“Honey, I have to tell you honestly that I’m worried about us in general, and I’m worried that things are never going to get better,” Mitch started. “You seem to be living a double life. You try to keep it together for the kids and the neighbors and even your parents, but behind the scenes and with me, well, it just seems like you’re never going to get over this. And now things are starting to happen that, well, just aren’t good. Half the time you don’t seem like you’re even here.”

She winced at him, and was about to jump on the “double life” comment, but backed off when she saw that he was genuinely concerned. “I know that’s what it looks like, Mitch, but I think I’m getting better, and I don’t know what else to do. I can’t just wipe Rachel and Evan out of my mind. And sometimes I can see Danny doing that, you know, that night, and I get so damned angry at him, that I want to kill him! I’m going as crazy as he must have been, because I start to think about their last minutes, over and over, and I can’t get these horrible pictures out of my mind.”

“Doesn’t it help to pray about this, honey? And what about that women’s support group at the church?”

“Are you kidding? You see that closet over there?

“Yeah. What about it?

“When I can’t stand it anymore, that’s where I go and kneel on the floor and ask God to let me stop thinking, and stop hating and being so angry all the time. I must do that six or seven times a day, but I still can’t let go of this. It just seems like the world is such an awful place with so much misery. So hopeless and ruthless and random. Then I start to think that something awful is going to happen to you or one of the kids. Particularly the kids, to tell you the truth.

“Sometimes I start to feel a little bit better, and even start to believe everything is okay and that Rachel and Evan are in heaven, but then I think about Christopher and what he went through, and how devious Danny was and how selfish. It’s like this merry-go-round that I’m on and I can’t get off of it. I can’t stop thinking about it.

“And the support group means well, but actually, well, they’re mainly a bunch of women who have had awful things happen, like their kids dying, or husbands who walked out on them, or abusive husbands, and I leave there more depressed than when I walked in …”