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Jo, she decided, didn’t know what she was talking about. While
she was simply trying to make conversation, Jo had twisted her
words into something that wasn’t quite true. Granted, Alex
seemed like a nice guy, and as Jo said, Kristen was as sweet as
could be, but she wasn’t interested in him. She barely knew him.
Since Josh had fallen in the river, they hadn’t said more than a few
words to each other, and the last thing she wanted was a
relationship of any kind.
So why had it felt like Jo was trying to bring them together?
She wasn’t sure, but honestly, it didn’t matter. She was glad Jo
was coming over tonight. Just a couple of friends, sharing some
wine… it wasn’t that special, she knew. Other people, other
women, did things like that all the time. She wrinkled her brow.
All right, maybe not all the time, but most of them probably felt
like they could do it if they wanted to, and she supposed that was
the difference between her and them. How long had it been since
she’d done something that felt normal?
Since her childhood, she admitted. Since those days when she’d
put pennies on the track. But she hadn’t been completely truthful
with Jo. She hadn’t told her that she often went to the railroad
tracks to escape the sound of her parents arguing, their slurred
voices raging at each other. She didn’t tell Jo that more than once,
she’d been caught in the crossfire, and that when she was twelve,
she’d been hit with a snow globe that her father had thrown at her
mother. It made a gash in her head that bled for hours, but neither
her mom nor her dad had shown any inclination to bring her to
the hospital. She didn’t tell Jo that her dad was mean when he was
drunk, or that she’d never invited anyone, even Emily, over to her
house, or that college hadn’t worked out because her parents
thought it was a waste of time and money. Or that they’d kicked
her out of the house on the day she graduated from high school.
Maybe, she thought, she’d tell Jo about those things. Or maybe she
wouldn’t. It wasn’t all that important. So what if she hadn’t had