One Little Mistake

Alexis is a stay-at-home mother worn thin by two small children. She is arrested for driving under the influence, an incident she cannot remember, and the court gives her one route back to her family: complete an AA program and admit her fault.

The problem is that she has never had a drinking problem, and nothing explains the blackout. She works the program anyway, because the alternative is losing her children, and the meetings and steps become the frame for a slower, more unsettling question about what actually happened that night and who in her life benefits from the answer she is being told to accept.

Lucinda Berry, a former psychologist specializing in childhood trauma, wrote this as a novella, first released as an Audible Original narrated by Brittany Pressley. It runs under three hours.