"We got a real problem with Mom," the youngest daughter spoke quickly and quietly between cigarette puffs.  I imagined her sitting on the thin comforter with inexplicably drab flowers in the hotel room where I had been persuaded to leave them.

"She's been usin' again.  Got ahold of some Valium or something and started stealin'.  Things we got no use for from Ozarkland.  She even stole this plaque all 'bout the month of April and ain't no one in our family born in April."

Somewhere between the hotel and detox center, I remembered we were all fighting a losing battle.