A sound like water, beading up and falling, tap-tap-tapping fast enough that the noise becomes steady, gentle. That’s nice. It must be raining. You hope you remembered to put the bike under the porch. It continues, and the static of noise seems to disappear under this attention. Hm, did it stop? Focus roams, searching for […]
The girl is seven. The boys are older, maybe nine. From the kitchen window, she watches them try to blow the lid off a garbage can with firecrackers. They hoot and holler. Then they see a cat, and one of the boys grabs the cat and tells the others to run into the garage and […]
She died at home two days later. Her mother and father and brothers were with her. Hannah Madison, who was not present, would weep for days. Paul Hoffman insisted, his wife silent and unsteady and distraught, that his daughter be buried sans casket, deep in the ground in the manner she’d asked for. It took […]
A month later Vanessa Hoffman went back into the hospital. Old meds faltered and new medications were tried. She was connected to machines again and monitored twenty-four hours a day. Days became nights and nights became days and the hours ticked by and nurses were on and off duty and doctors came and went and […]