Noelle choked on her coffee. “Cass did leave a whole hell of a mess,” she said, feeling disloyal. Still, if you couldn’t tell the truth at the meeting-after-the-meeting, you were in real trouble. “And there is a woman who’s complicating my brain. But nothing’s going to happen with her.”

“Why not?” the ringleader asked, waving her cigarette. “When was the last time you dated?”

Noelle sighed. “Before my parents died,” she admitted. “I’ve been focusing on my sobriety. But!” she raised a hand, as one of them started to speak. “Even if I wanted to date, I couldn’t date this woman. She’s not staying at Carrigan’s, and she’s engaged. Although there’s something weird happening there. She never talks about her fiancée.”

“Girl,” said the quiet, ancient woman, her white curls bobbing as she shook her head, “if you can’t get laid and stay sober at the same time, there’s something wrong with your sobriety.”

The others nodded, taking long drags of their cigarettes and long sips of their lukewarm coffee.

“The fiancée is a different matter entirely,” said the ringleader. “If she’s off-limits, it’s simple, she’s off-limits. So what’s the tangle?”

Noelle sighed. “I prejudged her, pretty badly, and I was unkind, and she thinks I hate her. I made her feel unwelcome at Carrigan’s, which is not what Cass would have wanted.”

“It’s good you came here today, and you’re not trying to figure everything out in your own head. It’s not safe up there alone,” the quiet woman said.

Tears came up, ones she’d been stuffing down since the funeral just to get through. Before she knew it, Noelle was weeping into a polyester tracksuit while the woman closest to her held her and rubbed circles on her back.

“I was so angry,” she choked out, “and scared and sad, without Cass. And this woman, Miriam, she got in the path of that. Somehow all my anger at Cass got pushed on her. Because I would have done anything to have another ten years with Cass, and she could have but she didn’t.” She was speaking around big, wracking sobs, and the old women were nodding. One handed her a crumpled tissue from the bowels of an alligator purse. “I didn’t know how to be fair and everything hurt so much, and now I hurt someone else. And I do like her, and I do wish she didn’t have a fiancée, and I do want to date again maybe eventually, and I don’t know what to do.” Her run-on petered out, and she took a deep breath before blowing it out. “I’ve been trying to hold it in and be strong for everyone, and it came out sideways.”