Butterfly Bayou (Butterfly Bayou 1)

The court system worked slowly. It was what had happened to Maryanne. She’d gotten away, gotten her husband arrested. He hadn’t had a record so he hadn’t served any actual time. He’d been put on probation and told to stay away from his wife. The restraining order hadn’t stopped him from walking in and killing her. He’d done it three days before his trial was to begin. She’d never even gotten her day in court. She’d gotten a funeral.

She had to be honest with Carrie. “Probably not. The sheriff can arrest him but if he can make bail, they’ll let him go. We can get a restraining order, but it can’t work if he refuses to honor it. It’s possible if the sheriff thinks it’s serious enough that you could be put into protective custody, but they don’t typically do that for domestic abuse cases.”

“Bobby will come after me. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her shoulders slumped. “I looked at myself in the mirror and realized if I didn’t get someone to stitch me up, I would look at that face for the rest of my life. It was like I needed to hide it, even from myself. He finally did something I can’t hide. What will he do when he realizes I came here? I don’t know how to explain this to him.”

“You don’t have to explain anything.” She couldn’t let this young woman walk back into hell. There were other ways. “If I found a women’s shelter for you, would you consider going to it?”

“A shelter. Is that like a homeless shelter? Because that’s what I’ll be.”

There wasn’t a shelter here in Papillon, but there was a well-run one in New Orleans. When she’d bought the clinic one of the first things she’d done was study up on all the resources she would need. Her clinic was about more than medicine. In a rural setting, she was the first line of defense when it came to a lot of her patients’ problems. “It’s not a homeless shelter, though many of the women who go through them are homeless. You would get a room and food, and more than that you’ll get counseling to help you set up a new life for yourself.”

“It’s just a house?” Carrie asked.

“It’s a house, but they have lots of security and no one would know where you are. I’ll take you there myself. I assure you I won’t tell anyone where you are. But it’s important that you file charges against him.”

“I don’t know.” There was a wealth of uncertainty in Carrie’s tone.

“You talked about how you ended up with Bobby because he was the first man to show you some attention. Was your father not in the picture?” She had to keep Carrie talking. If she backed off, she would lose her and then she might have to deal with signing her first death certificate.

Carrie’s eyes came up. “My dad was the best man in the world. I loved my dad, but he died long before my mom. I was seven when he passed.”

She took the chance. She reached out and put her hand over Carrie’s. “Do you think your father would want you to go back to Bobby, or would he want you to fight for your life? I know you think that having someone to love you is the most important thing in the world, but that has to start with loving yourself. It’s not selfish to want to live, to want a good life, but it has to start with respecting yourself and understanding that you are worth more than this.”

There was a knock on the door and Mabel stepped in.

“Lila, I have a test result you should look at.” There was a grim set to Mabel’s expression. She held out a printout.

Unlike the first time she’d seen Carrie, this time she’d run all the tests she could. Including a urinalysis.

She glanced down and saw the one thing she hadn’t wanted to see. Damn it. “Carrie, you’re pregnant.”

It would very likely send her straight back into that nest of snakes. If she was afraid to be on her own, how would she feel about raising a child without any help?

Carrie sat there for a moment. “I’m pregnant? Are you sure?”

“Tests these days are very accurate.” She would run it again, but the result would be the same.

“I’m having a baby.” Carrie put a hand on her belly.

“You are and you need to think about that.” If she could get Carrie to see the counselors at the women’s shelter she might have a shot at convincing her to leave the toxic situation she found herself in. If she didn’t, then she wasn’t sure what she would do. She only knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing what was happening on that island. “You’re going to need prenatal care. You can get that at the shelter.”