“I’m telling you, Kimmy: I think I spoke too loud. As usual. Linda’s been acting weird ever since you and I talked yesterday. She must have overheard. Gawd: she’s only here for two days, and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

“Oh hell, maybe it’s just as well. Maybe she needs to hear it. But I have got to learn to modulate my voice! Sure it’s handy when I want it, but jeez – how many times do I have to experience this after-regret? I get too excited, and then I get loud…

“Still, I think I’m right about her church. Or just about any church. I suppose I should look into the statistics to back this up, but it seems so obvious to me: churches and other behavior-controlling institutions are designed to attract the weak, the fallen, the sinners, the troubled – oh, you know – whatever words the institution uses to describe those it wants to help. And like the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day…the institution is bound to succeed with some, in spite of itself. So the institution succeeds occasionally, and pulls a weak individual into social remission. That individual is very likely to remain with the institution. Talk about a magic feather!

“We both know that recidivism is rampant. Most recovering alkies drink again. Most philanderers cheat again. Gamblers return to their games and maniacs to whatever mania is theirs. It’s so common I wonder if there isn’t an element of nostalgia to the backsliding: a sweet familiarity and a reminder of youth? Anyway, if the individual has been institution-helped and is still institution-adjacent, guess who gets hurt when she or he falls off the wagon?

“I never thought about it till Linda’s daughter was molested. I remember how shocked I was when it all came out. I mean, sure I know most girls experience some sort of sexual insult from older people some time while growing up, but usually it’s not more than an uncle exposing himself, or a neighbor asking to see panties, or (in my case) older male cousins trying to strip you. I’d never known anyone who was photographed, let alone probed. So when Linda told me about what happened to Beth in her church afterschool, I was plenty shocked. And then it came out that the teacher or whatever she was had been the perp…shock started morphing into horror, you know? But the final straw was when Linda told me that no one ran any kind of background check on the woman. It was a volunteer job, and she got it because the folks in the church knew her personally, or thought they did. Probably all they would have had to do is talk to her former church…”

That’s what I overheard Sue saying to Kim last week, and I only wish I had the nerve to confront her. But no…as usual, she’s the one with the nerve. I’m only nervous. I wish I was more assertive, but what do you expect? I was raised to be a lady.

Okay so my mom was eccentric. So she insisted on that bicycle and kept making meals that weren’t what my friends ate. That was mostly about her health problems, and she died young enough to prove it. How many other teetotalers get cirrhosis? None I know of. She was probably right to try what she did. And in other ways she was the kind of lady I want to be: a good wife, a good mom, a good Christian.

If I was more assertive I’d speak up to Sue. But in that case I’d probably speak up to Jim, too. Like in college. Like I still did a little after we were married. Face it, if the kids had come easily we might have remained in Pinole and kept our old friends, and we might still be like we were.

It wasn’t the move to Visalia that changed us. That was about Jim’s consulting. But after we joined the church here, it kind of created our social life.

When you’re young you don’t want to be bored. It’s important to have friends but you try to pick interesting ones. But then when you’re a little older, especially when you’re new in town and newish to marriage and trying to start a family, then it doesn’t matter so much if the people you meet tend to bore you. They’re good people, they help you settle, they’re there for you through four miscarriages, they celebrate it when you finally have your daughter and then two years later your son, they help you, and they become your folks.

So yeah, I’m not the old Linda any more. I wouldn’t even think of stepping out on Jim. I’m not very strong. I’m probably boring. But I’m a good wife, a good mom, a good Christian. I take care of my home, I work part-time, I try to do good. And there’s nothing wrong with my church.

I probably should have confronted her. Maybe I could have prevented her from posting her little fantasy/op-ed:

Annabelle Miller was a Hammond woman. And thus abused.

Don’t look for sexual penetration from her father, her uncle, her grandpa. This woman’s abuse was severe and emotional, grounded in religion. Her indoctrination began at birth; she had no more chance of escaping it than a Dravidian or polygamous Mormon.

“Give me a child till 7,” used to intone the priests. Annabelle was born into a family of crazies who medicated themselves with their insular inland church.

Her crime was horrific and overpublicized. The audience read, viewed, diagnosed and tried her long before she was arraigned. It took no time at all for the memorials to sprout; Walmart made thousands on all the stuffed animals and balloons. Bloggers held forth about how impossible it was for a woman to kidnap-molest-kill. “She’s covering for some man,” they said, and “She had to have an accomplice.”

No. That wasn’t it.

Annabelle and most of the Hammond clan have borderline personalities or worse. They all medicate themselves with their church services and busy themselves with their church activities and, except for the continuing religious abuse that they visit on their offspring, they mostly stay out of trouble. But people slip. The best meds fail sometimes. And Annabelle was sicker than most. She lapsed.

She meant to kill Leah. She had watched the child interact with her own daughter, and she saw evil. It was probably because Leah was three years older than Tiffany. There’s a big difference between 8 and 5, and when she eavesdropped on the girls and peered through the screen door, she witnessed Leah telling little Tiffany about sex. Leah had seen her aunt and uncle in bed and tried to reenact what she’d observed with the dolls the girls had. Annabelle concluded that Leah’s skipping high spirits were the mark of Satan.

She meant to kill, but she had to jack herself up for it. Even after she grabbed Leah she wasn’t quite ready to strangle. So she began to punish the child. For evil, she said. “For evil, for evil, evil, evil,” she began to chant, and then she had to cross a bigger line to kill. She penetrated the child’s body with the tool she had at hand. She used the handle of an X-Acto blade holder, thrusting and chanting “evil, evil, evil,” until Leah passed out and Annabelle had gone too far to come back. She looked at the blood and the unconscious child, and finally felt strong enough to end that life.

Please don’t think it was about sex. Stop looking for a man. I’ve spent most of my career studying these characters. Think about how this nation was settled. About what it took to come here. We are a melting pot of cognitive disorders, and some of us find in religion explanations for the voices in our heads.

Annabelle did what she did to send Leah innocent to death before the evil growing in her could take full hold.

Then she reversed the X-Acto holder and removed its blade, and swallowed. And another. Another. Sick, cowardly, ineffective: she ran too soon out of blades.