She sat Margaret down on the couch, then sat down on the armchair next to it, so that they were almost facing each other.

"I grew up here in Albuquerque," she began. "My parents used to take me and my brothers to the hot air balloon races every year. We could never even afford the dream of owning one, but seeing them as much as possible was almost enough. They were almost an obsession for me all the way through high school. I had never even been on an airplane, so I had no idea what it was like to be that high above ground, but the idea exhilarated me. The sole dream I had for my future was to learn to fly one of those things." She chuckled at the astonished look on Margaret's face. "Oh, I wanted a family too, but honestly, it wasn't my top priority, and I didn't feel one way or the other about a real career. I just wanted to fly a hot air balloon. Preferably one of my own, but I was down to earth enough to plan to take what I could get. I went to the city college after high school, and that's when I fell in love. Hank was a little rough around the edges, but he could be a real sweet guy when he wanted to, when he was sober. He'd lived in Texas most of his life, and had plans to go back there someday and work on his uncle's ranch. I don't know if I ever asked what he was doing at the college. He was probably just there because his parents wanted him to be; they hadn't struck me as being too keen on the idea of him becoming just another cowhand.

"Like a lot of college students and most typical 'tough-guys,' he sure did love his beer. When he was drunk, though, all hell broke loose. He was as mean as a rabid, hungry dog, and would beat on whatever was closest, which was usually me." She ran a light hand over her cheekbone, remembering the bruises there, how she had tried rather unsuccessfully to cover them with make-up. "If anyone confronted me about what was going on, I'd defend him as if he were Jesus Christ in the flesh, returned to save our souls. I was so head over heels in love with him that I thought nothing else mattered. He'd said we'd get married, have the perfect life together, and I'd believed him. The abuse was always just physical. Oh, he'd yell sometimes, but it was never anything I took too personally. Just stuff like 'let me live my life the way I want to' if I told him he was way too blitzed to drive. Then he'd look at me with those glazed-over eyes and hit. He'd always apologize the next day, and would usually bring me flowers or something else to mollify me. One night, though, he was just on the edge of drunk, still pretty coherent, and seething mad over something or other." A wry smile crossed her lips. "It's been so long now, the details have gotten fuzzy.

"Anyway, I had my own room in an apartment at that point, and my roommates were out for the night, so I had risked taking him home, hoping he'd cool off, which never worked. All I remember is that the anger originally had nothing to do with me, but he'd taken something I'd said the wrong way, something like that, and gotten angry at me. It had been a long day, I was at the end of my fuse, and so I talked back to him, called him names. He was on his feet, had never sat down like I'd asked him to, and he suddenly just turned around to face a poster I had on the wall of a multi- colored hot air balloon. My dad had bought it for me five years before, so it was a little battered, but still one of my prized possessions. Hank knew that. He knew how much the balloons meant to me. He just grabbed the center of it and ripped. He tore out a strip down the middle the width of his rough, oversized hand. I had, like an idiot, stayed within arm's reach of him and was now on the brink of bawling, something I didn't do often, at least not in front of people. After he was done with the poster, he turned just slightly, just enough, and backhanded me with the same hand that had the center of my beloved poster clutched within it. Adding injury to insult, so to speak. Something snapped in me. I sat up, and somehow managed to keep myself under control enough to tell him to get out before I called the cops. That sobered him up fast. He didn't hit me again, but I could see that he wanted to. He restrained himself, and told me we could work it out without the law. It was my luck that time that most apartment buildings have thin walls." Annie grinned, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. They were still clouded over with remembered pain and anger. "The next door neighbors, an elderly couple, had heard the shouting and had already called the police. Hank tried to grab me, I ran out of my room, heading for the kitchen, where the phone was, he caught me, we struggled. That's when the officer arrived. He didn't even bother with knocking, just barged in, rescuing me both from Hank and from myself. Hank went to jail, I went away for a while, stayed with family in St. Louis, and met Ben. He fell in love with me, and after a couple years I finally threw caution to the wind and loved him back. He's the sweetest, calmest man, and he loves balloons too. So we moved back here, started a life. I never heard from Hank again. I guess maybe he's back in Texas now, raising steers. If I'd stayed with him, that's where I'd be, too, a few hundred miles away from my dreams of flying a balloon, probably with a nose crooked from being broken so many times, bruises all over my body, a zillion emotional scars, and children that either mirrored me or him, not a great set of options." That soliloquy had flowed out of Annie. The bruises on Margaret's arm brought back the memories so vividly that the events almost seemed recent. At that point, though, Annie had run out of things to say, and so simply looked at Margaret, waiting for a reaction.

"Did that really happen?" Margaret asked in a quiet, hollow voice. Her heart ached for her friend, but at the same time her pulse quickened at the thought that this woman sitting in front of her had been in a situation similar to her own and had gotten out alive and well, and had gone on to fulfill her dreams. It was nearly too much to hope for.

"Well, jeez, Maggie, you think I'd make something like that up just to make you feel better? I'm living proof of the fact that it is possible to get away from men like that. Possible, and necessary. I know how to fly a balloon now." She beamed at the picture of her daughter on the table across from her. "And someday, when Ben retires, we might use some of the money we've saved to buy one of our own. I've kept my dreams, and fulfilled them better than I'd even hoped for. If you're going to have someone in your life, it's my opinion that he should be compatible with your dreams." Her voice lowered to an impassioned whisper. "Don't sacrifice your dreams to stay with a man who hurts you."