“Well? How did it go?”

“It’s a mess, Kathy.” He sopped up some egg on his plate with a piece of toast that he didn’t eat. He did not look up at her towering over him at the kitchen table with a spatula hinting at violence.

“I know that, Stan, but what happened?”

Stan sighed and slowly picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip. He held it in his mouth for longer than necessary. Finally, he swallowed, sat back and looked her in the eye for the first time that morning. “Well…”He didn’t know where to begin, so he just spat the words at her as fast as he could: “She’s staying at a squat over on Henderson with a bunch of junkies.”

“And?” She sat down at the table still clutching the spatula.

“And what? That’s where she is and we both bloody well know what she’s doing there.”

“Why didn’t you bring her home? You should have dragged her out of there!”

“I didn’t go there to pick a fight. You know how that always ends. If we locked her in her room, she’d find a way to get out and go right back to it.”

“But…”

“No buts, Kathy. You know just as well as I do that we can’t just drag her out of there. At least we know where she is.”

“Knowing where she is doesn’t help me sleep at night. I want our daughter home safe and sound.”

“I want that, too, but we need a plan. This is bigger than you and I can handle. We need help. She needs help. We can’t just drag her back home. We’ve got to get to the root of the problem.”

Stan leaned back in his chair and reached over to the cork board on the wall next to the phone. He grabbed a business card and handed it to her. It said SIERRA WELLNESS CENTER in friendly bold letters with a sunset behind them. She looked at him, puzzled. She was surprised that she hadn’t noticed the card before.

“I’ve already talked to their intake person. All we have to do is let them know where she is. They’ll handle the rest.”

She gingerly turned the embossed card on crisp linen paper over in her hand looking for something on the back. There was nothing but more expensive paper. “Can we afford it?”

“We’ll have to if we want her back home safe and sound. Don’t worry, I’ve already talked to Bob about it.”

She shot him a look of horror.

“No, not like that. I just told him that she’s got a medical condition, which is sort of true. This place is a medical facility. Anyway, I told him and he said I could take on any extra shifts they have and with your sewing money, it should be alright. They have a payment plan.”

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Flash Fiction 365 prompt: I didn’t go there.