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therapy.”
    Kina picked up her and E’Bell’s framed prom picture, still holding its place on her mother’s hand-me-down curio. She remembered with misty eyes how happy they were that night. Back then, she couldn’t have imagined a future without him. Now, she had no choice in the matter. She sighed and put the picture back in its designated space.
    It was times like this that it was tempting to miss E’Bell. Certainly not the abuse or the assaults on her self-esteem, but having someone—anyone—there waiting for her to come home would’ve been nice.
    Kina recalled how, following E’Bell’s passing, people told her she would feel a range of emotions from anger and resentment to crushing grief. Even her therapist had warned her about intense feelings of loneliness and mixed emotions about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband.
    â€œBut nobody told me it would be like this,” she said aloud. There was no one else to confide in, so Kina turned to God. “I guess it’s just you and me tonight, Lord, yet again .”
    Without Kenny there, the silence in the house was palpable. She could hear every drip from the leaky faucet, each clank from the old plumbing, even the creaking of the tattered sofa whenever she sat down on it was a constant reminder that she was utterly alone.
    â€œLord, I know E’Bell wasn’t in the running for winning the Husband of the Year award. There were times when he made me laugh, and he was a source of companionship.”
    Kina looked around her empty apartment. Funny, it seemed so small when she, E’Bell, and Kenny were all crammed in there. There were many times that the wood-paneled walls felt like they were closing in on her. Now, it seemed like a huge vacuum of desolate space full of borrowed and broken furniture. It struck her as strange that two years ago, she longed for the peace and quiet she now resented.
    She picked up her NIV Bible lying next to the telephone. After flipping through a few passages, her eyes fell on the first six words of Proverbs 6:25: “Do not lust in your heart.” She cringed and tossed the Bible aside. She felt convicted, knowing that the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John she wanted couldn’t be found between those sheets.
    Kina loved the Lord with her whole heart, but there was a void in her life that not even the most powerful scripture could fill at times like this. As much as she loved her son, Kenny couldn’t fill it either. Lord willing, Kenny would only get older, more independent. Within a couple of years, he’d be in high school, and off to college within a few more. Then she’d really be alone. Kina had her friends and her church, but what about the midnight hour when the doors of the church were locked and her friends were snuggled up next to husbands of their own?
    Deep down, Kina knew what her real problem was. Even though she’d never admit out loud, Sullivan had voiced it in jest several times before.
    â€œKina, you just need some male in your life, and I don’t mean the kind that comes stamped in long envelopes either!” Sullivan had declared.
    Of course, Kina rebuked the notion, followed by scriptural quotes about sexual purity and the marriage bed being undefiled. It made her feel like a hypocrite because inside, she was siding with Sullivan. Kina wasn’t a nymphomaniac by any stretch of the imagination, but she did long to be kissed, held, touched, and to feel the weight of a man on her own body.
    â€œGod, is it wrong to feel this way?” she asked. “Loving you is supposed to be enough, so why doesn’t it feel like it? I’m tired of pretending I don’t want a man in my life and like I’m not a real flesh-and-blood woman. While my sex life with E’Bell wasn’t the best, it did exist, which is more than I can say for my current situation.
    â€œYou said you’d send us a comforter,” she quietly