CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
She didn’t make it to the meeting in Alexandria before it started, so she had to enter as quietly as she could. The gathering was held in a small community center in the downtown area, the kind of place that smelled like stale coffee and dust. She found the room at the end of a long hallway and when she opened the door as quietly as she could and entered the room, only a few of the people noticed her. She got a few nasty looks as she found a lone metal folding chair in the back of the room and took a seat.
There was a woman sitting at the head of a semicircle of chairs—a woman named Barbara Francis. Mackenzie had called her and spoken with her on the way to Alexandria. Barbara headed up these meetings and although she had no history of abuse at the hands of the church
