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Author's Note:
Written for the 2024 Oz Drabble Tree.
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Genevieve stands at the kitchen sink, staring through the dark window into oblivion as the sleeping house creaks around her.
It's been 3 days since the sentencing, the end of the first act. Year one, month one, week one. Day 3.
Her and Tobias had had a good life, a normal life. The wedding was normal. Their kids were normal. Even the alcoholism was normal — her father was a lawyer, too, she knew how it was, long nights laying alone in bed, lulled to sleep by the whispering of the TV, the flicker of light in the hallway leading down to the stairs, where at the end of the night the bottle was spirited away behind the couch, gleaming amidst the dust. But they had kids; he was good with them, and he was good to her. So she ignored it.
And because of that, another woman lost her baby.
The guilt agonized, burrowed into her bones — leaving ant tunnels through the marrows, corpses stacked at the end of the hall to rot within her, a psychic leukemia that would never kill her without her help. The cushions no longer hid Wild Turkey and she couldn't brave the ABC store clerk's judgement, up and down glance, "oh. it's you," recognition of another privileged WASP slumming it with the scum, a dirty little secret for a pretty pretty princess. So when the woman at the courthouse had handed her the card for the support group, she took it.
Prison Wife Alliance.
That's what she is, now.
With trembling hands, she picks up the phone and starts to dial.