"Takes a moment for it to sink in: the gunman is the dead man, the injured are the women I heard him shoot, the retail store is the last place I visited.
I was there."
Betty, protagonist of Faith Gardner's How We Ricochet had expected a trip to the mall to buy her mother work clothes for her new job to be rather boring. In fact she'd ditched her mom and older sister, Joy, to go to the nearby cupcake shop. She was there when a gunman opened fire in the clothes store where she'd left her family.
"'We're fucking lucky,' Joy says. 'There were so many bullets. We should have died.'
'I'm so glad you're okay,' Mom says, holding Joy's head to her chest."
But Joy really isn't. The sister who Betty considered a badass--who rode a motorcycle, played bass guitar, and gave herself a tattoo--now can't leave the house. She's dropped her college classes. And she's ditched her job for so long that she's lost it.
But her mother's way of coping has her MIA when it comes to her older daughter's crisis. Being interviewed by NBC has inspired her to become a gun control activist. Between this engagement and her job that pays the bills she really doesn't have time for anything else. And now she's getting death threats.
The dead gunman's younger brother is an acquaintance of Betty. In desperation she tries to befriend him. Maybe he can give her the insights that can assuage Joy's crippling fears and empower her to keep her family safe.
On a purrrsonal note, I've regained another skill. A guy in my trailer coop told me I can swim in his pool. I hadn't been in a pool since before the stroke. It was literally sink or swim. At first I kept sinking like a stone. But I kept trying. I got to where I could swim across the pool. It felt so good to be cutting through the water with an evening breezes mitigating the sun's heat. Truly a time of unmitigated joy!!!
A great big shout out goes out to the kind neighbor with the pool.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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