Free BOUNDLESS (Mama's Story) by Lexie Ray Page A

old-school church revival. Was this how all AA meetings went?
    “With the abbreviated preamble out of the way, I want to go through the twelve steps,” Karla said. “I’m going to point to twelve people. You’re going to give me the steps, in order, according to where you are in the lineup. Ready?”
    Karla pointed at an inmate in the front row, who shot up like a rocket.
    “One. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
    She pointed to another inmate, one sitting in my row. She stood up and took a deep breath.
    “Two. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
    Another inmate stood, Karla’s finger like a magnet drawing metal up and out of those chairs.
    “Three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
    I’d known religious people in my time, though none of them frequented the nightclub. It confused and concerned me that anyone would turn their lives over to the idea of a higher power or idea of one. How else could we be responsible for our own lives? It seemed much too easy to let some God take care of us.
    “Four. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
    Moral inventory? That sounded painful—and time consuming. I wasn’t sure I’d like what I found if I ever tried to make one.
    “Five. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
    The justice system was convinced that I had done wrong, and the prison system was worried that I was on a fatal path. Why was it that I didn’t think I’d done a damn thing wrong? Sure, maybe I had a little too much to drink on some occasions. Maybe I couldn’t remember everything that had taken place on those nights. But I’d been a businesswoman, and a damn good one at that. I’d been there for girls who needed me. I’d built a thriving empire on nothing.
    The nature of my wrongs? I was the one who’d been wronged by all of this.
    “Six. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”
    Ready, nothing. I didn’t have any defects to remove. That was ludicrous. Plus, I wasn’t so sure there really was a God. This program wasn’t going to work for me. I could already tell.
    “Seven. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”
    “Eight. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.”
    That gave me pause. If the justice system had been correct in convicting me—and this was just a scenario I was playing around with in my head—then I’d wronged a lot of people. Dozens. If I had to make amends to all those people, I’d be working at it for years. I wondered if Marlee had contacted all of the boyfriends she’d screwed over. How many of them had there been? Dozens, like me? Was she still working through them?
    “Nine. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
    I remembered that strange memory I’d had of the night that Cocoa left. I’d obviously been drinking that night, otherwise I’d have remembered something as big as that. Cocoa had been my right hand, after all, and losing her had been a blow. But were my memories of that night true? The gunshots, the screams, the crash of glass. If I’d injured Cocoa that night, would trying to make amends with her injure her any further?
    “Ten. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
    I wasn’t sure what to think anymore about all of this. I thought I’d understood what it was all about, thought I’d figured it out, but it kept making me think. Could it be possible that I was like the rest of these people? Was it possible that I actually belonged here?
    “Eleven. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry