Afterwards
The muffler was loud as they entered the driveway. Both sets of parents were on the front steps before he turned off the engine. The mothers were in tears. His father was stoic—still angry, still pained. Her father looked broken. The young couple had called earlier when they were better able to estimate when they would arrive. This had been their second call in a matter of days—the first of which took place after more than a year of silence. They would come, the young couple said—on their terms.
“We’ll stay a week, maybe two if you’re okay with that,” they said.
And then? the parents wanted to know, but they did not ask.
Before
No one could have guessed what they were burning there in the little leap of flames that darted towards the black, summer sky. No one could have imagined the items that sizzled into dust that night at the far end of the grassy lawn on the edge of the river.
One white cotton shirt, men’s neck size sixteen, sleeve length thirty-two/thirty-three, one pair of men’s black trousers with frayed cuffs, one ankle-length skirt with double pockets, a brown, shoulder-length, authentic Asian hair wig, and a new black fedora with a wide brim.
A halo of light hovered just above the fire, obscuring the view of the river and the opposite shore. In daylight, a craggy cliff could be seen rising from the sandy bank across the way. On this starless midnight, though, there were neither rock nor river. There...
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