While You Were Out

trauma-and-survival

• Danny relayed a very specific plan to Holmer a few days before he died — the golf course, which tree. Still, Holmer would not allow himself to second-guess.

  WYW-003

• I was swinging my arms wildly, punching walls, throwing a chair. All the fear and rage and confusion were flying out of my body.

  WYW-007

shame

• If I was like Nancy, then I must be crazy, too. What was to stop me from ending up in a mental hospital, wearing paper slippers?

  WYW-008

• The parish priest said the boy's body would not be permitted inside the church, defiled by the stain of suicide. The casket idled in a hearse parked down the block.

  WYW-012

grief

• Back home, bleeding and exhausted, Mary Kay collapsed on her bed. Another family secret had been swallowed whole, undigested.

  WYW-011

• Like Peter in the garden, I knew instantly I had betrayed the one person who most consistently modeled love, and I was bitterly disappointed in myself.

  WYW-014