“But then where would I go?” The question came out in a dead tone, like she’d gone over this a thousand times and believed there wasn’t an answer. “My mom died a few years back. I have a cousin I grew up with, but she’s got three kids. I can’t put them in danger. I don’t have anywhere to go. Would they keep Bobby in jail?”

The court system worked slowly. It was what had happened to Maryanne. She’d gotten away, gotten her husband arrested. He hadn’t had a record so he hadn’t served any actual time. He’d been put on probation and told to stay away from his wife. The restraining order hadn’t stopped him from walking in and killing her. He’d done it three days before his trial was to begin. She’d never even gotten her day in court. She’d gotten a funeral.

She had to be honest with Carrie. “Probably not. The sheriff can arrest him but if he can make bail, they’ll let him go. We can get a restraining order, but it can’t work if he refuses to honor it. It’s possible if the sheriff thinks it’s serious enough that you could be put into protective custody, but they don’t typically do that for domestic abuse cases.”

“Bobby will come after me. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her shoulders slumped. “I looked at myself in the mirror and realized if I didn’t get someone to stitch me up, I would look at that face for the rest of my life. It was like I needed to hide it, even from myself. He finally did something I can’t hide. What will he do when he realizes I came here? I don’t know how to explain this to him.”

“You don’t have to explain anything.” She couldn’t let this young woman walk back into hell. There were other ways. “If I found a women’s shelter for you, would you consider going to it?”

“A shelter. Is that like a homeless shelter? Because that’s what I’ll be.”

There wasn’t a shelter here in Papillon, but there was a well-run one in New Orleans. When she’d bought the clinic one of the first things she’d done was study up on all the resources she would need. Her clinic was about more than medicine. In a rural setting, she was the first line of defense when it came to a lot of her patients’ problems. “It’s not a homeless shelter, though many of the women who go through them are homeless. You would get a room and food, and more than that you’ll get counseling to help you set up a new life for yourself.”

“It’s just a house?” Carrie asked.