A Magical Moment
This is how it goes…
Chapter One
“First, I’d strap my husband on the bed with leather restraints.”
Denise Whitton’s black leather pump beat a nervous rhythm against her briefcase.
“How would you get him on the bed? Would you drug him?” Teensy asked, her meaty fingers digging another handful of potato chips from the large bag cradled on her lap.
Denise’s foot stilled. She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa between Teensy, an unkempt woman who must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, and a blond who oozed wealth and self-confidence.
“No, I wouldn’t drug him. I’d wait behind a door when he came home from work and knock him out with a frying pan,” she said. “Then I’d wait until he came to before I flayed him alive. You know, the death of a thousand cuts.”
A collective ohhh arose from the diverse group of women sitting in a circle. Taylor Cates sat next to an abandoned flip chart. Someone had tried hard to make the room homey in an overdone country style. Frills and flounces vied with the pleth¬ora of homemade crafts.
Taylor’s group session on restraining orders, court procedures, victim’s rights, and other legal matters was seriously off track.
“I liked that old movie, The Burning Bed,” the blond said. “Remember, the one with Farrah Fawcett, where she burned up her no-good husband in his bed and got away with it?”
“I loved that movie,” an Asian woman murmured, surprising Taylor. The woman rarely spoke up.
“I liked the movie where that stalker broke in to attack her and she ended up beating the crap out of him and tied him up, then was going to kill him and bury him out in the garden,” a teenager said, adjusting her baby so he could better latch on to her nipple.
“I’d like to do mine like that,” a woman murmured.
“I’m going to do mine the easy way. I’m going to get my nine and smoke him clean and simple. I’ll just make sure he sees who capped him before he dies,” another teenager said.
Dark emotions hung and shimmered in the air.
“There’s nothing clean and simple about doing life in prison,” Taylor said. “Remember that movies are fantasy. Hard time for first-degree murder is the reality.”
The room sobered, and the shadowed impression of fear and darkness that Taylor had felt rising dampened and faded. She expelled a slow breath and ran a hand over her dreadlocks, feeling chilled. Was something going to happen, or had it al¬ready come to pass? Did it involve one of these women, or someone close to them? She frowned. Her gift of prescience almost always raised more questions than it answered.
“We ran our mouths again, and Taylor didn’t finish telling us about the court procedures,” Denise said, looking at her with concern.
“We don’t want you to get in trouble,” the teenager with the baby said.
“Nobody’s going to get in trouble,” a grandmotherly-looking woman stopped knitting long enough to grumble. “Taylor here is just doing her job.”
“We have times and places and plenty of people available for us to talk to. Ms. Cates has legal things to talk to us about and her time is valuable,” said a Hispanic woman wearing a lab coat with the letters M.D. embroidered after her name.
“I suppose you can relate since you think your time is super precious too,” the blond commented.
Taylor stifled a sigh. She had a hard time getting a word in edgewise with this group. “I wasn’t frowning because I didn’t get my material covered. You needed to talk, and I allowed you to do so. We’ll meet here tomorrow, same time, and same place. Let’s wrap up.”
She had sensed how much these women needed to share the poignant sadness of their stories. She’d set her instructional material aside and given way to their need. Their sense of wonder at the similarity of their experiences and feelings, despite their external differences was still fresh. Pain and guilt had started to be overshadowed by the dawning reality that maybe it wasn’t their entire fault. Now came the anger frosted with a little pure glee that maybe it was all right to be mad at the son of a bitch. Mad enough to want to kill him.
