Chapter 9: Three Attempts

Jo's POV

I read the headline three times on Dot's phone.

THREE SUICIDE ATTEMPTS.

I had two scars on one wrist, and not one other mark on my body.

"There's no file," Anson said again, pacing the kitchen. "I heard him say it. He invented it on the phone."

"Then a doctor signed it," I said.

"A doctor who sat at table one."

I put Dot's phone down on the table, very gently.

"The Auxiliary meets at four," I said. "Every Tuesday, in the church hall. Mom is in the chair."

"Jo," Dot said.

"Eighty women read that headline over their lunch."

"If you walk in there..."

"I'm going."

"Good," said Dot, and picked up her handbag. "Let me drive."

The church hall smelled of floor wax and burnt coffee.

Eighty women sat in folding chairs facing a long table with a banner behind it.

SAFE HOME AUXILIARY: EVERY DAUGHTER DESERVES A HOME.

My mother sat at the center of the table in a lilac suit.

At her right hand, with a glass of water, sat the doctor from table one.

The whispering began when I came through the door, and it rolled down the rows.

"She has a nerve," said a woman near the aisle, not quietly.

I did not stop.

I walked to the front, and Dot walked behind me, and Anson stayed at the back by the door with his hands in his pockets, because I had asked him to.

"Josephine," my mother said. "This is not the place."

"It's the only place with all the women who just read my file."

I turned around to face the folding chairs.

My hands were cold, and the stitches in my palm throbbed.

"My name is Jo Alder," I said. "You've read that I tried to die three times. I'd like to know when."

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