Free Her Reason to Stay by Anna Adams Page A

not the kind a lot of the folks who usually attended services here might even know about.
    Daphne parked and got out of her car. Nightfall had brought a chill to the air. Her sweater proved little protection.
    As she started inside, a woman came down the side staircase, tucking a leather notebook beneath her elbow. Daphne looked up to ask if she knew where the meeting was being held.
    Again, she peered into a mirror of her own face. Again, the shock was physical.
    “Daphne? How did you know—” A smile had started forming, but it froze on Raina’s face.
    “I didn’t.” With a familiar sense of desperation, she looked for the right door to escape through. She needed the support of a meeting tonight as much as she ever had.
    “You’re not looking for me?”
    “Not right this minute, but we need to talk.” She’d come prepared to tell a roomful of alcoholics that she was one of them, but this was no way to tell her sister.
    Raina looked down the stairs. “I don’t understand.”
    “I looked this place up in the phone book.”
    “There’s no service tonight. Where are you going at this hour?” She checked her watch to make sure she had the time right. Her notebook slipped.
    Daphne grabbed it and handed it over. “There’s a meeting in this building.”
    Raina glanced downward again. “Oh.” She stared at Daphne, her eyes troubled.
    “Maybe we should talk now.”
    “No.” Raina took one step backward, and Daphne felt the rejection with the force of a slap to the face.
    Tears started to her eyes. “I’m taking care of my problem,” she said, unwilling to let her sister see how much her reaction hurt.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t worry about it.” It was the last thing she meant, but she had pride. “I’m fine.”
    “You’re not and neither am I. We’re both too quick to misunderstand.”
    Raina came down a step, and Daphne wanted nothing more than to be the one to back away this time. But you didn’t change your life making the same old mistakes.
    “Come to my house. After.” She took one last look toward the stairs. “The meeting’s down there.”
    “After is too late for tonight.” And she wasn’t sure she could face Raina with her best intentions intact.
    “Tomorrow, then.”
    “Okay, but it’ll have to be late in the day. I have a job.”
    Raina looked up, her eyes wide and far more innocent than the ones Daphne saw in her own mirror.
    “Which one did you take?”
    Daphne laughed. “At least you assumed I’d have the choice. I’m working for Miriam Burke, the florist. Delivering flowers.”
    “I’m so sorry about this, Daphne.”
    “Forget it,” Daphne said, recognizing that the kindness in Raina’s voice meant she could, as well. “I want to explain, but we’ll talk tomorrow.”
    “Do you know where I live?”
    “No,” she said with a start of surprise.
    Raina pulled an envelope out of her purse and then rummaged for a pen. She scrawled words on the envelope and passed it across. “I’ll find something for us to eat.”
    Daphne nodded, too uneasy to contemplate food. “Okay, but Raina, it’s not as bad as you might be expecting.”
    “I believe you.”
    Raina took Daphne’s hand. Daphne hung on, imagining she could feel her twin’s pulse. The tears were going to rain like a tropical storm if she didn’t get out of here.
    She pulled Raina close and hugged her, briefly enough that Raina could put it down as a small collision.
    “Thanks, Raina. You can’t know what that means.”
    She barely touched any of the stairs on her way down. A sign posted on the third door she came to gave her almost as much relief as her first-ever double shot of Glenfiddich.
    She eased inside just as another woman latched both hands around the bull-nosed edges of the podium at the front of the room.
    Here was safety and a reminder that she was the kind of woman a sister could love. She’d fought her worst instincts to become a good woman. And Raina believed in her. That had to mean