Alex was free from guilt for the first time in his life after the appointment. The old guilt of a mother who lost herself giving birth to him, of helping his father fleece neighbors when he was a kid, was gone. All his regrets ran out of him like sidewalk chalk in a summer rain. He had the nod to do his worst, and it didn’t take long before he crossed lines he had always avoided.

            Instead of avoiding questions about his training when they were offhandedly asked over dirty laundry by coworkers, he answered directly and went into great detail over a wide range of therapies and techniques, both real and imagined, that he knew nothing about.

            If someone asked a...

Please subscribe to keep reading.