My best friend's mother had a string of abusive boyfriends. Some of whom I met, most of whom I only heard whispered about at two o'clock in the morning on weekends. I was thirteen before I questioned it; fourteen before I thought about trying to understand it. She was a smart woman, completely capable and outwardly independent, with a weakness that was too complicated for me to grasp.
             Until I knew Lauren I had always written off women like her as stupid. To me, the equation was simple: if someone treats you poorly, then that someone isn't worth having around. To stay with that person, to grow accustomed to an onslaught of aggressive behavior would require some sort of will on your part. Some part of this woman had to want to stay with the man who, maybe three weeks earlier had a knife pressed against her neck. And to me, that sort of masochism seemed ridiculous. If anyone was willing to put themselves in that position, then weren't they deserving of the consequences?
             She wasn't. She had three children to cater to, bills to pay with jobs that shifted so frequently there was hardly enough time to settle into a home before her kids were uprooted into another, smaller apartment. I never understood how the relationships she had assisted her situation.
             The first time I saw her with a black eye, vulnerable and crying and trying to hide from us, I couldn't fault her for being callous. I certainly couldn't say she deserved it, but why would she put up with it? Logistically, it made no sense. I wanted an answer I couldn't find, so I decided to make one up. The curiosity that made me question Lauren's reasoning became the breeding ground for the first story I ever wrote.
             In it, the woman was determined to leave the person who was taking advantage of her. But in the end, there was a reluctance that held her back. Perhaps not all aspects of this person were bad; perhaps this person's a...