The woman standing up in front was speaking about the trajectory of her drinking woes, a spiral as relentless as a toilet being flushed, according to her report: First, the family intervention, which had shocked her into good behavior. She’d been one year sober and then her mother died and she’d begun to drink again the day of the funeral. Three months later, she swore off alcohol again, but there were countless falls from grace, each one more degrading than the one before. Her husband divorced her. She lost custody of her kids. She was a mean drunk and her friends had taken to avoiding her. One morning she woke up in her car, which was parked at a shopping mall a hundred miles from home. She had no idea how she’d gotten there. Her purse had been stolen and she’d had to hike to the nearest service station, where she bummed enough money to call and beg her ex-sister-in-law to pick her up. Waiting, she’d finally accepted the fact she couldn’t do it on her own. Now she was fifty-one days clean and sober, which netted her a big round of applause.

Walker thought his circumstances were tame by comparison. True, Carolyn had forced him to leave the house, but he was confident she’d relent. He still saw his kids every chance he got and he still had a job, for god’s sake. He’d messed up badly, but his problems didn’t hold a patch on some he’d heard here. This was a bump in the road, a wake-up call. He’d stumbled off course and now he’d righted himself. All these stories about people losing everything and living on the streets? He sympathized, but his situation was entirely different. One guy had made it clean and sober for five years, two months, and five days. The best Walker could offer up was seven days, not even worth one hand clapping. He’d have felt like a fool if he’d stood up and shared that. Belatedly, he flashed on the fact that while he’d been busy patting himself on the back, he’d forgotten about the girl he’d killed.

Sitting there, he could feel his demons stir. It wasn’t that he wanted a drink as such. It was the option to drink that he found hard to renounce. At some point in the future—five years or ten, he was unclear on the time frame—he wanted to believe he could enjoy a cocktail or a glass of wine. How many special occasions would come and go with him sipping soda water or a Diet Coke, detached and disengaged? Not drinking for the remainder of his life was too extreme a penalty. Surely, he’d regain the privilege once he learned to moderate his intake.