the terror of the Ninth Step
And how will I administer the Ninth Step when it comes time to make amends? How can I start to make reparations?
Context
The making-amends step contemplated as sheer impossibility: the defrauded homeowners scattered or dead, the father gone since 1993, the mother too frail for the truth — the program demands reparation to people the past has put permanently out of reach. Ewell's dread is the Ninth Step's real difficulty, that recovery insists you set right what may no longer be settable, and hands you the wreckage with no guarantee anyone is left to receive the amend.