No One But You. Brenda Novak

“I know what to do with kindness. It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s you.”

      “Me.”

      “Yes!”

      “Why?”

      “How do you think all the people you care about—your friends and neighbors, your ex and his family—will react if they believe you’re taking my side? Befriending a man who—” he made quotations marks with his fingers “—killed his parents? They’ll start treating you like they do me. You’ll be an outcast. It can happen quickly, and once it does, you might not be able to turn it around—not in such a small town.”