The whole town knew about Lily by then. She was a waitress at the diner, barely an adult, evidently so by the way her body hadn’t yet settled into the soft edges of womanhood.Ben’s latest. The town whispered. Mara, as the wife of the serial town adulterer, was used by now to the pitiful glances she got over coffee cups, those snippy little muttered comments between the hardware store shelves about self respect or whatever. If she could, she would have left Ben long ago. But she couldn’t afford to take care of their kids and pay the mortgage on her own.She had grown teeth eventually. Along the way, so had her children.Cassie had come home one afternoon white faced, stood in the kitchen doorway, voice tight, and told Mara what had happened.She and her friends had been at the diner after school. They’d been collectively teasing Lily as she wiped down tables. It was just small, harmless banter meant to be funny. But she had snapped.
Last Updated : 2026-08-08 Read more