t feel very mild. They said to ice it. Elevate it. But I have to work.”

“Lisa is worried you might backslide.”

I was angry, but tried not to show it. “I’m not going to backslide,” I said.

“And she’s worried about how your ankle will affect your work,” Rebecca said. “She told me that if you can’t work, she’ll have to fire you and hire someone else, though she sounded so—”

“What?” Fear rose in my chest. “No! I have to do it. I will do it!” The thought of returning to prison was only part of my sudden panic. The mural was mine. The sudden sense of ownership I felt over it stunned me. It was my handsome lumberjack and my old Tea Party ladies and my little skull in the window and my bloody hammer and motorcycle fender. I wasn’t letting anyone else work on it.