Chapter One: Summer 1972
Leo Cassaro was a middle aged man who lived with his 19 year old son Alan in their suburban home. His wife – Alan’s mother – had left Leo four years earlier when she had discovered that her husband wasn’t faithful to her.
She wasn’t as upset about her husband’s cheating, Leo remembered, since she admitted to him in parting that she had a few flings of her own over the years. It was who she had caught her husband with that seemed to
It was just after 1am when I finished my university assignment on the computer. I shut it down and tidied up my mess of papers, and turned off all the lights. I began to climb the stairs up to my bedroom in the dark. I was just turning the corner of the landing when I collided with someone coming downstairs, and we both gave yelps of surprise.
“Who the hell is that?” I hissed, thinking it was my younger brother or sister. “It’s Joanne”, came the reply. Joanne was my sister’s best friend,
During the next few days Rich and I worked at the landscaping company together, but he was distant. We hardly talked and when we did, even at home, it was in short, cordial sentences. It was totally unlike Rich to behave this way, so by the middle of the week I wanted to have a talk with him. After work we got home, and our parents were traveling for a few days so we had the house to ourselves. I made some dinner and at the table I decided it was time to talk.
“Rich, is there something
I always address my lady friends by their first names and refer to them the same way but there is one whose real name I don’t even know. When I was introduced to her shortly after her divorce, our mutual friend told me that everybody calls her Sunny and that is the only name I have ever heard or used.
I don’t know why she is called that; I suspect part of the reason is the short blonde hair that frames her pretty, smiling face.
That smiling face is probably the main reason, though,
Clear, warm waters and azure skies did nothing for her.
There had been a holiday, once, where she had sat on one of those white sanded beaches whilst grinning Caribbean boys brought her drinks under a “made in china” palm parasol.
The heat, even in the shade, was sapping.
Slipping into the artificially clean water did nothing to alleviate it. Rather, it only compounded the problem. She’d felt her pores closing in protest.
Warm water was no great thing, she discovered, when the
It took me a while to squeeze out of the railway station before making it to the parking space while I kept thinking about what my wife said just before the train started moving.
‘You have to be content with your mother’s spicy food till I return with your baby.’
I was convinced that her statement was quite straight and meant nothing than what it sounds. But, I somehow began to feel the prick as I kept eschewing her statement again and again.
I have been watching Savita, my
Jamie sat in his kitchen, studying the woman across from him. He squinted through the smoke from his pipe and, for a moment, saw her as she had been when they met. He smiled at the memory. She had been 19, he 35. Neither had believed the other could be interested in themselves. Yet they were. Then she had been young, pretty and immature.
Now she was older, wiser and definitely beautiful. In 2004, when he had last seen her, she had been…well, a little on the too heavy side. Now, 4 years later,
It was pouring rain as I pounded on the door to my best friend’s house. The lights weren’t on and her car wasn’t in the driveway, but I was so enraged that I didn’t care. I was about ready to give up on the door and just crash through the front window when the light in the front hall came on and the door flew open.
“What in the hell…” Ashley’s dad looked furious until he saw me. His jaw dropped as he looked at me, and he was silent for a moment.
Catherine was blushing furiously. Looking anywhere but at Briana she murmured, “You know, I feel like going for a drive somewhere…”
“So have you?” Briana asked quietly, still grinning.
Catherine looked up, her eyes wide. She had been hoping to change the track of the conversation. “Have I what?” She asked, pretending. Briana was a little flushed, but she was making lots of eye contact.
“Have you ever done it?”
Catherine blushed harder. Briana was persistent.
They had been hanging out while
1.
When she was nineteen, two bandits dressed-up as Indians killed Molly Sheridan’s father and her three younger brothers, and burned their ranch. They carried her off, but hadn’t tied her hands properly, perhaps because they’d got so drunk, perhaps only because they didn’t imagine she could give them any trouble, bound or no. Thus as they were riding, she was able to get hold of one of their pistols, and shoot the men dead.
She would later regret that she had done the