The ancient truck’s open hood concealed her from the waist up as she bent over its engine; she rose a little onto her toes to get a better look at something shadowy and undefined. Try again now, she hollered to nobody in the cab, but all that happened was nothing, only the obstinate click-click-click of … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 10.25.20

Cecily could still hear the little fan whirring, a sound that somehow underscored the silence that morning, if she thought long and hard enough about it. For all but the coldest months in the last year, Claudia had kept it going on a small fern stand next to her reading chair, more or less in … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 9.7.20

It was twilight and Cecily’s bones ached. She stepped off the city bus and began the short walk to the home she shared with her mother, whose health had spiraled into a steady decline in the last year or so. She turned the key in the front door lockset and stepped inside quietly to the … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 8.2.20

Bran’s bedroom was all that remained to suggest the original vernacular architecture of her little cottage—the rest she had dragged grudgingly into the 1970s. A pair of authentic-looking casement windows just above the bed had convinced Lucy this might be true, anyway: They were large and lacked mullions, with handwrought iron fasteners that worked surprisingly … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 7.19.20