April 3, 2019:
There's a smug character to her band pictures, with their trophies and their awards. She's proud, and, uncharacteristically, extremely confident.
You have the sense that high school was the one period of her life when she was truly happy. Before then her life was abuse and closets. After, abuse and work, until at last she left the abuse behind and lived purely for toil.
She told me once that she'd wanted children very badly. She wanted more than one, but miscarried her second pregnancy. Now I wonder if the miscarriage was because he punched her in the stomach. And if at least some of the distance between us originated in resentment over having to abandon her high school dreams.