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“Actually, I was thinking about my day today. I told you it was
hard, right? Well, what I just told you is part of the problem. It
gets frustrating when people won’t tell the truth. I mean, how am
I supposed to help people if they hold things back? If I don’t really
know what’s going on?”
Katie could feel something twisting and tightening in her chest.
“Maybe they want to talk about it but they know there’s nothing
you can do to help,” she whispered.
“There’s always something I can do.”
In the moonlight shining through the kitchen window, Jo’s skin
glowed a luminous white, and Katie had the sense that she never
went out in the sun. The wine made the room move, the walls
buckle. Katie could feel tears beginning to form in her eyes and it
was all she could do to blink them back. Her mouth was dry.
“Not always,” Katie whispered. She turned to face the window.
Beyond the glass, the moon hung low over the trees. Katie
swallowed, suddenly feeling as if she were observing herself from
across the room. She could see herself sitting at the table with Jo,
and when she began to speak, her voice didn’t seem to be her
own. “I had a friend once. She was in a terrible marriage and she
couldn’t talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning,
she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him.
He swore that it wouldn’t and she believed him. But it only got
worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she
mentioned that she’d visited with one of the neighbors who was
walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night,
her husband threw her into a mirror.”
Katie stared at the floor. Linoleum was peeling up in the corners,
but she hadn’t known how to fix it. She’d tried to glue it, but the
glue hadn’t worked and the corners had curled again.
“He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry
because of the bruises he’d made on her arms or legs or her back.