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SAMPLE CHAPTERS - ANGRY ENOUGH TO KILL

WHAT PEOPLE SAY

JACKSON, WYOMING, Hunting Season
 

Almost any decision is reversible, but she is damned if she´ll change her mind, and damned if she doesn´t. She's come too far and given up too much. The time to reconsider is past.

 

In the chill of dawn, she quickens her pace along the forest trail. The sawed-off shotgun digs through the backpack and into her waist. She shrugs its weight to the side, rubbing her hands over her arms to warm them, forcing her fingers deep into her gloves. Her mouth is so parched, her lips cling to her teeth.
 

Fog deceives the eye, forming and fading away, only to form again in different shapes, like hunters . . . or witnesses.
 

Don’t think. Just get it done.
 

Beside the Snake River, trees pierce the haze, and patches of dawn fall onto the alder standing alone in the center of the clearing. An eagle screeches, wings flapping, and the river churns in the distance.
 

At the side of the clearing, she clambers over a fallen pine, crawling under the boughs she arranged so meticulously the day before. The tranquilizer pistol loads without a problem. She rests her arms on the log, and waits, like a child playing soldier, but this is not child's play. Nothing obstructs her view of the pathway leading from the town and to the river.


Something crawls up her neck. She swats at it; a spider lands on her arm. She chokes back a scream, and brushes it off. After a time, her knees ache and she shifts on the damp leaves, releasing a whiff of mold and decay.

 

A twig snaps.
 

Her hand tightens around the dart pistol.
 

Please let it be Devlin.
 

He's whistling, the tuneless wheeze she’s heard before, and he carries a plastic bag. She knows what’s inside: a Sears catalog with pictures of children in their back-to-school clothes.
 

Will he take a leak as he did yesterday and the day before? She tries not to breathe.
 

He hangs the bag on a branch of the alder and unzips his fly. Urine steams against the tree. He grunts, zips up and paws for the bag.
 

The dart won’t kill him, but if they find him too soon, before the Medetomidine-Ketamine dissipates . . .
 

Too many ifs.
 

She fires.
 

“What the fuck?” He grabs his rump, yanks out the dart, and frowns.
 

She rises, shaking the branches from her shoulders.
 

His hand grasps for the tree. He stumbles and drops to his knees, as though praying for forgiveness.
 

Damn, he’s going to fall forward . . . she wants to rush to him, to prop him up, but she waits for the drug to take effect.
 

He’s rubbing his eyes and squinting. Hallucinating. She can hear her own ragged breathing over his mumbled gibberish.
 

When he falls forward on his hands and knees and leans to the side, she scrambles to him, props him up with her hip. She places the shotgun on the ground, picks up the dart and jams it into its case in the pocket of her vest. One piece of evidence out of the way.
 

His eyelids flutter, his lower lip sags, and when his head nods, she rolls him onto his back the way she learned in First Aid. It’s easier than she thought. Too much beer and age have thinned his bones, wasted his muscles.
 

With her arms under his armpits, she drags him and props his back against the tree. His body remains upright. No need for the rope in her backpack to keep him in place.
 

Fetid whiffs of sweat and mothballs rise from his wool jacket. She holds her breath, picks up the shotgun and confirms the chamber is empty.
 

To test the suicide position, she wedges the gun barrel into his chin with the butt into the ground between his legs, close to his groin.
 

His eyelashes . . . long and curled like a child’s. He was someone’s child once.
 

But so was I.
 

She needs his prints. He’s right-handed—for days she watched him open doors, drink beer, and scratch his nose, all with his right hand. But early in the morning, in the woods, and free from the vigilant eyes of the townspeople, he turns the pages of his Sears catalog with his left.
 

She places his right hand around the trigger guard, shoves the thumb into the slot, presses hard, removes the hand and clamps the fingers and thumb around the stock and again on the action and barrel. Except for the area around the trigger guard, she repeats the process with his left hand, near the muzzle end, compressing thumb and fingers into the barrel, steadying it under his stubbled chin.
 

Satisfied, she removes the box of shells from her pocket, keeping two, and scattering the rest on the ground. She presses his fingers onto the box and on the shells, but when she tries to chamber a shell, the grip won’t move.
 

She pumps.
 

Thunk. The grip loads.
 

She drops to her haunches. Rams the barrel under his chin.
 

The world pauses, waiting for her to fall.
 

She remembers to breathe.
 

Gritting her teeth, she thinks about the children and squeezes the trigger.
 

Sound waves blast through her and beyond. And blood, so much blood. Brain tissue gushes onto the drop sheet, splatters on the tree, startling her even though she memorized the after-effects of shotgun suicides.
 

Wave upon wave of nausea. Gagging sounds.
 

Hers.
 

Run.
 

Hide. Anywhere, anywhere but the closet, that musty closet, behind Mommy’s muskrat coat.
 

But she mustn’t run. She cannot leave evidence. She has done what she had to do; now she must save herself and the others who depend on her to escape.
 

She sacrifices stealth for speed, rising, folding the sheet into itself and away from her. An alert forensic investigator might notice a gap in the splatter pattern where her body shielded the ground, but the investigators might be parents. A parent might choose to overlook many things.
 

Or might not.
 

Perhaps animals will disturb the site and cover her tracks.
 

Hurrying now, down the bank to the river, rinsing the drop sheet, folding it into itself again, resisting the urge to plunge into the river until her soul runs clear, returning to the backpack, stuffing the drop sheet into a green garbage bag, cramming it into the backpack.
 

A wind rustles through the leaves, like children sharing secrets, but she's still alone. Still safe.
 

She hangs a camera around her neck, and pulls an orange vest over her camouflage jacket. If other hunters come, she'll say she was hiking, taking pictures, heard the shot, and found him.
 

She will cry. It won’t be difficult to cry.
 

One last check of the site. Devlin’s bag still hangs on the tree. Would he have brought it today? No, not if he intended suicide. She shoves it into the backpack. Are there furrows where she dragged him? A few. She scuffs the dirt with a fallen branch.
 

Where’s the spent shell?
 

It should be on his left. No, his right.
 

Think!
 

She can’t see it. She should be able to spot the red casing.
 

Did she trap it in the drop sheet and flush it into the river? What if she can’t find it?
 

Tears push at her eyes. It must look like a suicide. She cannot fail now. She lets the backpack fall and drops to her hands and knees.
 

“Calm down. Breathe.” She’s muttering, but can’t stop.
 

She checks up and down his clothes, rubbing her hands up and down each side of him.
 

Nothing.
 

She sits back on her calves and pokes the leafy debris with a stick.
 

A glimpse. Red plastic and brass still in the chamber. How could she have forgotten? Pump-action shotguns don’t eject the shell until the next round is chambered. She swallows to moisten her tongue and struggles to her feet. When she checks her clothes and her moccasins, she can’t see any evidence. No obvious bloodstains, no brain tissue. She backs away from the body, shoulders the backpack and slides the straps over her jacket.
 

To survive now, she must leave unseen and she must forget, but forgetting is not one of her skills.
 

Along the trail, a breeze cools her cheeks. She prays they’ll find his body soon, that she’ll read about his suicide in the Jackson Hole News and Guide when she checks the Internet back in New York. A pointless prayer because what will be, will be, and that's okay.
 

The sun breaks through the sky's stinging haze. She feels exposed. Someone is shining a flashlight into her eyes, the closet door is open, and she can see Daddy’s shoes, and Daddy, waiting.
 

At the edge of the forest, she watches as a Range Rover leaves the Edelweiss Motel’s parking lot and turns left onto Harbinger Road. When it chuffs out of sight, she slips out of the woods and into the end unit of the motel, changes her clothes, and cleans the room. She shuts the door behind her, throws the backpack into the trunk of her nondescript Ford and drives away.
 

For the first hundred miles, she fights back nausea, gripping the steering wheel with whitened knuckles until her hands cramp. Gunshot echoes rumble in her ears.
 

Will they ever disappear? She wants to forget them, but she won’t. She knows she won’t.
 

At the second hundred-mile interval, she buries her moccasins and the drop sheet in the woods. At the third, she rips the Sears catalog to shreds, imagining that same catalog sitting so openly, so innocently on the coffee tables of homes with children. She stuffs the pieces into the bag, buries it, and tries not to think about the picture of a little girl holding a Barbie doll, Gold Jubilee edition. Her niece's favorite doll.
 

The dirt settles over the bag. She exhales and straightens her shoulders. 
 

Later, deep in the woods, she digs one last hole, burns her hunting clothes and gloves, and buries the ashes.
 

From time to time along the way home, she pulls over and tries to sleep in the back seat, a shallow sleep, floating on top of a pond roughed by the wind.
 

In Summit, New Jersey, she parks the car in a garage she rents under a false name, and changes into a navy business suit.
 

She will take the Transit to Hoboken and the P.A.T.H. train to the subway. She’ll ride the elevator to her office. There, she'll search for hints of suspicion in her colleagues' voices and in their eyes, and she'll pretend to be normal. She’s had a lifetime of pretending to be normal.
 

Perhaps my next murder will be easier.

 

WHEN GOOD MEN DO NOTHING

Was vamp a noun or a verb?

Dr. Robin Piper felt certain Cassie fluttered her eyelashes when the car rental agent at the Vancouver International Airport handed her the keys and the contract. As if the wavy red hair cascading down her back and curves in all the right places weren’t enough, Cassie knew her stuff. She’d flirted with the agent through every clause in the contract and negotiated an SUV for the price of a compact.

Robin flushed and turned away when Cassie ground her hip into the agent's side, but since she knew and understood the cause, she could forgive even that. Strange how Amber and Cassie were almost opposite poles on the continuum of human behavior: Amber never flirted, but Cassie took center stage whenever a man was within ten feet. Simple science: same cause; different effects, and not the kind of science Robin admired, but, this time, Cassie's overdone flirting did the trick.  

A half-hour later on the drive to Whistler, Robin’s stomach hurt. “Cut it out, you guys. I can’t laugh and drive at the same time.” She twiddled with the radio.

At forty-two, Robin was their Chairman of the Board, although she suspected they awarded her the leadership role because she was the eldest. Ever since their Association of Victims' Rights days, they'd called themselves the Board of Directors, infinitely better than the feminist collectives who, in their peasant skirts and Birkenstock sandals, gathered in church halls and basements to bemoan the state of the world.

The Board didn’t wallow. They got on with it.

Well, she'd get on with it, too. She'd stop wallowing.

Right. As if one weekend with her friends could jump-start a new life for her, and yet, she had hopes, modest hopes, but still. Hope hadn't lived with her for a long time, and as much as hope felt like a trespasser, she wanted to welcome it. If their prior years' shenanigans were any predictor, hope might move back into her life again.

Or, she could start the Piper Scientific Research Foundation, learn how to extract grief, pour it into a beaker, and send it to Mars. Might as well extract guilt, too. She could see it now: two Nobel prizes.

Soft jazz on the CBC soothed them for several miles, replaced by 'A Million Closed Eyes,' a documentary about a man convicted of forty-five counts of gross indecency, buggery, and sodomy, all with boys under eight.

She cringed. “Did anyone think to bring CD’s?”

Serious was not part of her plan for the weekend, and she didn´t need to be reminded of her niece at this moment either. Samantha murdered, then Marty dying. Who was next, she wondered. “I need  some quiet. Just for—”

“No!” Amber turned up the volume.

No gossip, no girl-talk . . . no Marty. Wasn't the weekend going swimmingly?

“Lord love a duck, Girlfriend,” Cassie said, tapping Amber’s shoulder from the back seat. “Are you lookin’ to be depressed?”

Amber increased the volume even more, her lips pressed into a thin line.

No talking to her with that chin jutting forward.

Over the years, the man served as Mayor, Boy Scout leader, Big Brother, and hockey coach in a small pulp and paper town in Northern Ontario.

“Fucking disgusting.” Amber snatched a look at Robin—the Chairman of the Board didn't like obscenities, but Robin didn’t comment this time. She shared her strong feelings. So did Cassie. The bonds of their friendship reached back to college, and strengthened during their years volunteering for the Association of Victims Rights. All those briefs to government, letters to the editor, magazine articles and fund-raising campaigns, and nothing changed. What a waste of time. But even during the most serious work, it was Amber who said, ‘Lighten up;’ it was Amber who brought the chips and beer. Where was that Amber?

“Amber. Really.” Robin reached to turn off the radio. “I've had enough of this. Please?”

“Don't you dare touch that.” Amber shoved Robin’s arm out of the way.

Robin bit her lower lip. Should she turn around and go home?

Bill’s predatory life lasted thirty years, until, based on videotaped evidence from a motel room, he was convicted.

The unidentified parents said they never would have allowed Bill to be around their sons if they’d had any idea he was a such a sick man, but the interview ended with a question to which the parents had no answer: “If this man wasn’t a problem, why did everyone call him ‘Three Dollar Bill?”

“They – damn – well - knew!” Amber pounded her knee, underlining every word with a punch. “I – fucking – well – know – they - knew.”

When Robin turned off the radio, an odd disquiet rippled the air.

“Well, now, Ma’am,” Cassie said in the exaggerated drawl she used when she spoke about her birthplace, lifting her long red curls off her neck and into a cluster on top of her head, a little girl showing off her new hairdo. “In Texas, we'd have opened a whole can of whoop-ass on that worthless son of a bitch, skinned him like a dead rattler, and hung him out to dry.”

Amber’s chest heaved. “If those were my children, I’d kill the bastard.”

“You couldn’t,” Robin said. “I know I couldn’t.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what I could or couldn’t do. Not even you, Robin.”

“All I meant was that you’d be caught.” She shrank into her seat.

“Sorry.” Amber rested her hand on Robin's knee. “Didn't mean to take my PMS week out on you.”

“Fine.” Except it wasn't fine. Robin´s hopes for the weekend became untethered, and drifted downstream like flotsam and jetsam.

Hell and damnation.

She damned Amber when she knew she should be damning all those Three Dollar Bills.

* * *

 

At Whistler, Cassie navigated from the back seat in case Robin didn’t remember how to get to the grocery store. Shopping was always their first order of business. They ooh’d and aah’d over the gabled roofs nestled in the mountains, ski chalets everywhere, some not much more stylish than student hangouts and others, mansions, from modern to artfully rustic. Cassie stopped commenting, perhaps when she noticed that Amber wasn’t joining in.

Unlike other years, they were silent as they climbed two flights of stairs to the main floor of the condo, lugging suitcases, coolers and grocery bags.

¨Lordy,¨ Cassie said, when they´d piled all the bags by the fireplace, “this place is tidier than a witch's broom closet.”

“Don’t worry,” Robin said. “We’ll soon make a mess of it.” But Cassie was right; the place was sterile, a picture in a magazine touting the good life, except there were no signs of life. No half-read newspapers, no slippers sloughed off, no mohair throws, and the dining-room table set for a showing.  

Amber snuck away, and stood by the window in the dining room staring into the deepening blackness.

Robin was having none of that; the Chairman’s first obligation was to get her people organized and having fun. “Come on, Amber. Next order of business is stocking the fridge and cupboards.” She marched over to the window. “Don’t let the Board down. Please?”

For God's sake, Amber, you're my best friend. You should know how much I need this weekend to be like the other ones.

“Sorry. Just enjoying the sunset.”

How likely was that?

“Yoo hoo, Members of the Board.” Cassie held up two bottles of champagne and a Nordstrom’s bag. “Y'all come on and join me in the kitchen.”

Robin whistled. “You splurged.” She pushed Amber toward the kitchen, and grabbed the champagne flutes from the cupboard over the stove, the first one for Amber on the other side of the counter top, and the second for Cassie beside her.

“Well, now,” said Cassie, holding her glass up to the light, “this girl has never really celebrated her divorce—”

“Celebrate?” Robin almost dropped her champagne flute. To her, 'celebrate' and 'divorce' didn't belong in the same sentence, not when she'd met Marty so late in life, not when she'd only had three years—

Don't wallow.

“Yes, celebrate, because that gawdawful circus left town right after the fucking honeymoon.” She seemed unwilling to share the reasons. “Not that there was a whole lot of fucking on that honeymoon.” She giggled, uncorked the champagne and poured. “But enough about that.”

“Okay,” Robin said. “So, let’s celebrate your divorce, and what about inheriting Dubais Fine Autos? I think we should celebrate that, too.” For God's sake, she wanted to celebrate something.

“Yes, my very own dealership.”

“To Cassie.” Robin always pronounced the toasts. “May she and her dealership prosper.”

Cassie downed her champagne in one gulp. “Now wasn’t that orgasmic.” She extended her glass for a refill, downing it and pouring herself another. “But before I forget . . .” She opened the Nordstrom’s bag and handed each of them a gift-wrapped package amid thank-you’s and you shouldn’t have’s.

And well she shouldn’t have. Cassie’s propensity for gift giving was embarrassing; she needed to buy their friendship, but friendship wasn't for sale.

Robin’s gift was a name tag with ‘Chairman of the Bored’ beneath her name; she assumed the other name tags said ‘Member of the Bored.’ The gifts were never expensive, but they were constant. Maybe it didn’t bother Amber, but it bothered her because Cassie refused to accept any of their gifts. She didn’t understand the full meaning of ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive.’ She kept all the blessings to herself and robbed them of the opportunity to be blessed, too.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Amber threw her name tag on the counter and sucked her finger. “It bit me.” 

There must be some reason for Amber´s new and enriched vocabulary. Robin wondered if her marriage was in trouble. She walked around the counter.

“Here, let me.” She pinned the name tag to Amber’s cardigan. The words, ‘it’s going to be all right’ waited in the wings, threatening to walk on stage, but she didn’t say them. She didn't say them because other words took root in her mind, selfish words like, 'you're not helping me with my plan one bit, my friend.'

“Come on, Guys.” She grabbed some toothpicks from the kitchen counter top and led Amber by the hand into the living room. “Time for the big lottery.”

Amber chose the cushy beige sofa against the wall. Robin commandeered the armchair, not as comfortable, but she wanted to be close to Amber without hemming her in. Cassie sat on the love seat, curling her legs under her. If there’d been a man in the room, he would have been drooling.

Robin broke all except one toothpick, hid the uneven ends in her hand, and they drew lots for bedrooms: Cassie, the room with twin beds; Amber, the room with the Queen-sized bed; and Robin, the master suite on the main floor. Normally, the winner of the ensuite bragged about her victory, but tonight Robin wasn’t up for it. Amber’s long silences and uncharacteristic invectives upset her, although Cassie was Cassie; she never changed.  

Without waiting for a yay or nay, Robin called Pizza Hut.

While they waited, they ‘moved in.’ Back in the living room, they caught up on the news from the past year. 

“The usual,” Cassie said, twiddling with her hair. “Dear old Mama has depreciated since Daddy died. I’d feel sorry for her, except that depreciating and deprecating are two things she’s especially good at. She still calls me the Easter Bunny. She thinks pink is an awful color for me, as if Emily Post, not to mention the girls in her Bridge Club, would never approve of a freckled redhead who wears pink.”

“But you look terrific in pink.” Robin felt a twinge of envy. Cassie always looked terrific, even without make-up.

“I surely do, don’t I?” She fluttered her eyelashes and gave her shoulders a sexy shake. “Besides, this girl has given up dressing for dear old Mama because there ain't no map to the place called, ‘Mother’s Approval,’ is there?” She nudged Amber’s knee with her toe. “Is there, Amber?”

“What?” Amber released a sighing breath. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. I’ll try to do better.”

“Not to worry, but tell us your news, Girlfriend.”

“Not much to tell, really, but David's a full partner now, you know.”

“We already know that,” Robin said, and wondered if she were petty enough to resent Amber because she still had a husband. “Tell Cassie about your black belt in karate, why don’t you.”

“Oh, that. Fifth degree this year,” she said, as if her own achievements were less important than David’s. “How’s your business, Robin?”

They kept asking questions about her vet practice. Was healing animals supposed to console her during her grief? Work, the great healer, people said. Hah! People said a lot of things but that didn't make them true. When no one even mentioned Marty, she wondered whether they thought that a year should be long enough to grieve. Maybe if she and Marty had had children—

The doorbell rang, saving her from those thoughts, and when she returned with the pizza, Amber and Cassie organized the plates, napkins and beer on the square coffee table. The Board didn’t need its Chairman to be organized.

Amber was saying, “Almost makes me wish I had my own children.”

Cassie fought Robin for the first piece of pizza, but Amber wasn’t eating.

Robin knew she should be worried about Amber, but resentment won out. “You’re only thirty-nine.” She rose to switch on the gas fireplace. “You still have time.”

Cassie grabbed the last piece of pizza out of the second box. “Did you know that ninety-three percent of people who don’t have children by choice never have regrets?”

“But that’s their choice . . .” Robin remembered the nights she would whisper-pray her bargains to a non-existent God. Give me a child, and I will . . . what? Be perfect?

“Girl, having children is not the only reason for your existence, you know, and, anyway, fifty-three percent of the people who have children by choice wouldn’t do it again if they had their lives to live over.” She plumped up the pillows to emphasize her point.

Robin half-listened to them debate the pros and cons of having children, until Cassie talked herself out and said her good-nights.

Robin yawned and stretched, intending to follow her, but Amber’s eyes were fixed, staring.

“It started when I was three,” she said, out of nowhere. “He'd wait until my mother went to work, and then he’d give me a bath and kiss me,” hand slipping between her thighs, “here,” thighs clamping together.

Oh, Jesus! Robin bent over, huffing into her palms. Please Lord, don’t let me cry, please don’t let me cry, she needs me, the little girl, a baby, oh, my God, just a baby, how could a father . . . how could You, our Father! 

She moved to the sofa, reaching for Amber’s forearm, drawing Amber’s hand into hers.  “I’m so sorry.”

“There’s more.”

More? Can I handle this?

She knew about the abuse, but none of the distressing details until now. And why now? Because of the program about Three Dollar Bill? That must be it. She stroked Amber’s hand.

“He’d take me down the basement, get an empty ice cream bucket, and we’d go upstairs to their bedroom. He’d tell me to stand with my back against the side of their four-poster bed with the bucket beside me, and he’d rub Vaseline between my legs. He’d take a pillow off the bed, kneel on it, and put his thing . . .  between my legs, tell me to hold them really tight together. I’d squeeze my eyes shut tighter than my legs and I'd try not to breathe. . . ” A tear trickled down the side of her nose and into her mouth. She wasn’t even aware of it.

Robin squeezed her hand before grabbing a paper napkin from the coffee table and dabbing the tear away.

“All I could see was his hairy stomach.” Perspiration beaded Amber’s upper lip. “I’d keep my eyes shut and pretend the fairies . . .” Labored breathing filled the room. She opened her eyes wide. “But the fairies never came.

“After a while, he’d say . . . he’d say . . . I can't . . . I can't tell you what he'd say.” She coughed, a choking sound, as if she were close to vomiting, and no wonder, because Robin was close to gagging, too.

“I had to watch him spurt into the ice cream bucket, and afterward, he’d point to the pail and tell me that’s where babies came from, and I couldn’t pretend, Robin, I couldn’t pretend. That’s why the fairies never came.” She broke into sobs, gripped her legs and rocked back and forth.

Robin had seen Amber rock before, but now she understood why. And why her outburst in the kitchen prompted the lines she didn’t say. The lines that weren’t appropriate then were necessary now. “It’s all right, Amber. It’s going to be all right,” rocking, rocking, rocking, a fugue of rocking, while Robin crooned, “it’s all right, it’s going to be all right,” until the rocking slowed, and Amber reached for a napkin and blew her nose.

When would the anger start, the Three-Dollar-Bill rage?

“Does David know?”

“Poor David. Yes, he knows, but not all the details.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “He sure didn’t know what he was getting into when he married me. But that’s why he is so over-protective at times that I want to scream. I try to keep my mouth shut, though. Not something I’m very good at, unfortunately.”

She’s kept these secrets for . . . “How long did this go on?”

“Until my father died. I was eleven.”

Oh, God. Eight years.

“Did you tell your mother? Anyone? Surely someone could have stopped it.” But children didn’t tell, not when their world turned topsy-turvy in the telling.

“I sure as hell told my mother.” She grabbed a cushion, threw it across the room toward the balcony window, and erupted from the sofa. “Right after I started grade school, right after my father asked my friend Jennifer if she knew how to make babies.” She spat out the words like poison. “In front of me. I knew what would happen. I couldn’t . . . ”

   The pacing stopped at the fireplace. She faced Robin, head bowed, cowed somehow, as if expecting a reprimand. “I couldn’t let him hurt Jennifer, so when my mother got home that night, I showed her the ice cream bucket. She slapped it out of my hands, yelling and screaming, ‘Stop lying, Amber. Your father is a good man. Don’t ever say that again. You’re a bad, bad, girl.’”

What kind of mother puts her marriage ahead of her child?

“Typical, isn’t it?” Amber snorted, her mouth turning into a bitter line. “Cured me of telling anyone else, though.”

How had she survived? How did any of them survive?

“When my mother died, I was glad, Robin.” She brushed the surface of the mantel. “I still feel guilty being so happy, even though my aunt Barbara and my psychiatrist tell me I have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“You’re not bad. You know that, don’t you?” She rose, held her arms wide, and Amber stepped into her as if to a mother´s comfort.

“My psychiatrist told me that when I could tell a friend, the healing could begin. Thanks for listening, Dr. Robin.” She gave Robin a quick squeeze. “Oh, God, I’m all sweaty. Shower time.”

After she disappeared down the stairs with another ‘thanks for listening,' Robin went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. The light from the television flickered on the ceiling, casting shadows along the walls.

Her mother used to turn on the bedside lamp and make animal-shaped shadows on the wall. Robin felt safe then. You could say what you wanted about her parents, and Robin often did—her mother, stay-at-home mother, the priest groupie, who seemed to think that if she hung around the clergy, their imagined purity would rub off on her by osmosis; her father, the workaholic and stern disciplinarian; their relationship far too traditional for Robin´s taste. But they protected her. A family with flaws and dysfunctions, but they protected her. Who protected Amber?

Her parents raised her to believe in Good and Evil, two powerful forces battling for control of our souls. ‘Good and God will win,’ they said.

She rejected it all. Can’t touch it, can’t smell it, can’t taste it.

Can’t be.

Eventually, even agnosticism was too pale a word, and she declared herself an atheist. But now she wondered, because if Evil existed, so must Good.

Was it as Edmund Burke said—evil flourishes when good men do nothing?

 

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