The Red Hot Fix Read Free Page A

touch our lives.”
    Mort glanced around the room and saw dozens of people nodding their heads.
    “Our daughter’s pediatrician told us not to worry. Valerie Amber was a straight-A student. The doctor assured us it was just a phase. ‘Don’t overreact and it’ll all blow over.’ ” Nancy looked down. “But it didn’t. Two days after her fourteenth birthday, I found her passed out in her bathroom in a pool of vomit. The emergency room doctor told us she was filled with OxyContin, a drug neither my husband nor I had heard of. That started the rehab rumba.”
    Exhausted parents moaned in solidarity.
    “Valerie Amber did four weeks in-patient here in Seattle. She used nine days after she got out. Then came a Yakima treatment center for three months. Weekly family meetings were filled with our daughter’s promises. Two weeks after she got home, I found syringes and rubber tubing stuffed behind the teddy bears in her bedroom. So we sent her to Utah. They guaranteed success. She ran away after three days. Called us from a bus stop and begged to come home. So we tried tough love.”
    Mort looked at the room filled with worn-out souls. Their heads were bowed, but he knew they connected with every word.
    “We told her she could come home. But if we caught her doing drugs she’d be out on the street.” Nancy’s voiced cracked. “I came home from grocery shopping a week later and found six kids stoned in my daughter’s bedroom. I threw them all out. I shrieked and swore and damned them all to hell.” Tears streamed down Nancy’s face. “My fourteen-year-old daughter stormed out with them. We didn’t see her for nearly nine months. When we did, it was on a slab in the King County morgue.” Nancy’s whisper was picked up by the podium’s small microphone. “Valerie Amber had become a prostitute to support her heroin habit. A customer beat her to death.” Nancy looked straight at Mort. “The police never found him. Five weeks later I buried my husband next to her.” She looked down at her hands. “His heart simply stopped beating. I didn’t know what to do. That’s when I heard about CLIP.”
    The enthralled group offered Nancy a smattering of vocal support.
    “That was almost six months ago and I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve learned I’m not alone. I’m not helpless.” Nancy’s smile was wide and genuine. “CLIP brought me hope out of despair. That’s why I consider it an honor and a blessing … I’m allowed to say ‘blessing’ in a church basement, right?”
    The crowd laughed and Mort sensed a collective relaxation.
    “It’s my blessing to introduce tonight’s speaker. She’s the woman who founded CLIP sixteen years ago. Hers is a story of hope in the midst of all this darkness. Ladies and gentlemen, Charlotte Conklin.”
    Mort joined the crowd in applause and watched a well-dressed woman cross the stage to hug Nancy. His police instincts kicked in. Mid-forties, five foot five, 130 to 135 pounds, sandybrown hair. Another instinct surprised him when he noticed perfect legs beneath her knee-length skirt. He pulled his attention back and, like the rest of the group, settled in to listen.
    Charlotte Conklin spent the next thirty minutes discussing the plague of prostitution. She told stories of boys and girls who, for whatever reason, felt they had no other option but to sell their bodies to survive. She spoke of those who used them. The pimps. The madams. The customers. The consequences of addictions, pregnancies, diseases, and suicides. Mort’s mind drifted to Allie. He offered a silent wish that his daughter had found some other way to make it in this world.
    Charlotte wrapped up. “And so we gather. In church basements and town libraries and sometimes in our own kitchens. We tell our stories. We support one another as we search. Sometimes for our children.” She offered a gentle glance in Nancy’s direction. “And sometimes for meaning. But we are always together. And we’ll