One Wrong Makes a Right

This is my latest contribution to

Five Sentence Fiction

The prompt for this week is

Conflict

You will find other entries at

Her workdays, boundless, endless, brutal, were at other people’s homes, places with one skewed couch, substituting for a bedroom, the magazine picture on the wall a sad reach for beauty.

Marcie hoping, but never finding, good news with each visit – a lesson in every appalling thing one person can do to another.

She had been schooled to protect, but social work was a very different proposition from its portrayal in her classes so long ago; would she ever be able to change the outcome for even one child?

She decided to go to the mall after work, a respite from reality that was now cancelled for her by the sight of the wild-eyed mother stinking of stale booze and dragging the tiny screaming child out into the night.

Drawn inexorably after them into the cold, conscious of the cashed paycheck in her purse, Marcie followed, followed, and then spoke,

“How much would you take for the child?”