fingers of one hand the times she’d had more than two drinks in one day. “Am I drunk?”
“Maybe. Can you say the alphabet backward?”
“Z, Y . . . Oh, forget it.” Madison waved a hand. “It’s official. I’m drunk.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got your back, but maybe you should let me hang on to your purse.”
“Here you go.” Madison plopped her purse in Shelley’s lap, and then spun around on her butt and laid her head on top of her purse and stared up at her sister.
“Oh, okay, we’re doing that.”
“Hey, how come you’re not hammered?”
“After the first sip, I pretended to drink.”
“No fair!”
“Someone has to drive us home.”
“Not you. Your driving foot is wonky.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Madison felt mellow and floaty. Above Shelley’s head the clouds danced. “You never did tell me when you snapped to the fact you were in a cult.”
“It’s not been that long,” Shelley said. “It happened the day Gia called and left a message that Grammy was having surgery for cancer. I was in a treatment room, undergoing one of Guru Meyer’s healing sessions, when I—”
“What’s that like?”
“The hieroglyphics stuff I showed. Rattles, drumming, circle breathing. Things that blast you into an altered state of consciousness.”
“Like salted caramel whiskey.”
“Like salted caramel whiskey without the hangover.”
“Sounds nice.” Madison felt like Pyewacket. Lithe and warm and feline.
“Ahh, but like salted caramel whiskey, altering your consciousness has a dark side,” Shelley said.
“Yesss. The loss of control.”
“It’s all a balance,” Shelley said. “Between having boundaries to protect yourself and being open and kindhearted.”
“We both went off the deep end in opposite directions.”
“But, look, we’re back together in the middle.”
“Back to the realizing you were in a cult thing. I’m sorry, I keep butting in. Please go on. Tell me what happened.”
“During the healing session, the receptionist knocked on the door and Guru Meyer, who was pretty peeved about being interrupted, went out into the hall. I was lying on the treatment table, floating in this warm cocoon of bliss, and I heard them whispering about Grammy. And then he said, ‘She’s not to be told, we can’t risk letting her go home.’ Just like a lightning bolt, it hit me, and I understood that everything he’d been doing was mind control. And yes, maybe I did need to control my mind. But I needed to be the one doing it, not some narcissistic cult leader.”
“Wow, that must have been mind-blowing.”
“It was.” Shelley leaned back on her elbows and looked down at Madison, who still had her head in Shelley’s lap. “I kept trying to talk myself out of it, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he was keeping me from Grammy.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“So I packed my meager clothes in my backpack, stole my passport out of the office where he kept all our passports locked up—duh, another red flag, Shelley—and I took off. I didn’t have money for airfare, but I went to the American consulate, told them what had happened. They’d heard about Guru Meyer’s cult. They’d had people come in before in the same shape I was in, but the authorities considered him fairly benign and left him alone. They put me in touch with an expat group who paid for my ticket home.”
“Shelley, things could have gone wrong in so many ways.” Madison sat up abruptly. “You do impulsive like no one else, but somehow you come out of it smelling like roses.”
“I’m here, none the worse for wear.”
“Well, except for your hair and nails,” Madison teased.
“Yeah.” Shelley grabbed a hunk of her hair and stared at her split ends. “But I haven’t paid you back for the taxi and the phone and I don’t even have money for a haircut.”
“No, no. The haircut is on me. The taxi and the phone, too. We’re taking you for a spa day, right now.”
“Maddie . . .”
“I’m serious. We’re going, but something’s missing.”
“What’s that?”
“Gia.”
“She’s the only one of us who’s been balanced all along.”
“She had to be to even us out.” Madison snapped her fingers. “Quick, hand me my purse.”
“You don’t need any more salted caramel hooch.”
“I don’t want whiskey, I want my phone. Let’s call Gia. The Moonglow sisters are getting makeovers! My treat.”
Chapter Eighteen
Gia
ON POINT: The orientation of a quilt when its corners are placed up, down, and to the sides.
THINGS CHANGED BETWEEN the three sisters after their spa day together. For the first time since coming back home they relaxed around one another. They laughed and teased Shelley about being in a