by Linda Berry
A slender teenager, dark-haired and pale-skinned, took the chair next to Ann. Her features were almost too strong to be pretty, though her expressive hazel eyes softened her brooding appearance. She wore a man’s motorcycle jacket, baggy jeans, and ankle high Nikes. A cigarette was tucked behind one ear and a letter was tattooed on each knuckle of her hands in blue ink, spelling GUYS SUCK. There was something tragic and vulnerable in her posture—one arm looped over the back of the chair next to her, her legs sprawled out in front. Maybe this was an attempt at toughness, but instead, she came across like a little girl dressed in her big brother’s clothing. Catching Selena’s gaze, she leered back. Selena glanced away.
A pretty black woman, dressed in an oversized orange sweater and faded jeans, with close-cropped bleached hair, approached Ann with her hand outstretched. “Hi, Ann. It’s so nice to see you again.”
“Hi, Jude.” Ann’s lips formed a stiff smile and she allowed Jude to clasp her hand briefly before pulling it back into a nest of interlocking fingers. “This is my friend, Selena, who I told you about.”
Jude’s inquisitive brown eyes turned to Selena, her manner amiable and confident. Selena sensed in her an innate strength that reminded her of Sidney.
“Nice to have you join us, Selena.” Jude smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth.
Selena nodded, noncommittal.
Jude seated herself next to Motorcycle Jacket.
The last straggler, who had been nervously hugging the coffee corner, slouched across the floor with darting eyes, as though the planks might open up and swallow her. She completed the circle by taking the remaining seat between Jude and Selena.
“Hello, Ladies,” Jude said. “So nice to have you here today. We have two new faces, so let’s open the meeting by going around the circle and introducing yourselves. Share whatever is most pressing in your life. Everything we say here is confidential, which means it never leaves this room. Agreed?”
Everyone nodded.
“Becky, want to start?”
With grave concern, Selena studied the woman sitting next to her. Becky was so thin she gave the impression of wasting away. She could be forty or fifty, hard to tell by her gaunt face. Her gray pallor, ice-blue eyes, and limp blonde hair gave her a faded look, like a photograph not fully developed. Gray slacks and matching sweater added to her colorless appearance. In contrast, a Rolex with diamonds around the face sparkled with her slightest move, catching light from the windows.
“Becky?” Jude repeated.
Becky blinked, cleared her throat, and began to speak in a hesitant voice. “Hi, I’m Becky. I’ve been seeing Jude since my son died of a drug overdose, nine weeks and two days ago. Joey was only eighteen. Just graduated with honors and a basketball scholarship to OSU.” She stared at her hands for a long moment.
“Becky?” Jude said. “Anything else?”
Lifting her drawn face, Becky cleared her throat again. “A part of me died with Joey. Since the funeral, I’ve lived in purgatory. I can’t concentrate, can’t eat.” Her eyes glistened with tears. Jude passed her a box of tissue. Becky blotted her eyes and continued in a voice so soft, Selena had to strain to hear. “My husband died two years ago. Now I’m alone. I’m not a mother anymore. I’m not a wife. I don’t know who I am. I feel invisible. This is the only place I don’t feel so alone, so useless.”
The room was dead quiet.
As Becky spoke, Selena’s pain returned, crawling out of the silence. A wave of grief washed through her so sharply it brought tears to her eyes.
“Selena,” Jude said gently. “I notice your strong reaction to Becky’s words. Would you like to share what you’re feeling?”
All heads turned to Selena.
Selena wanted to bolt, but running away would never get her closer to healing. “Becky just described my feelings exactly after my miscarriage last year. My second in four years.”
Selena met Jude’s dark eyes, which seemed an anchor in a stormy sea, and continued. “I understand how it feels to be invisible. After I lost Alissa, I went about my normal life; shopping and cooking, teaching my yoga class, but it felt meaningless.” She chewed her bottom lip. “All around me, people were taking pleasure in life, enjoying their families, making plans for the future, but my world was collapsing. My husband and I shared the same house, the same bed, but emotionally, we were a million miles apart. We couldn’t connect. Randy blamed me for the death of our babies. He looked at me like I was defective.” Selena closed her eyes, pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead, and felt more tears burn to the surface. “When I really needed him, he left me.”
“It’s okay,” Jude said softly. “Let the tears come.”
Selena let go of her reticence and cried in front of these strangers. She felt a gentle hand rubbing her back. Becky. On her other side, Ann took her hand and held it tight. The box of tissue appeared. More tears. Selena said in a husky voice, “I just found out my husband’s living with an eighteen-year-old. She’s pregnant.”
Becky gasped.
“Bastard,” Motorcycle Jacket hissed between clenched teeth.
Selena felt raw. She had opened an ugly wound for others to see. But the faces around her were soft with compassion and understanding. Their empathy felt like a soothing balm, dulling the sharpest stings of grief.
“Thank you, Selena,” Jude said quietly.
A respectful silence enveloped the room.
“Want to go next, Ann?” Jude asked.
Ann sat straighter in her chair and her interwoven fingers tightened. She said bluntly, “I have prosopagnosia.”
“Want to explain what that is?” Jude said.
“It’s facial blindness. I can’t distinguish one person’s face from another’s.”
Looks of surprise from Becky and Motorcycle Jacket.
“I can’t tell any of you apart,” Ann continued, words nervously running together. “My disorder makes me anxious about going out in public, so I stay home most of the time. It’s a struggle to find a connection with people. I try to memorize a unique feature about them, a limp, slouched posture, so I can remember who they are. I know Jude and Selena by their hair. But when Selena wears a ponytail, I no longer know who she is.” Ann spoke as though the words were lodged in her throat, fighting to come out. “So if you see me in town, don’t think I’m a snob. Tell me who you are, and I’ll say hello.” She lapsed into an awkward silence.
“Anything more you’d like to say about that, Ann?” Jude asked.
Ann coughed, shook her head. “That’s all for now.”
“Thank you.” Jude allowed silence to settle into the room. These pauses seemed to cleanse the air between people sharing. She turned to Motorcycle Jacket. “Nicole?”
The teenager impatiently brushed a lock of unruly hair from her forehead. “I’m Nicole. Thanks for inviting me into this fucking crazy group. Looks like I fit right in.”
Selena smiled. Nervous laughter from Becky.
“I’m a survivor of incest.” Nicole’s mouth twisted into a scowl. “Thanks to dear old Dad, the sleazy pervert. I was his main squeeze after my mom died when I was twelve.”
Selena’s gut twisted at the pain embedded in Nicole’s sardonic humor.
The only sound in the room was the wind pushing tree branches against the outside wall—a scraping, haunted sound
“I don’t want to dredge up all that crap today,” Nicole continued. “What I will say is that I finally got the strength to tell someone. The nurse at school. She became my advocate. She stood by me through the whole nightmare of reporting him and testifying.” Nicole exhaled sharply, as though eliminating a nasty odor. “Now he’s rotting in a tiny cement cell. Hopefully, with a jail mate named Predator, who’s giving him a taste of what he did to me.” With a rueful smile, she sagged in her chair, depleted, and something tender entered her voice. “Now I live with a foster family. Decent people. They make me come here. Fucking therapy with all you fucking nut jobs.” A shiver passed o
ver her, something dark and ethereal that revealed her fragility. “What I want to talk about, what I need to talk about, is Sammy Ferguson’s murder.”
A chill touched Selena’s spine. She met Ann’s gaze and saw her shudder.
“I knew Sammy,” Nicole said. “I ate at Hogan’s all the time. She and I use to joke around. She was beautiful and smart and really funny. Sometimes she gave me a free Coke or dessert. I’m having a hard time accepting her murder. And knowing her killer is still out there.” Fear tinged her voice and was mirrored on the faces of the other women.
“I knew her from Hogan’s, too,” Jude said sadly. “Her death came as a shock. Very scary the killer hasn’t been caught.”
Bright spots of color now burned in Becky’s cheeks.
“Becky? Want to add something?”
The thin woman’s lips tightened minutely.
“We’re listening.”
“I don’t want to speak ill of the dead,” Becky huffed. “But Sammy brought this upon herself.”
“What? You’re blaming the victim?” Nicole asked, indignant.
“I knew Sammy, too. She grew up in my neighborhood. Maple Grove. I know her parents.” Becky paused, swallowed. “She wasn’t Miss Perfect as you all seem to think. She was strung out on drugs, and she was in and out of treatment for years. The hurt she caused her parents…” She shook her head as her voice trailed off.
“I don’t believe it. That’s gossip,” Nicole said angrily. “She never seemed stoned to me.”
“Hold on, Nicole,” Jude intervened. “Let Becky talk. She has a right to speak her mind. Is there a point to this, Becky?
“Yeah, there’s a point. Sammy got my son high. I found pills in his room. I had to press him hard, but he finally confessed he got them from Sammy.” Becky inhaled sharply, exhaled. “I told her parents. Years of friendship went straight out the window. Jack accused Joey of lying. He said if I brought charges against Sammy, their lawyers would ruin Joey’s life. Have him locked up for years.”
“What did you do?” Ann asked, brow furrowed.
“I had no proof the pills came from Sammy. Joey was eighteen. An adult. About to leave for college. I only had him for one last summer. I couldn’t control him, but I did take away his car privileges. Drove him everywhere. Talked to him endlessly about the risk of doing drugs. I quoted statistics. Told him thousands of people are dying all across the country from overdosing. ‘Yeah, Mom, I know,’ he told me. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t do anything to jeopardize my scholarship.’ But he got hold of heroin laced with Fentanyl. Probably from Samantha. He shot it up. Died alone in his bedroom. I found him the next morning.” Tears welled in Becky’s eyes and she clenched and unclenched her jaw, trying to compose herself. “I torture myself with the thought that if only I found him sooner…” She swallowed and said with chilling bitterness, “I blame Sammy for his death. For introducing him to drugs.”
A solemn mood settled over the room. Selena was almost overwhelmed with pity for her.
A haunted look fell across Jude’s face. “So terribly sorry for your loss.”
Becky bent her head low and made a strangled noise, trying not to cry. “Will this pain ever go away?”
“The answer to that is yes,” Jude said in a tone that was calm and believable. Selena needed desperately to believe it too.
“Sadly, grief never completely fades,” Jude continued. “Right now, your world feels closed in, and there’s a dark, sad place in your heart. But in time, your world will expand again, and there will be more parts to it. You will learn to hold your pain in a private, sacred place.”
Becky sniffed and nodded.
Jude looked at the circle of women with soft, sad eyes. “Anything else we need to say about Samantha’s murder?”
“Is her killer going to kill someone else?” Nicole asked, her body stiff with fear.
Selena felt the tension in the room.
Ann suddenly blurted, “I stumbled upon her killer in the woods Thursday night. Dragging her body.”
Stunned silence.
“Oh my God. Did he see you?” Jude’s eyes were wide, the whites showing.
“Yes. He chased me.”
Several women gasped.
“I outran him,” Ann said hurriedly. “I hid. He couldn’t find me.”
“Thank God,” Becky said. “He would’ve killed you, too.”
“Did you see who it was?” Nicole asked.
Ann frowned. “I saw him. But I don’t recognize faces.”
Murmurs of comprehension.
“But he thinks you saw him,” Nicole said.
She nodded, face drawn.
“Let’s slow down, here,” Jude said. “Take it from the beginning. Tell us the whole story, Ann. Step by step.”
Ann started reciting her story in a dull monotone, and then her voice picked up speed and vibrated with emotion and she brought her experience into the room in sharp, vivid detail. Selena broke out in goose bumps.
No one interrupted, just listened, faces mobile and open. Unguarded. Expressions shifting from shock to stark fright. When Ann finished, the room erupted with questions. It was clear to Selena that Sammy’s murder had haunted these women, the horror locked in their imaginations, magnified by the rumors of rape and torture floating around town. Ann patiently answered each question and sketched in missing details. For the remainder of the session, emotions gushed, peaked, and eventually tapered off. Airing their feelings communally gave the women some relief, but no one would feel safe until the killer was caught.
“Sammy’s death was a traumatic event for our whole community,” Jude summarized. “This brutal tragedy can make us feel helpless. But we can take steps to protect ourselves. As the newspaper article this morning recommended, we need to stay alert. Don’t go out alone. If we notice anything unusual, report it immediately to the police.” She turned to Ann. “You had a terrifying experience, but you outsmarted a killer. You have strong instincts for survival.”
“Not so sure about that. I’m a wreck,” Ann said. “I’m glad Selena persuaded me to come back to therapy.”
All eyes turned to Selena.
“This your first time in therapy?” Jude asked.
Selena nodded. “I confess, I didn’t come willingly. I guess I was expecting to be dissected like a bug under a microscope.”
“Not today.” Jude gave her a teasing grin. “Maybe next time. Therapy can be summed up in one word. Healing. People come because they are suffering. Sorrow can feel like a heavy balloon lodged in your chest, weighing you down. Here, we support each other, share the burden, deflate its power.” Jude’s gaze swept the room, settling momentarily on each woman. “Therapy is not a panacea. It’s not something you complete or recover from, like the flu. You just keep pushing through the pain until you reach the other side.”
Selena glanced at Ann, her friend’s soft eyes trained on Jude, filled with hope and trust.
“Okay, ladies, that’s it for today,” Jude said. “Continue to show up and support each other. Next week, same time, same station.”
The women rose to their feet and folded their chairs, placed them against the wall, and quietly filed out. As they descended the stairs, Selena said to Ann, “That was extremely painful. But I’m glad I came. It was a relief to talk about my feelings without being judged.”
“It was a relief to talk about Sammy’s murder,” Ann said.
〜 〜
They emerged into a windswept autumn day. Tops of trees swayed against a clear cerulean sky. Rounded aspen leaves vibrated in the wind, sounding like flowing water. Leaves the color of apples and persimmons cartwheeled across the lawn and collected like snowdrift against the side of the church. Passersby strolled along the sidewalk wearing complacent expressions. A man walked a dog. A woman pushed a baby carriage. A young couple jogged by in colorful athletic wear. All oblivious to the world of pain exposed in the attic of the church.
Becky stood on the sidewalk, wind blowing her sallow hair, her
clothes hugging her spare frame.
“Need a ride?” Selena asked as they approached.
“No, thanks. My brother’s picking me up.” She glanced up the street. “Here he comes now.”
A silver Mercedes sedan eased to the curb and parked. The windows were down, and a familiar piano concerto drifted into the street before dying with the engine. Chopin. Recognizing the car and the driver, Selena turned to Becky with a touch of surprise. “Derek’s your brother?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“He comes to my yoga class.”
She blinked. “You’re his yoga teacher? He’s mentioned you many times. You’ve really helped him.”
Derek got out of the car and joined them on the sidewalk. Normally, he wore baggy yoga clothes, but today his khaki shorts and white cotton shirt emphasized his lean frame and muscular build. He was over six feet tall with broad, perfectly square shoulders and slim hips. Derek must hit the gym in addition to practicing yoga. Selena saw there were no burn scars on his arms or legs. The fire had affected only the left side of his face and throat and his left hand.
Derek smiled, the scarred tissue on his face masklike, offering little movement beyond his mouth, the one blue eye frozen in its tight seam. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Selena.”
She smiled back. “Small town.”
“So, you’re all in the same group.”
“Yes. I just met your sister.” Selena’s throat tightened, and she suddenly felt self-conscious. She’d been found out. Caught attending a therapy group. Soon the whole town would know that Randy ditched her for Allison. She didn’t need rumors flying that she was so devastated she had to seek professional help. She was determined to get through the divorce with dignity and grace.
Derek gazed at them with a steady, unruffled expression. He didn’t strike her as the type of person who would gossip or judge her. She forced barbed thoughts of Randy back into submission and introduced Derek to Ann.
He politely shook her hand, and they chatted about trivialities; the beautiful fall colors, the inexorable approach of winter, how unready they were for the cold. The sun highlighted the golden hair on Derek’s tanned forearms, and the wind tousled his dark hair. Outside of the yoga studio and in this more neutral environment, Selena viewed him in a different light. Non-threatening, and appealing.
