The words hung there between us for a second. I thought about how she had cried at the potluck when the church helped with the bill. She had said “I hate taking charity but I don’t know what else to do for him.” That was the same woman whose boy had those marks on him now.

The same woman I saw every Sunday in the pew two rows ahead of me with her head bowed during the prayers. It was the same potluck where we all sat together and nobody knew what was really going on at home.

I picked up the phone again even though the call was already made and done with. It felt heavier than it should in my hand. The lady on the other end had said they would send someone out soon to check on things at the house. I wondered if they would knock on Linda’s door while she was sleeping after her shift or if they would wait until she was up and ready for the day ahead.

Timmy stood up and pushed his chair in careful like he had been taught at home. “Thanks again,” he said. “See you next Saturday maybe if you are making them again.”

I told him to be careful going home and to watch for cars in the street. The door closed soft behind him and the house got quiet again. I sat down at the table where he had been sitting just a minute before. The syrup bottle was still open and the smell was strong in the air around me. My tea had gone cold in the cup from earlier. The clock on the wall ticked loud in the quiet and I could hear a car drive by outside.

I had been a nurse long enough to know you cannot ignore something like that bruise on a child’s arm.

You just cannot look the other way and pretend it did not happen right in front of you. I remembered one time when a doctor told me “If you see it you have to report it. No matter who it is.” That stuck with me all these years later. But I also knew Linda was doing all she could with the night work and the bills piling up on the table. The call was the right thing but it did not feel right in my chest at all.

I got the boy some help but I might have cost his mother the little bit of peace she had left in her life. That is the part I keep turning over in my head while I sit here at the table. The phone is back on the counter now but I can still feel where it was in my hand during the call.

The exact thing I got wrong was believing I could keep out of it and still sleep at night.