Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

lie by omission all the time. People will tell you most of the story… and I’ve learned that the part they neglect to tell you is often the most important part. People hide the truth because they’re afraid.”
    With Jo’s words, Katie felt a finger touch her heart. All at once, it seemed hard to breathe.
    “Are you talking about me?” she finally croaked out.
    “I don’t know. Am I?”
    Katie felt herself pale slightly, but before she could respond, Jo smiled.
    “Actually, I was thinking about my day today. I told you it was hard, right? Well, what I just told you is part of the problem. It gets frustrating when people won’t tell the truth. I mean, how am I supposed to help people if they hold things back? If I don’t really know what’s going on?”
    Katie could feel something twisting and tightening in her chest. “Maybe they want to talk about it but they know there’s nothing you can do to help,” she whispered.
    “There’s always something I can do.”
    In the moonlight shining through the kitchen window, Jo’s skin glowed a luminous white, and Katie had the sense that she never went out in the sun. The wine made the room move, the walls buckle. Katie could feel tears beginning to form in her eyes and it was all she could do to blink them back. Her mouth was dry.
    “Not always,” Katie whispered. She turned to face the window. Beyond the glass, the moon hung low over the trees. Katie swallowed, suddenly feeling as if she were observing herself from across the room. She could see herself sitting at the table with Jo, and when she began to speak, her voice didn’t seem to be her own. “I had a friend once. She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn’t talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning, she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn’t and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she’d visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror.”
    Katie stared at the floor. Linoleum was peeling up in the corners, but she hadn’t known how to fix it. She’d tried to glue it, but the glue hadn’t worked and the corners had curled again.
    “He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry because of the bruises he’d made on her arms or legs or her back. He would say that he hated what he’d done, but in the next breath tell her she’d deserved it. That if she’d been more careful, it wouldn’t have happened. That if she’d been paying attention or hadn’t been so stupid, he wouldn’t have lost his temper. She tried to change. She worked hard at trying to be a better wife and to do things the way he wanted, but it was never enough.”
    Katie could feel the pressure of tears behind her eyes and though she tried again to stop them, she felt them sliding down her cheek. Jo was motionless across the table, watching her without moving.
    “And she loved him! In the beginning, he was so sweet to her. He made her feel safe. On the night they met, she’d been working, and after she finished her shift, two men were following her. When she went around the corner, one of them grabbed her and clamped his hand over her mouth, and even though she tried to get away, the men were so much stronger and she didn’t know what would have happened except that her future husband came around the corner and hit one of them hard on the back of the neck and he fell to the ground. And then he grabbed the other one and threw him into the wall, and it was over. Just like that. He helped her up and walked her home and the next day he took her out for coffee. He was kind and he treated her like a princess, right up until she was on her honeymoon.”
    Katie knew she shouldn’t be telling Jo any of this, but she couldn’t stop. “My friend tried to get away twice. One time, she came back