Free I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places by Lisa Scottoline Page A

hoot at night.
    But here’s the sign I think I got from Mother Mary, and you tell me if I’m crazy.
    Because it’s a sign that only she could send.
    Let’s go back for a moment, to the day of her memorial service, which was very sad. It was a small and tasteful ceremony, but everybody was predictably teary, and that day, it was raining.
    In fact, it was raining very hard.
    It was raining almost hurricane-hard.
    And after the service, we came home to my house, and it had rained so hard that my entrance hall was flooded.
    I’m not talking about one or two inches of water.
    I’m talking about four inches of water, so much that wet rugs had to be removed and you had to wade through it to get to the front door.
    The water had evidently come in under the front door of the entrance hall, but that had never happened before.
    And dear reader, it never happened again.
    In fact, it hasn’t happened in the entire time, since the day of her funeral.
    Recall that since, we’ve experienced very hard rains, very hard snows, and sometimes a little of both.
    At the same time.
    In other words, there’s been major weather.
    But my entrance hall never flooded again.
    Not even a drop.
    And so I think it’s a sign.
    Mother Mary wasn’t the type to send butterflies, rainbows, or hoot owls.
    Hurricane Mary sent a hurricane.
    And so we wouldn’t miss it, she put it in front of the front door.
    That was Mother Mary.
    She was a force of nature.
    And she still is, eternally.
    Now I’m a believer.
    Love you, Mom.
    You owe me a rug.

 
    Incident Report
    Francesca
    This book is meant to be fun, but it’s also about life’s real moments, light and dark. This summer included one of the darkest experiences of my life, when I was assaulted and mugged. The events of that night and their repercussions were difficult to process. I’ve learned that trauma has to metabolize and be absorbed into your emotional system. My recovery has been full of contradictions, revealed in stages through time and self-reflection. So, I think the only accurate way for me to write about it is in pieces.
    This piece is about what happened that night, the way I see it when my mind replays it, and it replays it often, with some moments in great sensory detail and other moments of infuriating blackness. If you are upset by violent crime, you may wish to skip this chapter.
    After something bad happens, it’s deceptively easy to retrace your decisions and wish you had made them differently. I wish I had left the party early with my friend who had a cold. I wish I had taken a cab home like I had intended. I wish I had asked one of the two guy friends I had ridden the subway with to walk me to my door instead of only accompanying me to my stop. I wish I had turned down any other street but that one.
    But none of these choices were mistakes or imprudent in their own right. They were just the choices I made before someone hurt me.
    I remember the rain splashing on the top steps of the Christopher Street subway stop as I emerged a little after 1 A.M. , and wishing I had insisted my friends share a cab because this rain would ruin my new leather moccasins.
    I hurried down the sidewalk on the balls of my feet, jumping over puddles and the rivulets of rainwater flowing toward the gutters.
    I remember seeing a rat but not startling, and thinking that was brave of me.
    I am not a girl easily frightened.
    I had no idea that was to be tested at the very next turn.
    I took a left down the street that I live on, two short blocks from home. I had my umbrella open, a thin shield of pink blocking my peripheral vision. But maybe I wouldn’t have seen him anyway.
    I felt a body slam into mine and an arm pull across my neck. We collapsed together on the ground, my back flat on the sidewalk. Somehow my head didn’t hit the concrete, I guess because he was choking me from behind.
    There was no thought but the primal knowledge that I