Free Rose Madder by Stephen King Page A

Rosie for her name.
    â€œI guess it’s actually Rose Daniels,” she said, “but I’ve gone back to McClendon—my maiden name. I suppose that isn’t legal, but I don’t want to use my husband’s name anymore. He beat me, and so I left him.” She realized that sounded as if she’d left him the first time he’d done it and her hand went to her nose, which was still a little tender up where the bridge ended. “We were married a long time before I got up the courage, though.”
    â€œHow long a time are we talking about?”
    â€œFourteen years.” Rosie discovered she could no longer meet Anna Stevenson’s direct blue gaze. She dropped her eyes to her hands, which were knotted so tightly together in her lap that the knuckles were white.
    Now she’ll ask why it took me so long to wake up, she thought. She won’t ask if maybe some sick part of me liked getting beaten up, but she’ll think it.
    Instead of asking why about anything, the woman asked how long Rosie had been gone.
    It was a question she found she had to consider carefully, and not just because she was now on Central Standard Time. The hours of the bus combined with the unaccustomed stretch of sleep in the middle of the day had disoriented her time-sense. “About thirty-six hours,” she said after a bit of mental calculation. “Give or take.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Rosie kept expecting forms which Anna would either hand to Rosie or start filling in herself, but the woman only went on looking at her over the strenuous topography of her desk. It was unnerving. “Now tell me about it. Tell me everything.”
    Rosie drew a deep breath and told Anna about the drop of blood on the sheet. She didn’t want to give Anna the idea that she was so lazy—or so crazy—that she had left her husband of fourteen years because she didn’t want to change the bed-linen, but she was terribly afraid that was how it must sound. She wasn’t able to explain the complex feelings that spot had aroused in her, and she wasn’t able to admit to the anger she had felt—anger which had seemed simultaneously new and like an old friend—but she did tell Anna that she had rocked so hard she had been afraid she might break Pooh’s Chair.
    â€œThat’s what I call my rocker,” she said, blushing so hard that her cheeks felt as if they might be on the verge of smoking. “I know it’s stupid—”
    Anna Stevenson waved it off. “What did you do after you made your mind up to go? Tell me that.”
    Rosie told her about the ATM card, and how she had been sure that Norman would have a hunch about what she was doing and either call or come home. She couldn’t bring herself to tell this severely handsome woman that she had been so scared she’d gone into someone’s back yard to pee, but she told about using the ATM card, and how much she’d drawn out, and how she’d come to this city because it seemed far enough away and the bus would be leaving soon. The words came out of her in bursts surrounded by periods of silence in which she tried to think of what to say next and contemplated with amazement and near-disbelief what she had done. She finished by telling Anna about how she’d gotten lost that morning, and showing her Peter Slowik’s card. Anna handed it back after a single quick glance.
    â€œDo you know him very well?” Rosie asked. “Mr. Slowik?”
    Anna smiled—to Rosie it looked like it had a bitter edge. “Oh yes,” she said. “He is a friend of mine. An old friend. Indeed he is. And a friend of women like you, as well.”
    â€œAnyway, I finally got here,” Rosie finished. “I don’t know what comes next, but at least I got this far.”
    A ghost of a smile touched the corners of Anna Stevenson’s mouth. “Yes. And made a good job of it, too.”
    Gathering all