Listening to the thrum of the road calmed me, and it wasn’t long before it lulled me to sleep. I drifted in and out, jostled awake by the bumps and turns before falling back to sleep. We drove for what felt like days, but it was probably only hours. Everything just seemed longer stuck back in the dark. Finally the van stopped. My eyes snapped open. Feet shuffled to the side of the van. The lock clicked, and Ray opened the door. Blinding light shone into my eyes, making me squint. He stuck out his hand, and I stepped outside into the sun. It took my eyes a while to adjust from being in the dark for so long.

We were parked in front of an old farmhouse. Large evergreen trees surrounded it on all sides. The roof sagged to the left, and faded yellow paint peeled off in chunks. Two of the stairs leading up to the porch were rotten. One of the windows was boarded up. The grass around it was long and unkept. The weeds had won the battle in the yard long ago. Ray walked around the house to the back, and I hurried along after him.

“Where’s Margo?” I asked, struggling to keep up, still weak and disoriented from the long car ride.

“She stayed behind to take care of things,” he said.

He immediately started clearing away a pile of brush leaned up against the back of the house. I moved to help, and we worked silently side by side as the sun lowered itself in the sky. The pile grew smaller, revealing two large cellar doors sealed together with an old padlock. Ray dug his keys out of his pocket and picked through them until he found the right one. He lifted open the doors. Dust filled my nose. Concrete steps led into darkness. Ray motioned to the steps. I ducked my head and stepped into the darkness, holding the railing on the left to steady my feet as I made my way down. I came to the bottom and turned to look up at Ray, waiting for him to follow me. But he didn’t. He just stood there looking at me with a strange expression on his face. Then, without saying a word, he reached over and shut one of the doors. He wasn’t coming with me?

“Ray?” I called up to him. He closed the other door. “Ray!” I yelled louder this time as I scrambled to the top of the stairs and pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. I beat on it with my fists.

“What are you doing?” I screamed.

Nothing.

My ears buzzed with silence. What was happening? A surge of fear ran through my body. “Relax,” I admonished myself. “This is all part of the process.” I repeated it like a mantra until the fear began to subside and my thoughts slowed down.

I’d done fear exercises before. I’d stood naked in front of the entire group. All of us women had done it to release our unhealthy focus on our bodies. We’d all cried. I’d shaken through most of it. But I’d gotten through it and the next one, too, just like I’d get through this. I let out a deep breath, my muscles slowly untangling. I turned around and headed back into the cellar.