What were we suppose to call this? | Cora Bryan

She touched the swollen eye with her hand to confirm its reality. She could barely see her reflection through the throbbing, purple, tissue. She took a long decisive breath and turned the car on. She looked at her three boys in the back seat. The oldest was about three and the youngest still just a baby. No more. Her children were going to be safe this time. She put her hand up to readjust the rearview mirror and hesitated. There hung her mother’s Rosary. Memories of her mother began to intervene. To leave him would mean excommunication from the church.
But it was too late. He lay there, passed out; drunk, and the police would be there soon. She looked back at the kids. The toddler had bruises up and down his arms. Boiling water left burn scars on the three-year-old’s leg. It was either him or them.
She put the car into gear and left, not knowing where to go. Three days later, away and safe, there would be a knock on the door. The police came to deliver the news of her husband’s death; how he hung himself in jail. She would try to think of the days when he was a good husband, before he fought in the war. Yet she could not forget the beatings, the weeks of not knowing where he was… the alcohol. And yet, in his sin he would give her freedom and withdraw impending purgatory.