“Buster said they’d busted up every blessed knickknack in the place. I’ll have some of that lobster salad, Nell, honey,” Dorcas Burmingham said, then went straight back to gossiping with her companion. She and Biddy Devlin, Mia’s third cousin once removed and the proprietor of Surfside Treasures, had a standing lunch date at the café every Monday at twelve-thirty.

“I heard Sheriff Todd had to forcibly remove the man from the premises,” Biddy expounded. “At gunpoint.”

“Oh, Biddy, no such thing. I talked to Gladys Macey, who had it straight from Anne Potter who sent for the sheriff in the first place that Zack had his gun holstered right along. Can I have an iced mocha with that salad, Nell?”

“Domestic disputes are one of the most dangerous calls for a policeman,” Biddy informed her. “I read that somewhere. My, that soup smells divine, Nell. I don’t believe I’ve ever had gazpacho before, but I’m going to have to try a cup, and one of your brownies.”

“I’ll bring your lunch out to you,” Nell offered, “if you’d like to get a table.”

“Oh, that’s all right, we’ll wait for it.” Dorcas waved the offer away. “You’ve got enough to do. Anyway, I heard that even though that brute bloodied that poor woman’s lip and blackened her eye, she stuck by him. Wouldn’t press charges.”

“It’s a crying shame is what it is. Odds are her father beat on her mother, so she grew up seeing such things and thinking that’s just what happens. It’s a cycle. That’s what the statistics say. Abuse spawns abuse. I’ll wager you, if that woman had grown up in a loving home, she wouldn’t be living with a man who treated her that way.”

“Ladies, that’ll be thirteen eighty-five.” Nell’s head throbbed like a bad tooth, and her nerve endings stretched thin as hair strands while the two women went through their weekly routine of whose turn it was to pay.

It was always playful, and usually it amused Nell. But now she wanted them gone. She wanted to hear no more about Diane McCoy.

What did they know about it? she thought bitterly. These two comfortable women with their comfortable lives? What did they know about fear and helplessness?

It wasn’t always a cycle. She wanted to scream it. It wasn’t always a pattern. She’d had a loving home, with parents who’d been devoted to each other, and to her. There had been arguments, irritation, annoyances. While voices may have been raised, fists never had.

She had never been struck in her life before Evan Remington.

She wasn’t a goddamn statistic.

By the time the women headed off to a table, thin, sharp-edged bands of steel had locked themselves around Nell’s temples. She turned blindly to the next customer and found Ripley studying her.