Excerpt: The Child Bride

I loved to watch people walk into a meeting room before the meeting started, especially other women. Slowly, gracefully, like gazelles approaching a watering hole, wary of predators, they would rise on tiptoe, searching the room for someone they knew, someone they could sit next to, someone to offer them familiarity, even of the most mundane sort. I loved to see everyone so carefully, professionally put together, and imagine them that morning staring forlornly into their closets or their bathroom mirrors, thinking what we all think sometimes: that we--not our clothes, not our makeup, not our career title, but we ourselves--simply won't do. And I always wanted to reassure them: no, you look fine. Those leggings do work with that minidress. You are the person to pull off that magenta eyeshadow. You are fine. You are worthy of love.
Unfortunately there was no one there that morning to reassure me. And when Craig Phillips sat down next to me, I found myself wishing that one of the crocodiles at my metaphorical watering hole had gotten him.