“I’m never going to get out of Burnt Creek if I stay on this couch.” Charlotte patted her shoulder. “Best place for you. I don’t wonder that you got sick. All of this stress, this violence. You’re not used it. None of us are.” Actually, Lola thought, she was used to it, on a far larger scale and even more violent. But she couldn’t explain to herself, let alone to Charlotte, why these deaths bothered her so much more than the routine butchery she’d witnessed in Afghanistan and other places during her years overseas. Certainly the fact that she’d had a passing acquaintance with Judith and DeeDee and Ralph and Swanny was part of it. And yet again she found herself silently protesting that life wasn’t supposed to be so cheap in her own country. “You must see your share of it at the clinic,” Lola said. Maybe she and Charlotte had more in common than she’d first thought. But Charlotte shook her head. “Oh, no. Anyone hurt bad goes straight to the hospital at Williston.
