Acts of Love by Emily Listfield

her room, but when I went in to see if she was okay, she pretended to be reading. She’s being so…I don’t know. Stoic.” The implacable silence she wrapped herself in, carrying it with her everywhere, always, a bell jar of watchful, guarded silence that warped the distance between herself and everyone else. “She just watches me.”
    â€œPeople deal with trauma differently.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    â€œSandy, whatever you need to do, you’ll do. Whatever you need to learn, you’ll learn.”
    She nodded, unconvinced. “I called the school to arrange for some extra counseling for the girls. Maybe that will help.” She shifted position. “I’m going to make sure that bastard pays for this,” she muttered.
    â€œHas it occurred to you that maybe Ted is telling the truth?”
    â€œTed wouldn’t know how to tell the truth if his life depended on it. Particularly if his life depended on it.”
    â€œI know you’ve always had a thing against him, and I don’t much like him myself. But we still don’t know exactly what happened.”
    â€œI can’t believe you’re defending that man to me. He killed my sister, for God’s sake.”
    â€œSandy, you’re a journalist. You should know better than to jump to conclusions. You should know the importance of facts.”
    â€œYeah, and the fact is, my sister is dead. And Ted Waring did it. Ask Julia, she’ll tell you.”
    â€œJulia is thirteen years old.”
    â€œWith twenty-twenty vision. Do you mean to tell me you find it acceptable behavior for men to go around shooting their ex-wives?”
    â€œWhoa, come back here. Of course I don’t think it’s acceptable behavior for men to go around shooting their ex-wives. Good Lord. All I’m saying is, we don’t have the facts yet. There’s going to be a trial. You know that, Sandy.”
    She nodded grimly.
    â€œThe police are satisfied with Ali’s statement. After all, she didn’t see what happened. But they want to talk to Julia again tomorrow,” John added.
    â€œI know. I’ll take her over there in the afternoon. First I want to get them more settled. When I look at them, when Ali says she wants to go home…”
    John said nothing.
    They were both silent for a moment. “You know,” Sandy said softly, “I always felt like I had to protect Ann. Even when we were younger. She was always so…so fucking sweet, you know? Gullible. I was always tougher.”
    â€œSandy, what could you have done? This had nothing to do with you.”
    But she knew that wasn’t true.
    Â 
    S ANDY ROSE EARLY the next morning and, tying her chenille robe tight against the late-October chill, opened the door to pick up the paper. The top-right-hand corner of the Chronicle was dominated by a picture of Ann, Ted, and the girls, under the headline, “Tragic Accident or Murder?” She leaned up against the wall, breathless.
    She had always been fascinated by the sole, stark event that could turn a person, a family, into this. Public domain. News. The single misstep that left you chained like Prometheus to Mount Caucasus, with guts to be picked over afresh each day. Neighbors, friends, always protested about these paper faces. “They were such a normal family,” but she was certain that if she could dig further (for she was often the one asking the questions, taking the notes), there must have been a symptom, a portent, overlooked at the time, noticed but discarded as insignificant.
    Hers, of course, had never been a normal family, and she had always feared that they were just barely keeping whole and private beneath a thin sheet that pushed and strained with the effort. In the back of her mind, Sandy had been waiting all her life for that sheet to rip. In a way, she was almost relieved now, leaning up against the wall, paper in hand, like a hypochondriac being given a