apartments, counseling rooms, a legal clinic, gardens, and a playground overlooking the mountain.
Women could arrive there quietly.
Children could sleep behind locked doors without fear.
And unlike Rebecca, they did not have to disappear forever.
At the entrance stood a stone plaque.
It read:
**FRANK BELL HOUSE
FOR THOSE WHO NEED SAFETY WITHOUT LOSING THEIR NAME**
Rebecca cried when she saw it.
So did I.
On opening day, Daniel stood beside me.
Lily held his hand.
Jenna stood several feet away.
Older somehow.
Quieter.
She approached me slowly.
“Carol.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
There had been a time I imagined destroying her.
Exposing her.
Humiliating her.
Making her feel every ounce of pain she had caused my son.
Instead, I looked at the woman in front of me.
She wasn’t innocent.
She wasn’t the monster I had first imagined either.
She was human.
Messy.
