One Prayer Away by Kendra Norman-Bellamy Page A

it affecting your performance here. I made my daddy a promise.” Chris stopped long enough to count the incomplete folders on Mitchell’s desk. “You’ve got twelve assignments to complete and less than three weeks to get them done. Can I still rely on you?”
    Mitchell clenched his jaw and swallowed. He knew Chris was right. This was nobody’s problem but his, andhe couldn’t force those around him to be affected by it. That was what he’d done all those years ago with Virtue. He’d made her suffer because he was in so much pain, and that was the reason he was in this predicament. In slow motion, Mitchell nodded his answer and then watched his friend stand to leave. Just before he walked through the open door, Chris turned to face him.
    â€œI’m on your side, Mitch. I don’t want you to think that just because I have a great relationship with Lisa that I don’t feel you on this. But I wouldn’t truly be your friend if I didn’t tell you the truth about what I felt. And what I feel right now is that you are agonizing too much over this. You need to stop trying to figure this out on your own and maybe start praying about your next step. On your own, you might make the wrong choice. I might even slip up and advise you in the wrong direction. But the one person who we both know won’t ever steer you wrong is God.”
    Mitchell stared at his closed door long after Chris made his exit. He had heard every word that his partner had said, but some stood out more than others.
    â€œI hope you’re right,” Mitchell whispered as he redirected his thoughts and picked up another folder from his stack. “I hope you’re right.”

Nine
    T en years ago, when Beverly accepted the position of a therapist and counselor at the Houston Center for Women, she’d thought that she was just taking on a job that would fulfill her desire to help women who had been made to suffer the abuse of domestic violence. But since the destruction of her own marriage, she’d begun to see her appointment at the center as more.
    Aside from the comfortable office that she occupied every day to serve those in need of mental and emotional therapy, the HCW also included a one-hundred-bed shelter where survivors of domestic violence, women and children, could live until they felt safe enough to start new, independent lives for themselves. Even with her conventional education, Beverly had, in her mind, thought of abuse as something of a more physical nature. Most of the women she saw on a daily basis had been sexually abused or, like Virtue, physically harmed at the hands of the men they once shared their lives with. But now Beverly saw abuse as much, much more.
    Having had her whole world come to a crashing halt without her even seeing the brakes that would bring it there, Beverly now understood a different level of violence. For her, it seemed even deeper than emotional abuse because that was something that she was trained to know how to deal with. What Lester had done to her was so much crueler as far as Beverly was concerned. She masked her hurt well; but every now and then, like today, the heat of the invisible mask smothered her, and she had to remove it to show her true emotions. Wiping a lone tear from her cheek, Beverly took a sip from her cup of water that was left over from the lunch she’d finished nearly three hours earlier. It was room temperature, just the way she liked it.
    In truth, days like this one, when she felt the full brunt of Lester’s cruelty, were few and far between. But every year, at least once a year, she cried. When she thought of the evil intent behind Renee’s words yesterday, a part of Beverly wished that she’d have allowed Virtue to give the girl the tongue lashing that she deserved. Beverly’s education had taught her that lashing out wasn’t the way to deal with these sorts of things. But appropriate or not, knowing that