Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman

husband that she was going to Big Sur on a yoga retreat. It would have been pretty awful if the CCU folks had found out she was using again. Their church is violently opposed to drugs, as I’m sure you know. One of their basic tenets is that the CCU cures its members of the need to do drugs. I guess it would have caused a public relations nightmare if it had gotten out. That’s what happened with poor Jupiter. Everyone at the CCU was freaking out when they found out about his cocaine addiction. You know, like if the Reverend can’t keep his own kid off drugs, how can he help anyone else.”
    Was I imagining it, or did I detect a hint of a sneer in her voice when she talked about the CCU? “What do you make of the CCU’s claims? Can they really cure drug addiction?”
    She snorted, and then covered her mouth with her hand. “They are very good clients of ours.”
    “That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”
    She glanced around again, and then shook her head. “Look, if they could cure drug addiction with their astrological stuff, why would they need us? We have an arrangement with the CCU to provide care for their parishioners who need drug treatment. A full third of our patients at any given time are CCU members. Reese is the one curing them, not Polaris Jones.”
    I nodded. “Reese, and the rest of you.” No harm in giving the woman a little stroking. “But Chloe didn’t want the CCU to know that she was back. So she checked in anonymously, right?”
    “Everyone is here anonymously. But yeah, she asked us to keep it hush-hush.”
    “And she finished her intensive therapy uneventfully?”
    Molly shook her head. “
That
time, she did.”
    “What do you mean that time? As opposed to her first residency?’
    Molly bit her lip. “Look, I’m only telling you this because she’s dead, and because I want to help Jupiter. I can’t believe he killed her. I mean, I know he did, I read about the DNA evidence. But I just know there must have been a really good reason.”
    “Excuse me?” I asked.
    “Chloe was a nightmare. A complete bitch. And the most manipulative woman I’ve ever met in my life. She came to the center in the first place because she convinced some guy to give her a free ride. That’s what she does; she gets men to pay her way. And then as soon as she got here and met Jupiter, and figured out who he was, she decided she had to have him. He had really been progressing before she showed up, and she just destroyed all the work he was doing. He’d been processing his relationship with his dad, his mom’s legacy of drug use. When Chloe dug her little claws into him, it was all over. He’s never been the same since. Never. Poor Jupiter.”
    Molly’s eyes had filled with tears, and she dashed them away.
    “You were close to Jupiter, back when he was here?”
    She nodded. “I was his counselor. Everyone here gets assigned a counselor, like a sponsor. Someone who’s been through the program, and through the staff training. I was Jupiter’s.”
    “You’ve been through the program?” She seemed so sensible, so reasonable, so healthy. It was hard to believe she’d ever been a drug addict.
    “Yeah. I first came here about seven years ago.” She looked around the terrace, her brow wrinkled. It was almost as if she were surprised to find herself still there, all those years later. Then she turned back to me and shrugged. “Heroin.”
    “Heroin?” That shocked me. The heroin addicts I knew were emaciated and hollow-eyed. They didn’t have glossy blond hair and an athlete’s body. They also didn’t wear pink cashmere.
    She flashed her rueful smile. “Yeah, I know. I don’t look like a junkie, do I? Neither did anyone else in my sorority. We were all using. We didn’t shoot up, though. That was too gross for us. We snorted it. We thought that was safe, but we were wrong. I ended up getting sick. Turns out you can pass Hepatitis C through a nasal tube. After I got out of the hospital, my