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they are being abused.”
    “That don’t make no sense,” Stanley said. “You’d think they’d know what to look for and avoid it.”
    Rosie remained silent for a moment and then she spoke. “When you’re an abused child or when you watch your mother being abused, you think that’s what a normal relationship is all about,” she said. “And when your husband hits you the first time, although you’re shocked, a little part of you wonders if you didn’t deserve it.”
    “No one deserves abuse,” Bradley said.
    Rosie nodded. “You’re absolutely right,” she agreed. “No one deserves it. But sometimes it takes a lot of counseling and some good people to help you understand that.”
    “So, do you want to talk about it, or you gonna leave us guessing?” Stanley asked, leaning forward on the table toward Rosie.
    She laughed nervously. “Yes, of course, you are all my friends and I can trust you,” she said.
    Mary reached across the table and placed her hand over Rosie’s. “You don’t need to share,” she said. “If it makes you relive things you’d rather not.”
    Rosie placed her other hand on top of Mary’s and shook her head. “No. No, this is important and it might help you with the case.”
    She took a deep breath and began, “My father hit my mother. She wouldn’t have dinner done when he came home, so he’d hit her. The house wouldn’t be as clean as he wanted, so he’d hit her. The kids would be too loud, the dog would bark, the cookies would burn, and he would hit her. It took me a while to realize that it had nothing to do with my mother’s behavior, my father just liked to hit her. He liked to control her.”
    Leaning back in her chair for a moment, she shook her head. “I remember the first time I realized that it wasn’t her fault,” she said. “I was about twelve and before that I always thought my mother was a fairly incompetent person. Then my father came home and started yelling at her. He raised his arm and she bent over and cringed, waiting for the blow.”
    Her voice shook; she took a deep breath and then continued, “There was this look on his face, a smile of complete satisfaction, just before he stuck her. I finally realized the hell my mother was living in.”
    “Did she leave him?” Stanley asked , his hands clenched in fists. “Did someone help her?”
    Rosie smiled sadly. “Stanley, in those days women didn’t leave their husbands,” she said. “They just endured. And she endured until he died of a heart attack when he was fifty-seven years old. The day after his funeral my mother cried with relief. She would never have to deal with that man again.”
    Rosie stood up, gathered some of the empty plates from the table and walked over to the sink. She stared out the window at the snow covered backyard for a few moments and then turned to her friends with tears in her eyes. “It’s hard, you know, when you realize that your father is a monster,” she whispered. “It took me a long time to understand that part of the monster didn’t lurk inside me too.”
    Mary hurried over to Rosie and hugged her. “I’m glad you know you had nothing to do with his illness,” she said.
    “Illness?” Stanley growled. “That ain’t no illness. Chicken pox, that’s an illness. Beating on your wife or your kids, that’s just plain mean. That’s just being a bully. And someone oughta have beaten on him.”
    “Generally, abuse like that is a learned behavior, Stanley,” Bradley said. “Her father was probably abused or watched someone else being abused.”
    Rosie and Mary came back to the table and sat down. “That’s why I got involved with VOICES,” Rosie said. “It’s a place here in Stephenson County where people who are abused can go for help.”
    Bradley nodded. “Yeah, we work with them all the time when we have domestic abuse cases. They are really good people.”
    “Bradley, do you think you could talk to them and see if someone matching our ghost’s