Category: Fiction

She sat in a high-back blue chair, an opened book in her lap, one leg pulled up under the other, her lower lip pushed out in thought. It appeared as through she was looking out the window beyond anything she could see.

The crying fits came without warning. She would be sitting there, having a conversation or staring out into a space – he would often catch her doing that, staring off at some indeterminate point in the distance – when all of a sudden she would buckle over, bury her face into her hands and begin to tremble.

Josh pressed the nozzle of the spray-paint can and concentrated on the hiss as he sprayed a golden line on the side of the boxcar. Amongst the stationary metal behemoths that frequently acted as his canvases in the train yard, he painted in peace. Just him, the blank walls of metal and that satisfying hiss.

Soon after our wedding, Raj’s employer offered him a transfer to Seattle, providing us an escape from family tensions even though I had to resign from my IT job. Driving us to the airport, you were your usual jokey self, but when I caught sight of your eyes reflected in the rearview mirror, the sadness in them punched a hole in my gut. At the airport, my heart trembled at the way the tearful hug between you and Raj stretched on. “I’m going to miss you, too,” I whispered.

“Please, stop,” she begged Mr. Turner. “You must realize what a story like this could do to me. It’s not like the other rumors you spread about me, like how I enjoy taunting our servants, or that I put my sewing needles in your shoes. Or worst of all,” she closed her eyes once more, “that I snuck worms into the pies I brought to the orphanage. I can’t show my face there ever again, and you know how much I loved serving there.”