Twelve Houses With One Revisited
Narrative nonfiction published by
Cornerstone Press University of Wisconsin Stevens Point
Stand-alone chapters previously published:
Everyone at the Table - Los Angeles Review of Books
Ice Cream - Narrative Magazine
Dog Pack - University of New Orleans Bayou Magazine
Awards placements in competitions such as Driftwood Press and New Letters' Robert Day Award for For Fiction.
“…the medium nods to the empty space near the sofa, “OK. OK, she wants to say that she knew. That’s what I’m getting. You were young. Very young, little. Yeah, she’s letting me know she’s just very sad about what he was was doing…the first stepfather. To you, you know, when you were little…,” the medium sets the glass of water down, head bowed and everyone in the room, living and dead, their heads bowed too at the story the ghost is trying to tell. “She’s asking permission. The first stepfather, he’s standing behind her and she’s asking permission to bring him forward. She’s trying to help him…”
“To do what.”
“They see, how it affected you. In your life, what he did. They’re asking, they’re telling me that they’re asking…wait…hold on…ok…”
The medium turns to Amy. Grown now. A mother herself.
“They’re asking if you can forgive them?”
Amy eyes straight ahead at whoever may or may not be standing there, “No.”…”
“…All told, there would be three witches; The warning witch, the healing witch, and the telling witch. Each would appear in my life in the right way and at the right time. And each I would recognize, for every child knows a witch. And the witches would recognize me. Go this way. Lean that way. Aim for this horizon, defer that turn. Stand tall, now hunker down. Here is bad weather. Here is bright weather. Come sister, I know a place you can be free…”
“…She watched him take a towel from the stack by the door and unfold it in his capable hands and she knew she’d never get to see him do their dishes or open car doors for his mother or hold letters that weren’t from her. She’d never get to see his drawings or go to his shows. Those would be things other girls would do. Girls he would go back to on the plane tomorrow. She’d be another story in his story. Something sweet and not lasting and it wasn’t her business to know any more than that. He gave her kisses that tasted like cigarettes and Coke, he gave her his face buried in her neck, curled hair in her fingers, strong back holding himself above her, his blue eyes, and the knowing that there were good men in the world and, at the lucky age of seventeen, she had had one love her and she had loved him back.…”
Coming January 2028