Not Fair and Not Funny

I have a lot of good memories from my time in Central PA even though it was a little weird while I was out there.  I was working in a job that did not fit my personality in any way, and I can see how jobs can change you when you stay at them for too damn long.  There is a point at which you take what you can from a job and move on; I hit that point at week two.  I shouldn't have stayed, but I did because of misguided loyalty.  Theme of my life, actually.
A lot of times when we go back to visit we run into people we know.  People I knew from my job.  I ran into someone at Walmart last year and I couldn't quite remember her name.  On Saturday night while I was a few glasses of wine deep, I asked my friends her name since I still couldn't place it.  I gave the description...our age, had a boyfriend who was a chef, was trying to be a nurse and got pregnant.  Not a rare story at all.  The girl who lives there made it clear that I had missed something.  I got the name and I got the story.  Her boyfriend and father of her three children under age 5 shot her in the head almost a year to the date I saw her at Walmart.
This is not the first person I worked with who is dead now.
Being poor is dangerous.
I don't think anybody could have stopped it.  Least of all me. Definitely not my friends.  Not even the agency I worked for.

BUT
We knew he was creepy.
We knew he wouldn't let her out of his sight.
We knew he was taking money away from her.

If this stuff we saw had happened at a bank, or a school, or a restaurant, the cops would have been called.  But it happened at a welfare office.  And this stuff is just expected and these women are as protected as they have allowed.  It turns out she had sought out two PFA's against him.  It just didn't stop him from shooting her in the head.  It turns out he had gone to prison.  It just didn't stop him from buying the guns that he wanted.
There are three kids out there, undoubtedly in the same exact town, that are going to school this year and their last name will tell the rest of the kids, the school, the community, exactly what they need to know about them.

It's not fair and it's not funny.  And I wish it didn't happen but I know that it did, and I can even imagine the way that it happened.
I can imagine that it will happen again.