There’s two of them in the unit above Cherish’s: voices arguing with each other. A couple, Cherish’s mom claimed. She’d helped them carry a box of crockery up the apartment’s narrow stairwell when they moved in last month. The woman’s expecting, her belly distended, her shoes orthopedic. And the man supposedly has a condition that makes physical exertion difficult, but from the way Cherish’s mom explained it, he just sounds lazy. Their fights are nightly, short and loud.
Cherish is at home curled up on the same rattan couch where she used to fall asleep watching cartoons. The TV’s going as it always does when she’s alone, but she stopped paying attention from the moment she turned it on. On the screen, housewives answer trivia questions for the chance to win a full kitchen makeover. She’d given up watching kid’s stuff long ago in junior high school when this one girl, Monica Brentwood, real nasty, laughed at her Bullwinkle impression in a mean way. Next month she’ll be thirty-five.
“Stop following me,” the woman upstairs is saying. “I’m done talking to you.”
“I’m not following you,” the man says.
“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me.”
“Don’t raise your voice at me.”
Back and forth, on and on. The drama’s repetitive, but its proximity to Cherish feels exciting: not too close to be her problem, not too distant to be just another pointless TV show—the perfect spectacle. She lights another cigarette, inhaling deeply, doing breathing exercises to cancel out the negative effects of the nicotine.
The arguing stops when Cherish has finished smoking. She hears footfalls, a slamming door, nothing. She forgets that the radiator is going until it clicks off, leaving dead air.
“I think we have our winner,” the TV announcer says.
One of the upstairs people goes downstairs. Cherish’s curiosity rises when she hears them walk across her landing, the sound of them growing louder. They stop outside her door.
Three knocks. Cherish rises from the couch and looks in the rounded mirror, also from childhood. Lucky for her, she looks presentable, her hair clean and curled, her makeup fresh. Still, panic seizes her chest.
Another knock. The woman’s voice is speaking, asking if anyone’s home. “Is Sandra there?” she asks.
No, Sandra isn’t here. Sandra, Cherish’s mom, has been out all day helping Cherish’s sister Pearla shop for the perfect prom dress, which Pearla’s school says must be modest—no spaghetti straps nor strapless-ness, no decolletage, no spandex and nothing above the knee. They probably stopped for lunch. If they haven’t found anything, Pearla will have fallen back on her dieting schtick, convinced she’s fat—she, Pretty Lil’ Pearl, the sister with the hips and butt and flat, never-been-pregnant stomach. Then she’ll cry when their mom makes her eat, then bicker, and by the time they get back, it’ll be dark. The woman upstairs should just come back tomorrow.
“Hello?” the woman says.
“Hold on,” Cherish says.
She re-ties the sash of her dress, strikes a pose in the mirror and teases her hair with her fingers. For once, she’s put together. This morning, she had to go back downtown to finalize the divorce. She’d set her hair the day before.
The woman upstairs smiles when Cherish opens the door. Cherish smiles back, copying her mom’s sugary voice when she asks if anything’s the matter. This is the first time she’s seeing her up close.
The woman fidgets with her hands. She has a brown pie face. Her eyes look magnified underneath her bifocals. “Sorry to bug you,” she says, craning to see past Cherish.
“It’s no problem,” Cherish says. “Did you need anything? Something to drink?”
“I think I have the wrong apartment number. I’m looking for Sandra Foster.”
“I’m Sandra’s daughter.”
“Oh.” The woman looks surprised. “Sorry, I thought she had just the little girl.” She smiles, extending her hand. She’s lacquered her nails a deep shade of green. “I’m Sophia by the way.”
“Cherish.”
“What?”
“That’s my name.”
Sophia’s large, violently rouged smile feels even less genuine than Cherish’s. “Such an interesting name,” she says, beaming. “I’ve never heard it before. First time for everything, I guess. Nice to meet you.”
They shake hands. Shame weighs Cherish down so heavily that she feels herself sinking all the way to hell. Her mom’s trying to erase her, she thinks. She’s pretending Cherish’s marriage never happened when she’d insisted on planning the wedding.
Cherish’s mom’s always been one to put on airs to save herself and what remained of the family. Her life’s mission: obscuring the inconvenient fact that had dominated her and her daughters’ lives for a while now. The fact: the Foster women attract no-good men—didn’t matter if they were black, Spanish or Pearla’s white boyfriend who got into a fistfight with his step-uncle. Most of Cherish’s mom’s friends think her husband died when he really just jumped ship for another woman up north in Texarkana, then a different one further south in Galveston.
“Are you okay?” Sophia asks.
“Yes,” Cherish says. “I’m sorry, what do you want again?”
“It’s a bit private. Sorry.”
“Okay,” Cherish says, and starts closing the door.
“Wait!” Sophia says. “I don’t mean to bother you. My husband has me so stressed out, and our apartment’s about as big as a shoebox so there’s nowhere to go. Is it okay if I come in and stay for a little bit? Not long. Just until he cools off.”
“Sure,” Cherish says. Her mom would get annoyed if she turned away one of her many varied friends. She used to always get on her for being shy towards the women at church, calling her sassy and impolite.
Cherish and Sophia drink tea in the kitchen. The window captures the city’s darkening skyline so perfectly that it’s like looking at a picture, its crown molding and dirty scrolled corners a baroque frame in disrepair. It makes the low-rise apartment feel less cramped. One can just make out Mexico way off in the distance.
“You have such a pretty view,” Sophia says.
“It is nice,” Cherish says.
“The elementary school blocks most of our windows. All you can see is a big brick wall. Sometimes I can hear the little kids play, which is nice.” Sophia looks down at her belly as if just remembering it. “There’s something relaxing about listening to them,” she adds.
Cherish looks up at the clock. It’s almost six, and still nothing from Pearla or their mom. She hopes one of them remembers to bring home milk. She wants to make cornbread to go with her mom’s leftover casserole, maybe a hot milk cake too.
“Have you ever been across the border?” Sophia asks.
“Plenty of times,” Cherish says. “My mom and me used to go there to get our teeth cleaned since a lot less local dentists in the area took black patients, and the one we used to see near here had a kid die of sepsis in his care. I don’t think he was very hygienic. There was mold on the ceiling.”
“How terrible.” Sophia pauses to take a sip from Pearla’s favorite Minnie Mouse cup. “Are you black?”
“My mom,” Cherish says. “My dad’s from Mexico.”
“What part? I have family in Juarez.”
Cherish shrugs. “He died when I was really little,” she hears herself lie. She purses her lips, already tired of the subject.
Sophia presses her bushy eyebrows together, pinching her face into a look of almost-sympathy. Judgment radiates from her. It’s as if she’s picking through the lies. Her large eyes are inquisitive, searching. They travel to the poorly plastered-over, head-sized hole in the wall that Cherish’s dad had made stumbling drunk around the room. (“Get out!” Cherish’s mom had yelled at him. “I ain’t raising no babies with no Goddamn alcoholic.” Then over the phone a few days later: “What d’you mean you’re not coming back? Ramone, no, please don’t do this to me.”)
Sophia gets misty-eyed. “Sorry,” she says, sniffling. “It’s just that my husband has me so worked up. I feel like I’m gonna miscarry because of him. I’m just so tired of it all. It never ends with him.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, why’s he so angry?” Cherish clears her throat, her shame shrinking under the woman’s, her chest rising. “Maybe I could help.”
Sophia throws her hands in the air. “There’s way too much to explain about Ben. I’m sure you don’t wanna be bothered.” Then, after another sip: “It’s just that he really hates my side of the family. I had him wire my sister money so she could pay off some overdue bills. It was supposed to be a loan until she got on her feet since CPS won’t let her see her children otherwise. She used to clean up at a cannery. I thought she’d find work elsewhere but then it turned out that she just upped and left with all the money. She didn’t even pay her rent.”
“Wow.”
Sophia presses her palms against her mouth and makes a low, animal-like noise that’s something between a scream and a groan. Cherish startles.
“So sorry,” Sophia says. “My sneezes are all off, I know—Ben’s always complaining about them. I had scarlet fever real bad as a child, so my throat’s not the same as what it was.”
Cherish nods and puts her hand on Sophia’s. “You don’t have to apologize,” she says. “It must be hard. I’ve been having similar issues with my husband.”
“Oh Gosh, I feel sorry for you then.”
“My husband’s a psychotherapist,” Cherish says, “so he has a lot of stories, and he’s always on edge from the stress. I used to make him drinks in advance and put them in the freezer so that they were extra cold when he came home.” A rosy feeling rises from Cherish’s gut. She speaks faster: “He’s such a talent, though. He used to work with shellshocked vets before he started his own practice. A lot of his patients caught on to him so well that they’d always be inviting him out for beers. Of course he told them no for professionalism’s sake.”
“Does he live with you?”
Sophia’s voice snuffs out Cherish’s rosiness, leaving her exposed again.
“No,” Cherish says. “Ex-husband.” The word still doesn’t feel right on her tongue, its aftertaste strange and foul and almost-familiar like rotten milk. “I’m divorced.”
Sophia’s mouth drops a little. “Oh, God. I can’t imagine. I’ve heard how traumatic that can be.”
Cherish makes herself laugh, but the squeaky sound that comes out of her throat doesn’t sound very happy. “I’m not sad at all,” she says. “I’m happy.”
“It must’ve been so hard for you.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” Cherish snaps.
“Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. It’s completely fine—really!”
Sophia rises from her chair. She looks down at her feet. “I should probably get going,” she says. “I think I might stay at my friend’s place until Ben cools off.”
“Hope everything works out,” Cherish says.
On the way out, Sophia stops to hug Cherish. At first, Cherish doesn’t know what to do, so she lets herself be embraced until she feels herself getting too emotional. She pulls back first.
A few minutes after Sophia’s left, Cherish’s mom comes back with Pearla. Cherish hears all of them talking in the hallway.
“That dress is gorgeous!” Sophia’s voice says. “I really love the color. It’s just like the ocean.”
Pearla comes into the apartment first, dress in hand as she sings the refrain to “Isn’t She Lovely.” She spreads it out on the kitchen table, the light of the overhead lamp turning the rhinestones into starlike twinkles of light.
“Well?” Pearla says. “What d’you think? It’s perfect, right? The fabric’s taffeta. Don’t touch, though. I can’t have wrinkles.”
Cherish offers generic compliments even though she finds the design a bit tacky. “How wonderful,” she hears herself saying. “So nice. What a pretty color. ” She’s not thinking. She can’t. Her divorce clouds her thoughts like a thick smog. She can’t stop remembering those words: broken woman. Her mom goes into the kitchen to start dinner. The clanging of pots and pans annoys Cherish on an irrational level. She just wants her old place back, not this one with its ancient furniture but the other one with Darryl.
“That’s exactly what Sophia said,” Pearla says, “but I feel like the outer layer’s darker than aquamarine. The lady at the store said the color’s called ‘Promise.’”
When Cherish doesn’t respond right away, Pearla waves a hand in her face. “Are you still alive?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” Cherish mumbles.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know. The usual.”
Pearla rubs Cherish’s back. She’s getting sad for Cherish, which makes Cherish feel even sadder because today’s supposed to be Pearla’s day—they’ve been saying so for weeks, Pearla slowly collecting her savings for the outfit of her dreams. Cherish can’t risk having her misery infect Pearla too. Peppy Pearla with her sparkly dress, rainbow painted fingernails, and purple-rimmed glasses; her automatic, high-fidelity record player and comedy records; her youth, her face a rounder, chubbier reflection of what Cherish used to look like. Her boyfriend’s supposed to be taking her to the dance, but she hasn’t said anything to their mom yet—only Cherish—and when she does, there’ll be an argument for sure, because this boy’s been to jail while the farthest Pearla’s ever been from home was Bible camp one summer.
“Lemme hem that for you,” Cherish says. She doesn’t wait. She gets out the sewing kit from the wardrobe.
Pearla whines as she puts on the dress, saying that she’s starving and also that she can’t ever have carbs. She mounts the old baby stool she used to climb to reach the bathroom sink when she was little. She probably doesn’t remember him, but their dad built it.
Cherish wears a pin cushion like a bracelet. She thinks of her childhood, motherhood. She’s the mother of two miscarriages and, before that when she was really little, a plastic baby doll that her mom has pictures of Cherish trying to nurse.
“You always wanted to be a momma,” her mom used to say, which wasn’t a lie. One time, when Cherish was pushing baby Pearla through Kroger in her stroller, this lady, white, stopped her and said that she had the most darling little daughter, and Cherish didn’t correct her.
Cherish’s hands work on the dress as her mind hurdles back to her old life with her ex, their old apartment in the nicer part of the city, and the horse ranch he promised that he’d buy one day for her and all the children she was supposed to give him. She wonders if things would’ve worked out different had she met her ex in high school instead of in her thirties at the Garden Inn’s taproom. Would he have loved her more deeply then? Maybe. If only he’d grown up here instead of in Chicago. She pretended not to be jealous when he told her in passing about girls he’d fallen for as a kid in Bronzeville: pretty girls from school, his mom’s friend, a bank teller, a play-cousin who turned out gay, a nun, Jayne Mansfield.
Fat tears roll down Cherish’s cheeks. Her mom comes up behind her, whispering, “Baby, let’s not do this right now,” and Cherish nods, wiping away snot with her free hand while Pearla pretends not to see. Pearla redresses in her overalls. Then she and Cherish set up the table while their mom deshells shrimp.
Their mom spots the two mugs in the sink. As she washes them, she asks Cherish if Sophia was doing better or if that man of hers was still giving her a hard time.
The second, Cherish says, her eyes going towards the window again. She peers down and sees what has to be Sophia. There she goes, Cherish thinks, the same powder blue sundress from earlier. A blue blip, that’s what she is. A taxi pulls up and she gets inside, looking over her shoulder before she closes the door.
“Poor lady,” Cherish mumbles. She looks up. “Hey, Ma,” she says, “I think Sophia might be leaving her husband. She’s getting into a taxi now.”
“Her money situation is a nightmare from what she told me,” Cherish’s mom says. “One-thousand dollars—that’s how much her cousin stole. Can you believe it?”
“I think it was the sister.”
“Was it now? I can’t remember. The woman’s a real talker.”
“At least I stuck it out with Darryl. Didn’t work out all the same, but still. I tried. I didn’t run away.”
Cherish’s mom clears her throat. She doesn’t say anything. The silence speaks for her, telling Cherish to be quiet, to mind her business and help her in the kitchen with the black beans she’s draining. Still, Cherish goes on, talking about all the future she has now that the divorce papers are signed, as if seeing Sophia pull away in the taxi has made her suddenly optimistic. A few months stuck at her mom’s is barely any time at all compared to the decades she still has to live.
“It’s not too late for me,” Cherish says. “There are a million women in the world who have it way worse, and I’m nowhere near being them. Marielle from work says we might be getting a raise just like the rest of the accounting department, so there’s hope in a way.”
“Mhm,” her mom says.
“I don’t have to have kids to be happy. Maybe I could go into teaching. Or babysit on the side. It’d be like being a part-time mother.”
“There’s no such thing as a part-time mother. A caretaker, sure.”
“I just wanna be happy.”
Cherish regrets saying these words as soon as she hears them. She waits for her mom to tear her down, to tell her for the umpteenth time that she should’ve done this, that, and the third if she’d really been serious about Darryl. After the first loss, her mom had been supportive in her usual overly instructive manner, giving Cherish big jars of vitamins and recipes for soups that were supposed to improve circulation. “Don’t change the litter box,” she’d warn at the end of every call. “Have Darryl do it.” She’d read somewhere that cat feces cause birth defects. She liked Cherish’s husband, but not his pet tabbies, which she said looked dirty, more like alley cats than the cute purebred ones with the smushed-in faces.
“It’ll work out,” her mom says now.
Cherish nods, smiles, her eyes still red. “Thanks.”
She looks out the window again. All that’s left is a long strip of mostly empty road save for the two clunkers parked on the opposite side. Also, the horizon. The sunset has painted the sky pinkish orange.
Thank God Cherish isn’t Sophia. Cherish has money. Options. Though the old apartment’s gone, the divorce settlement is enough to get her out of her mom’s. All she needs to do is figure out where to go, what to do. She should feel lucky. Her breakup hadn’t been violent.
Darryl was gentlemanly, the coddled child of two teachers and six older, very doting sisters. There was never any hitting or screaming with him, no police visits or arrests. Cordial, the lawyers called the divorce. One of them had a client who’d tried to poison her husband with the little packets of silica gel that keep new shoes fresh. What a nightmare. Darryl was never like that at all. It was his disappointment that hurt Cherish. He’d given her so many clues after the second miscarriage. He never wanted to be the one to end things though, not even when the relationship was new and strong, always waiting for her to hang up first on those long, pining calls. He just wanted to move on, he said now. He was tired.
All she could give him was death, and though he never said so outright, Cherish knew him well enough to feel his emotions swelling up inside of herself, his disappointment and hidden disgust becoming hers forever.
The next day, they’re at it again: screaming, crying, and carrying on. Sophia’s returned and Ben is beside himself.
“You were out fucking Ronny again, weren’t you?” Ben says. “It was him. I know it was him. Don’t lie to me.”
“Give me back my shoes,” Sophia says.
“Say one more word and I’ll go find the bastard myself.”
“You’d better not. I’m warning you, Ben. Ben? Ben! I’ll leave barefoot if I have to.”
Cherish drinks wine and shakes her head. “How terrible,” she keeps saying as she massages Pearla’s scalp, “so terrible.”
“I wish they’d shut up already,” Pearla says.
Pearla starts coughing again, squinting as she tries to watch Little House on the Prairie without her glasses. She’s curled up in a tight, catlike ball, her head on Cherish’s lap, her forehead balancing a frozen water bottle.
Pearla’s dance is tomorrow, but their mom says she can’t go because her fever won’t break. She must’ve picked something up at one of the dress shops. Her skin is hot to the touch. Their mom should be coming back soon with more Tylenol.
Cherish wants to take this private moment to tell her sister so much, mostly warnings, but can’t figure out how to without sounding like their mom. Don’t stay with people who break your heart, she thinks, imagining the words traveling down her fingers and directly into Pearla’s brain like electricity.
“D’you think we should call the police?” Pearla asks. “That guy sounds insane.”
Cherish puts a finger up to her lip. The upstairs is silent now. Then there’s a loud crash.
Quickly, Cherish gets up, moving Perla’s head, her heart beating fast. She’s pretty sure Sophia’s okay, there’s no screams of pain. She almost sits back down when she hears Ben say, “Look, I’m sorry,” and then Sophia’s light footfalls echo through the stairwell. Cherish feels like she’s about to choke on her heart.
Clop, clop, clop. Sophia must be wearing heels this time.
“I’m leaving you!” Sophia yells at the top of her lungs.
“Fine,” Ben says, yelling down at her.
“Will you two shut up already!” yells a third voice, that of the elderly black woman who lives across from Cherish’s family. She slams her door and the fight goes on in the stairwell.
“Come on,” Pearla whispers to Cherish, her hoarse voice almost gone, “let’s just call the police. That guy sounds crazy.”
“Okay,” Cherish says.
She walks up to the phone and past it to the door. When she goes out into the corridor, Pearla rushes behind her.
“What’re you doing?” Pearla whispers, but Cherish ignores her.
Sophia and Ben are still in the stairwell. Cherish rushes toward the former, her stomach a turgid water balloon of excitement and dread. She looks up and sees him: Ben, his face swarthy, his hair mussed.
“If you gotta leave,” he says, “then you better take your stuff with you. All of it.”
He disappears, and for a moment, there’s peace. Then he comes back out again and starts throwing things at Sophia. First small things: candles, books, newspapers, a tied-up stack of Reader’s Digest issues. Gradually, his rage increases, and with it the objects’ sizes: shoes, a lazy Susan, a drawer full of panties and bras, kitchen bowls, pots and pans, a birdcage with a parakeet squawking inside. He keeps coming back out, surprising Sophia as she rushes to pick up the broken pieces of her life with him.
The whole time, everyone else is taking cover and scrambling like they’re at war. Pearla helps Sophia retrieve her things. Cherish tries to pull her back further into the corridor, but Pearla keeps pushing her away. Pearla’s bigger. Stronger. Though the girls at her school used to push her around, she could punch a hulk-sized dent into metal, having demonstrated so on the souped up truck of a boy who wouldn’t stop following her.
There’s a loud crash. A mini fridge, its door swung open, beers everywhere, some of them leaking brownish-blonde foam. Cherish goes for Pearla one final time but slips on a puddle. She falls on her side so hard she feels her soul rattling around her bird-boned body.
All Cherish can see is the ceiling, the dim, exposed lightbulb and the water stain that’s kinda shaped like Florida or maybe Italy. She doesn’t see the exercise weights when they first land. She just hears more screaming. The silence that comes after is what alerts her.
“Oh my God,” Sophia is saying, “No, no, no, no.”
Over by the fridge that looks like it was holding a bomb: a new puddle, deep red and growing. Cherish sees Pearla on the floor and closes her eyes, shaking her head. A protective panic takes hold of her, only this time it’s much stronger than before. Her mouth suddenly tastes like it’s full of pennies.
On the drive home from John Sealy Hospital, Cherish stops at the gas station near the local pool. She’s craving the fifty-cent tamales Pearla’s obsessed with. She’s not hungry. She just craves the rough feel of the corn husks and the way her sister used to lick them clean.
“We’re all out, ma’am,” says the overly freckled white girl working the register. “We’ve got other stuff though. Check the freezer section.”
Cherish thanks her. She thinks of buying more smokes but stops herself, remembering what her mom had read about nicotine and fetuses, as if the information matters anymore.
Not knowing what else to do, she walks through the aisles, studying the bright packaging of pork rinds, Circus Peanuts, potato chips, Moon Pies, beef jerky, popcorn, licorice, Twinkies—on and on, endless rows of junk food. People pass by her without looking. Nothing, she keeps thinking. There’s nothing in the world left for her.
As she’s about to leave, she comes across that boy Pearla’s dating. She’s seen him a few times before, mostly at Pearla’s volleyball games. She creeps closer. Yep, she thinks. That’s definitely him: same dirty blonde hair, same lanky frame. He thinks of telling him what happened but can’t find her voice. Tonight’s the dance.
The boy’s talking to the cashier. She gives him a skeptical look, swishing her lips as if he’s a flavor of soda she can’t decide if she wants or not.
“I can give you my number if you don’t wanna gimme yours,” he says.
“You must think I have ‘stupid’ written across my face,” she says. “No way. I’ve heard the rumors. You’re trouble.”
“Awe, come on, girl, don’t go listening to those people. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” He leans into the counter, resting his hands against its surface. “I’m a real good person when I try to be.”
The cashier crosses her arms. A moment passes where they just look at each other.
“Naw,” she says. “Like I said: you’re trouble.”
Cherish can’t take them anymore. She rushes outside. She thinks she’s going to throw up and doubles over by some shrubs. Nothing comes out of her. She gasps for air.
It’s late. The sky is dark with no stars. This morning, Cherish overheard one of the nurses calling Pearla’s case hopeless, and though she knows the woman was probably right, she can’t help but hate her. So much hate. She’s bursting with it, its sources too heavy to sift through. There’s that nurse but so many others; even people she hasn’t thought of in years are starting to grate at her. She tries not to think about them as she drives home, blasting the radio, but then a reporter comes on and starts talking about Pearla’s accident without giving her name and she almost has a head-on collision with a Station Wagon.
She should go home. But she can’t. The apartment is too empty. Ben’s in jail. Pearla’s on life-support and their mom’s been by her side since the tragedy, which is dragging into its third day now.
Then there’s the issue with the stairwell. The mess is gone but not cleaned. Everything still smells like beer. The linoleum is sticky. The gas station was a spotless oasis by comparison.
But Cherish goes home because there’s nowhere else to go. She makes it all the way to the unit’s door and freezes when she hears a noise from upstairs.
Clop, clop, clop. Cherish’s heart’s about to explode.
“Sandra?” Sophia says.
“It’s Cherish,” Cherish says.
Sophia hugs her belly as she comes around the corner. She’s trembling. This is the first time she’s shown herself since the accident. Her hair’s matted. She’s in a threadbare housecoat and a slip, no bra. When she gets closer, Cherish can see the dark half-moons underneath her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “You have no idea. I’ve been praying for days!”
“You need to calm down,” Cherish hears herself say, her voice cool and even. “The baby—remember?”
“I just don’t know what to say,” Sophia says. “This is all my fault.”
Cherish shakes her head, but Sophia keeps going.
“How bad off is Pearla? Is she gonna make it? I’ve been up all night thinking about her. Do you need money? I can give it to you. I want to help”
“She’s fine,” Cherish whispers.
“But the blood.”
“I said she’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t imagine the pain you must be feeling.”
“No,” Cherish whispers.
“What?”
Right as Sophia’s about to speak again, Cherish slaps her across the face. Sophia whimpers, but she doesn’t seem stunned. She just nurses her face. It’s not the first time she’s been hit. Blood trickles out from her nose.
Cherish offers her a silk handkerchief from Brooke’s Brothers. For the first time since the accident, she lets herself smile. It’s a close lipped smile. Nothing can get past it.
“You must be so desperate right now,” Cherish says. “Can’t imagine what it’s like having a husband in jail.”
