Veronica pressed against the glass, the steam of the shower pillowing up behind her, framing her face and shoulders in mist.  How did I let it go this far? she asked herself.  She knew her husband would soon be calling her, and she would be dragging her feet to their bedroom.  

Steve wasn't an alcoholic, somehow that might have been easier-they'd have meetings to go to for support.  Their therapist called it Intermittent Explosive Anger disorder.   He didn't have the PTSD typical of vets, his mother told her he had always been this way.  She told Veronica this not before they married, but after the police had been called.  Veronica was expecting their first child, a little girl.  The visit to the obstetrician had set it off.  A daughter?  Steve was a man's man, his firstborn should be a son.  

Veronica leaned into the window, her naked breasts pressed against the pain, her nipples reacting to the air from the cold glass.  Feeling, sensation, something.  Lately she had been imagining ways for Steve to disappear.  She knew she didn't have it in her to, well, kill him.  After watching her friend die in highschool, in front of her, she had recoiled from any confrontation against possible death, pain... it was easier to give in.  Her grandmother drove that into her mind, her heart, again and again.  We are Jews, we have always suffered, we will always survive it.  Take it, take it, and survive.  You can live to tell your tale, but only if you take it.  She had turned in on herself after Miriam's death.  

It was supposed to be a prank, really.  Some stupid prank about gas chambers and .... Miriam had diabetes, and didn't tell anyone about it.  Except Veronica.  She had to inject insulin.  She had just done her afternoon dose, they were headed out for food at Burger Bowl.  Miriam didn't want anyone to see her kit, to know she had another "thing" that could socially isolate her.  Miriam didn't want anyone to know anything, except Veronica, in case....  Two young granddaughters of the Holocaust, braving it in suburban Dallas, pretending they didn't hear the taunts, the comments.  Pretending they didn't "get it" when their classmates made such awful, awful comments.  

They were almost at the Burger Bowl when Tim McGinty approached them, lured them into an alley near the restaurant.  Veronica thought they had finally been "picked" by two of the hottest guys in the school, Tim and his friend Jesse Braydon.  They had been picked, and entirely for the wrong reasons.  Veronica was later rescued by the owner of the restaurant that night.  Miriam hadn't been so lucky.  Veronica would never look of Miriam's mother's anguish at the funeral.  Why wasn't it you?

Veronica stopped speaking to anyone outside of school for a long time after Miriam died.  Her grandparents didn't want to talk about it, and her mother had taken off on one of her journeys.  Veronica learned to write stories, poetry, and took another name for herself.  Moira.  She was Irish, another refugee from her ancestral lands.  But Moira was fair and aflame where Veronica was dark and cool, and Moira was angry and fiesty and outspoken, a spitfire, a comet, where Veronica was... mute.  She wasn't sure if it was Moira or Veronica that accepted the attention of  Lance Dawson.  But he was hot for one of them, and her body was hot for anything but her real life. 

Veronica flinched when Steve called for her to come to bed, she was still feeling the warmth of the shower in her coldness.  Steve never hit her, though he had broken a lot of things and left a lot of bruises on her arms, her legs, her breasts.  It was enough, her world got smaller and smaller, her spirit felt boxed, again.   As she turned to pick up the large fluffy towel, a glint of glass caught her eye.  Not the glass of her bathroom window, but of a small lens on a rooftop across the street.  She narrowed her gaze, and managed to discern a shadowy figure on a rooftop veranda on the house across the street.  She couldn't see what it was up to, but she had noticed her new neighbor.  He came and went alone.  No one came to visit, it was just him bringing the blue bin to the curb, opening and closing the garage, strolling to the mailbox and looking around the neighborhood.  Veronica felt a surge of warmth when she saw him, a feeling in her solar plexus, something like sunshine really.  But she also felt a tug in her pelvis, a chakra of a different color.... well, she thought, it's not like I can invite him over.  Though, maybe I can find a reason to go there.  

She pressed her nipples against the glass one last moment, hoping her mystery neighbor had the random fortune to be looking exactly then.  Just the thought of a lover, a different man, a better man got her libido flowing. Veronica called back to Steve, asking for five more minutes.  Her fingers sought out her soft and tender folds, her button of pleasure, and her  chasm of unfulfilled desire.  Years of loneliness had taught her to be quick, and make the most of every moment that was her own.  She climaxed soon, and then again, her moan supressed into the towel, her gaze landing across the cul de sac.  Please, she asked.  Be someone.  

***********

(part two of several: the saga will continue) 

(NB:  This post was written with the permission and informed consent of those named.  Creative license has been taken with reality).