I was hemorrhaging badly in the emergency room after losing our baby, but my husband did not care; he yanked the IV from my arm, struck me across the face, and snarled, “You could not even carry a child properly, you worthless trash,”,…

When Karen and I visited, she sat across from us in a prison-issued smock, her silver hair cut short, her face without powder. She looked smaller than I had ever seen her. A woman who had spent seventy years on her appearance and now had nothing left to hide behind.

“You’re here about the tea,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I was told it would be gentle.” Her voice was dry, almost curious. “I was told it would only make you slow. Tired. Dependent. I did not know it would take the child.”

“You knew,” I said.

She said nothing.

“You did not know how it would end, but you knew what you were doing.”

Evelyn lifted her eyes. For the first time in six years, there was no contempt in them. Only something worn and exhausted.

“I wanted my son to be mayor,” she said. “I wanted it so badly I forgot everything else.”

“You forgot me.”

“Yes.”

“You forgot my baby.”

Her lips trembled.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I did.”

She was sentenced to another twelve years. She was seventy-three. She would die in that prison, and I did not feel sorry, and I did not feel glad.

I felt finished.

In the spring, I opened a small office on Halsted Street, above a bakery that smelled of cinnamon every morning. Dana ran the medical side. Monica Reyes, who had left WGN, wrote our grant applications. Marisol brought flowers every Friday and refused to be thanked.

We called it Hope’s Place.

It was a legal and medical advocacy center for women who had been harmed inside the systems that were supposed to protect them: hospitals, courts, marriages. We sat with them. We found them lawyers. We kept the records that other people tried to erase.

On the day we opened, a young woman came in with her arm in a sling and a bruise fading yellow along her jaw. She stood in the doorway, clutching her purse, afraid to step across the threshold.

“I don’t know if I’m in the right place,” she said.

I came around the desk and held out my hand.

“You are,” I said. “Come in. Nobody here is going to tell you it’s your fault.”

She took my hand. She stepped inside.

Behind me, on the wall, Dana had hung a small framed photograph. It was a white blanket, folded neatly, with a single white rose resting on top.

For Hope, the card beneath it read. Who never got to stay.

I touched the frame once, lightly.

Then I turned back to the woman in front of me and said the first words anyone had ever said to me when I needed them most.

“I believe you.”

THE END

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.