A quarter moon sat high in the evening sky, pockmarked and shadowed. From time to time a curtain of clouds partially obscured its face, along with the sprinkling of stars in the otherwise clear sky. The cool summer’s night air was stirred only by a light breeze leaving the bay still and smooth as glass, save for the subtle rippling of underwater currents. Other than the rhythmic clanging of a distant bell buoy, the only sound was the water lapping gently against the hull of the boat.
Mollie steadied herself with one hand on the rail of the rowboat and knelt on the floorboards as she positioned Henry, her much beloved but now incapacitated husband. She had sat him on the stern bench and was propping pillows and towels around him to keep him stable and upright. When she was satisfied he was sufficiently safe and secure for the evening’s voyage, she reached over to retrieve her Hawaiian print canvas bag from the dock at the Bali Hai.
Henry had bought the bag for Mollie on their honeymoon to Kauai years ago. It had been the second marriage for both of them, with Henry being already well advanced into his middle years and eleven years Mollie’s senior. Each of them had previously survived marriages of twenty plus years, from which they had brought into the fray a supporting cast of eight children, evenly divided between the two of them. Truth be known, “supporting” may not have been the most appropriate adjective to describe the attitudes of the children as they marched reluctantly, nay screaming and kicking, into the long term combat of a blended family. Now thankfully, all the children were grown and gone, off to college, marriage, and careers, leaving in their wake a trail of grandchildren, and more importantly, finally freeing Mollie and Henry to enjoy each other’s company in the “autumn of their years,” as Frank Sinatra might have put it.
For this evening’s moonlight cruise Mollie had dressed casually in blue jeans with a blue and white striped knit top, covered by a loose-fitting black hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of deck shoes. Mollie pulled from the bag a straw sun hat. Though there was no need for a sun hat at night, she put it on anyway because it was Henry’s favorite and she knew it pleased him so to see her wearing it. It was such a “fun” hat he would say, though Mollie failed to see how even a hat could bring much fun to this evening.
For her heart was filled with a sense of foreboding and also a sense of duty, as might have been seen from her somber expression. Her empty eyes glazed over as she stared out across the bay at the downtown San Diego skyline where not even the rainbow of lights from the buildings reflecting on the water could bring joy to her heart on this night.
As Henry had approached retirement age he set out in earnest to accomplish one of his life dreams – that of building a wooden boat completely by hand. Old wooden boats had been a passion of Henry’s for as long as he could remember. Black and white photos of classic mahogany Chris Craft runabouts covered the walls of his office and books and magazines about the topic lined the bookshelves.
Henry began the project by converting the garage into his workshop and then accumulating an exhaustive collection of tools and equipment. He took a part-time job working weekends at a wood furniture making shop to learn how to use the tools and to develop his woodworking skills. He became a dedicated student of his passion, leaving Mollie to become a boat builder’s widow for nearly two years while He spent every free evening and weekend constructing the boat.
He had so extensively researched available plans and designs and construction techniques, one would think he was preparing a doctoral thesis on the art of wooden boat building. Eventually he settled on a traditional Dory-type rowing boat with a shoal draft bottom and rounded topsides. This style had appealed to Henry because it carried a five-foot, two-inch beam, which was wider than the normal ratio for a fourteen-foot boat. Henry was more interested in comfort than speed, for he intended to build this boat specifically as a two-person party boat for Mollie and himself to be used for nothing more than lazy moonlight cruises on the bay and the sharing of a bottle of wine and fine cigars and intimate conversation.
Henry built the hull of lapstrake construction with Honduran mahogany planks overlapping to form ridges inside and out and then fastened them with clinched copper rivets. The ribs were steam-bent from red oak, and the thwarts, or transverse bench seats, solid keel, rub rails, floorboards, and transom were all made from fine Burma teakwood.
Everything on the boat was done by Henry’s hand alone, with no task being farmed out to third parties with the sole exception of the numbering and lettering. For that Henry had engaged the special calligraphy skills of his wife. The final touch was the painting of the boat’s name on the transom:
Mollie Bea
Oceanside, California
so named in honor of his ever-so-patient and understanding wife, Mollie Beatrice. The end product, even she had to agree, though just a simple rowboat, was truly a marvelous work of art.
So, as it had on countless evenings before, the Mollie Bea would serve as their transport and conversation pit for the evening.
Mollie sat the canvas bag on the front bench seat, or “forward thwart,” as Henry referred to it, then loosened the bow and stern lines from their moorings and tossed them into the boat. She seated herself at the rowing station on the middle thwart facing backwards toward Henry. In this way she could talk to him and tend to him, as needed, while she handled the rowing chores by herself.
Mollie switched on the battery powered lantern and then turned to look at Henry. “Well sweetheart, are you ready?” she asked in a soft and tender voice. Without waiting for a response she laid the oars into the solid bronze oarlocks and pressed her feet against the foot braces and prepared to make way. Mollie pushed away from the dock with her hand and then dipped the blades of her oars into the water. She turned the boat away from the dock and then headed out into the bay steering toward the city lights.
“Well Henry, you’re a lucky man again tonight. You get to be alone with your two favorite ladies – the Mollie Bea and me.” Mollie smiled as her lungs filled with the cool night air. “Oh, the air is so pleasant and balmy tonight, and the lights are simply dazzling. Just look, Henry,” she said, waving her arm in the direction of the city lights. “There is every color imaginable out there. God himself couldn’t have painted a more beautiful picture.”
Mollie headed out into the bay. The boat rowed fine and it was stable and graceful. It took a little while for her muscles to loosen up, but soon enough she broke into a smooth rhythm and then really began to put her back into it.
Mollie valued rhythm, not only in rowing, but in life. She enjoyed the sameness of a weekly routine – church on Sundays, Bible study on Wednesdays, moonlight cruises on Saturdays. As an engagement gift, Mollie had given Henry a beautiful mantel clock, which chimed on the quarter, half and hour marks. The regularity of the chiming provided a rhythm to the days for Mollie. The gentle sound in the background became a metronome for the subconscious, providing a sense of stability and predictability as regular as a heartbeat, from which she drew her sense of security. Now, with the rhythm of their lives suddenly broken, it was as if the mantel clock had wound down and ceased its melodic chiming, leaving Mollie disrupted and unsettled.
The mantel clock had been a symbolic gift of time from Mollie to Henry. Now, with the events of late, it was as if the precious gift had been dishonored, surfacing a smoldering undercurrent of anger and resentment in her heart, though Mollie had not previously been consciously aware of these feelings.
She rowed on, her heart laboring slightly with the exertion, her breathing heavier, and a light sweat building on her brow and lip. After a while her abdominal muscles and her back began to ache and the muscles in her arms began to burn. It was no small task to row a boat half way across San Diego Bay. “You know, it would be good if you could help me with this rowing,” she suggested, knowing that was not a possibility. And yet, it felt good to Mollie to be working her body and resting her mind. She desperately needed the break, as things had become more than a little bit stressful for her these days.
After about five hundred yards or so of steady rowing they reached the desired location. Near the approximate center of the bay she could see the skyline of downtown San Diego, and the cruise ships and the famous Star of India tall ship at the Embarcadero to the east, and Shelter Island and the Bali Hai restaurant and the marina to the west. It was too dark, of course, to see Point Loma off to the south. Yet there was beauty to behold in virtually every direction. And in the center of it all there was only quiet and stillness and solitude, affording peace and tranquility, and providing an environment that was amazingly conducive to intimate conversation.
Molly shipped the oars, pulling them in toward her and laying their grips gently on the floorboards beneath the forward thwart where she also found the anchor. She let the anchor down over the side, keeping hold of the nylon rope as it uncoiled. When she felt the anchor hit bottom, she pulled the line taught and then tied the rope off on a bronze cleat mounted on the rail near the bow.
Returning to her seat, Mollie rested for a few minutes, catching her breath and taking in the moment. When she felt sufficiently recovered she retrieved the canvas bag from behind her. From inside the bag she produced a bottle of wine and two crystal wine goblets wrapped in white linen napkins, along with a corkscrew. Mollie removed the seal and the cork from the wine bottle and then sat the bottle aside to breathe in a special bronze mount that Henry had fabricated for just such a purpose.
Digging into the bag again she now produced two cigars, a cutter, a lighter, and two small ceramic ashtrays, which she fitted into two more bronze mounts, also fabricated by Henry for just such a purpose. Mollie removed the cellophane wrappings from the cigars, placing them back into the bag, then deftly clipped the tips of both cigars. She slowly passed one of the fine cigars in front of her nose taking in the aroma, “Ah! That’s sweet,” she declared. “We have some very nice Ashton’s tonight. A little expensive for every day consumption perhaps, and a little long for my liking, but then those cheap Phillies Titans I get at the grocery store just wouldn’t do for such an auspicious occasion as tonight, would they dear?”
Mollie inserted the end of the cigar into her mouth and twirled it, wetting its entire circumference. Then she took the lighter and lit the cigar, puffing quickly several times until she was satisfied that she had it going properly. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said. “It breathes well, as you would say.” Mollie placed the other cigar in the ashtray in front of Henry. “I won’t light this one because I know you can’t smoke them anymore. Maybe we’ll just leave it there for old times’ sake.”
Mollie puffed on her cigar and enjoyed the view for a few minutes. “Oh, hey! I almost forgot the wine.”
She carefully folded and then draped over her left forearm one of the linen napkins. Then she picked up the wine bottle and tipped it over her linen-covered arm as she ceremoniously filled their wine glasses, deliberately twisting the bottle just so as to roll the last drip off the lip. “I’ve poured one for you too, Henry, even though I know you can’t drink wine anymore. We’ll just have it there for old times’ sake, you know, as with the cigar.”
Mollie smiled lovingly at Henry and then lifted her glass in a toast, “To you, dear Henry. For all you’ve done for me and all you’ve shared with me and for all you’ve meant to me, for the way you’ve loved me, and for being truly the love of my life.” She leaned forward and clinked her glass on the one she had prepared for Henry, who remained silent throughout.
“Oh, this is lovely,” she remarked, holding up the bottle of Clos Du Bois Napa Valley 2004. “A little expensive for every day drinking perhaps. But, my Two Buck Chuck, as you call it, just wouldn’t do on an occasion like this, now would it, Henry?”
Mollie put her free hand over the side of the boat and dangled her fingers in the water. “Do you remember the first time you showed me this place? We were still dating and you brought me down here to Shelter Island. We had dinner over there at the Bali Hai and you had arranged for the maitre d’ to seat us at a table by the window where we had the most magnificent view of the city skyline. I remember how you went on and on, talking so excitedly about how you loved the lights and the way they shimmered on the water. At one point a rowboat, much like this one, passed as a shadow through the lights, and we could see two lovers having a private moonlight cruise. I’ll never forget it. You said, ‘I want to be there, with you, in a rowboat, a shadow in the shimmering lights.’ You spoke with a chilling certainty in your voice as if you intended to will the idea into being.” Mollie paused as the emotion of the memory of that moment flooded over her. “And sure enough, thus was planted the seed for our most wonderful tradition. Now, as many times before, here we are, two lovers in a rowboat, making a shadow in the lights. Isn’t it romantic, Henry?”
Mollie sat up quickly, her face brightening with a broad smile, and she began to speak excitedly. “Henry, do you suppose someone seated at a window table at the Bali Hai is seeing us right now? Could we be planting a seed for two new lovers to experience this same sweet dream? Oh, it’s a lovely thought.”
Then she realized that her quick movement had caused Henry to tip over to one side. She leaned forward and straightened him, repacking the pillows and towels around him. “There, there. Sorry about that,” she said in apology. She smiled at her husband. “You look very handsome tonight, sweetie. I’ve always liked seeing you in navy blue. It goes so well with your eyes.”
Mollie sat back on her bench and heaved a sigh of contentment. “Oh, I do love these summer evenings out here on the bay with you. This tradition of ours has become very special to me. Though, of course, now it can never be quite the same, I suppose.” She paused and stared at Henry and took a moment to remember their times on the bay. “We had some wonderful conversations out here, didn’t we, honey? I do so love talking with you. I guess now, though, I’ll have to do all the talking for both of us since you have unfortunately also given up that practice. But, as you say, I’m good at that. And it’s true; I do enjoy a good conversation. So, I’ll just carry on as always, you know, just for old times’ sake.”
A sad smile came across Mollie’s face. The intimacy she and Henry had been able to achieve over the years as their relationship developed and their love deepened and grew was something she greatly valued and knew she would now desperately miss. Mollie downed the remainder of her glass of wine and then poured herself another. She continued to puff contemplatively on her cigar.
“Ah, Henry, Henry, Henry. Whatever will I do? You have abandoned me again, you old coot. You know, I should have listened to my friends. When we got engaged they all warned me that this would happen. ‘Mollie, what are you thinking?’ they asked. ‘Look at how many times he broke up with you when you were dating. The man is a runner! He’s never going to stay!’ Yeah, Liz and Deborah, and the women from the church. They all said the same thing. But I said, ‘No! You loved me and you would stay with me.’ And so we got married and what did you do? As soon as things began to get a little rough for us, you started to feel that old wanderlust. Do you remember what you told me? You said you felt an ‘overwhelming compulsion’ to run away. An ‘overwhelming compulsion!’ That’s what you said. But then, do you remember what you said after that? You said, ‘I love you too much to go. I just can’t do it.’ And you didn’t do it. You didn’t leave. Bully for you, Henry. Bully for you. You overcame that overwhelming compulsion and you didn’t leave. Thank you for that, Henry. Thank you for having the courage and the commitment to stay. Just think of what we would have missed had you not.”
Mollie studied Henry for a while before speaking again, her head spinning with wine and thought. Her cigar puffing became more aggressive, as did her drinking, and she became more agitated by her own conversation as that smoldering undercurrent began to reach the surface. “Yeah, and you know what else they said? My very best friends? Those people who loved me dearly and had only my best interests at heart? You know what else they said?” She glared at Henry as if he would, or could, respond. “They said, ‘Mollie, what are you thinking? Why would you marry someone who is so obviously unhealthy?’ By unhealthy they meant fat, of course. ‘Why, he’s a walking heart attack, or a stroke for sure.’ Yeah, that’s what they said. My friends. They didn’t think you would live very long, or if you did, you would not have a ‘quality life.’”
Mollie puffed furiously at her cigar and refilled her wine glass. “Yeah, that’s what they called it – a ‘quality life.’ I don’t know what the hell they meant, but I’m sure they had in mind paralysis from a stroke, or blindness and amputations from diabetes, or God forbid, an early onset of Alzheimer’s. Isn’t that a hoot? Alzheimer’s! With a mind like yours, just consider the irony.”
She turned her head away and stared off into the distance as the tears began to flow. Her chest heaved and convulsed. After a moment, still not composed, she turned back to face Henry.
“But, I said, ‘No! I would take care of you and I would help you learn to eat in a healthier manner and I would get you to exercise more.’” Mollie’s chin quivered as the tears flooded down her cheeks. “Isn’t that just like a woman, to try to change a man? But, obviously they were right and I was wrong. Just look at you, Henry! How could you have allowed this to happen? Are you really that selfish?”
Mollie dropped her head and held it in her hands and wailed uncontrollably for some time. In a little while she sat back up and straightened her sweatshirt and picked up her hat, which had fallen off, and then placed it back on her head. She emptied the wine bottle into her glass and picked up her cigar, which had fallen onto the deck. “Oh, dear! I’m so sorry,” she cried, referring to the ashes that were now scattered about. “I’ll clean this up at home. I promise.”
Mollie stared off into the distance and her eyes were drawn to the brightly lit cruise ship moored to the dock at the Embarcadero. It saddened her, strangely, to think that there were happy couples on that ship, enjoying their retirement together, growing old together, and being sufficiently healthy to at least go on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. What had these people done so right that she and Henry had done so wrong as to make for such a stark difference in their outcomes?
Mollie shook her head from side-to-side as she relit her cigar. She picked up Henry’s wine glass and said, “I presume you’re not going to finish this.” Mollie held the glass up high in front of her face so that she could see the moon through it. “This is expensive wine,” she said. Then she held the cigar up in front of her face and examined the label. “And these are expensive cigars.” She surveyed the boat that Henry had handcrafted. “And I shudder to even think about how much you spent building this damn boat.” Mollie smirked and nodded her head up and down.
“Yeah, you know what else my select group of prophetic advisors said to me, Henry? Do you? This one’s really going to piss you off, I’m sure.” She paused for a moment before continuing as if for effect. “They said you were a spendthrift and that in spite of how much money you made, you would still spend more than that. They accused you of squandering your money, Henry! Can you believe that? You, a CPA by trade? I guess it’s the old ‘cobbler’s children have no shoes’ adage.”
Mollie shifted uncomfortably in her seat as her chin began to quiver again and her tears reappeared. “And so, what happened? You gave up your lucrative business that provided all that big money and bought a stupid-assed home-based business that never made a nickel in the five years you owned it, just so you wouldn’t have to travel so much.”
Mollie took a final puff from her cigar and then angrily tossed it over the side. “And so, the next thing you know, Old Jed’s no longer a millionaire, if you get my drift. Here we were, not even married yet and you talked me into taking out a second mortgage on my house so I could loan you money to pay off your debts! And then what happened? We got married and inside of two years we were bankrupt, and I lost my house to foreclosure. My God, what a fool I was. Henry! My equity in that house was going to pay for my kids’ college educations and my retirement. It was all the money I had in the world. And I worked my ass off and scrimped and scraped and made do with next to nothing for years and years to get that house. And for what?” Mollie downed the last of her wine and then threw the wine glass over the side of the boat. “DAMMIT, Henry!”
She cried heavily for a good long while. Eventually, she settled down again. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and said, “Oh, what the hell? I suppose I really didn’t lose anything, what with the bottom falling out of the housing market and the mortgage market going to hell, both at the same time. The damn house was worth less than what I paid for it originally by the time the bank took it. Those bastards!” Mollie spat the words out of her mouth. Then suddenly, as if without warning, she leaned over the port side of the boat and vomited into the water.
“Excuse me, Henry. I’m so sorry,” she said, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Remembering the linen napkins, she found one and then dipped it in the water to clean up her face more thoroughly. “I suppose you’re probably thinking about the first time we smoked cigars together. Remember, Henry? We were downtown at Street Scene walking around, drinking those blue margaritas. We stopped into one of the cigar stores and bought a couple of big fat ones. I don’t think you had ever even smoked a cigar at that point, but I wanted to show you how. So we were smoking away and powering down the margaritas. I began to feel a little dizzy, so I asked if we could sit down. We found a nearby curb and sat down together. Then, at a moment when I thought you were looking away I turned my head to the side and threw up in the gutter. I didn’t think you had seen it until years later when I heard you telling this story to our friends. It’s kind of funny now, I suppose.” It was only then that Mollie realized that the violence of her retching had caused her hat to fall off into the water. Seeing it floating twenty yards away, she cried, “Oh! I’ve lost my hat!”
As if the loss of the hat had broken the momentum of her anger, Mollie began to settle a little. She shook her head and giggled to herself. “Oh, what am I talking about? You were an excellent provider and a generous giver. You built me a beautiful new home that was bigger and better than any other house I ever had.” Mollie shook her head from side to side. “Oh Henry, if there was anything you could do, it was to make money. I never saw a man so driven and so committed to his work and with such a deeply ingrained work ethic. I’ve always admired that about you. Once we got back on our feet, you truly did provide well for my children and me. I couldn’t have asked for more. And I thank you for that. Truly I am grateful.”
She chuckled and then said, “But, you know, I’ll say one thing about you, Henry. You don’t think in moderation.”
Mollie ran her hands along the rails on either side of the boat, as if fondling it, just as her beloved husband had fondled the boat so lovingly while building it. “I miss your touch, Henry.”
She sighed deeply, and then again, as she prayed silently, seeking peace and comfort. After a long quiet moment, she spoke again.
“Well, lover. I’ve finished my cigar, I’ve drunk all the wine, and I’ve done all the venting I need to do. I’m drunk and I’m cold and I’m tired. I guess I’ve come full circle now and have achieved some sense of peace with it all.” Mollie lowered her head and closed her eyes tightly. Tears began to flow again as she inhaled deeply and held her breath. In a moment, she exhaled the breath and raised her head and opened her eyes. She put on her best and kindest smile and then spoke in an ever-so-gentle voice, “So, sweetheart. If you think you’re ready to go now, I believe I could be also.”
With that, she paused for a moment, closed her eyes, and prayed again, this time for strength and courage. Then Mollie opened her eyes and carefully leaned forward and picked up the navy blue ceramic urn containing Henry’s cremains. She clutched the urn tightly to her breast and then raised it to her face and kissed it, a soft, gentle, long last kiss. She removed the lid, tipped the urn down toward the water on the starboard side of the boat that was facing the city, and allowed her husband’s ashes to fall into the bay. Then when she was sure all the ashes were gone, she set the urn afloat and watched it fill with water until it sank into the bay.
As Henry’s ashes formed a shadow that trailed slowly away from the boat, Mollie blew a final kiss. “Good-bye, my friend, my lover, my husband. I will love you always. Now truly you are a shadow in the shimmering lights.”
THE END
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~ Bear with me on this thought, because it’s circular: I wonder if you’re trying to set up the reader for a huge shock at the end. To me, the twist that it was an urn, not a corpse, was not much of a twist. Yet, Mollie’s words and actions throughout the story indicate clearly that she’s the only living thing on that boat. If your goal was to have a major twist, this story needs some major reworking. WHICH I HOPE YOU DON’T DO, because this story was awesome to me.
~ You have written Mollie so wonderfully that the story wears its emotions on its sleeves. The themes of acceptance and resistance of death are so powerfully captured, that the twist at the end distracts from it. All the details brought the couple to life. Especially the parts where Mollie recalls what the other ladies thought about Harry. How sold are you on keeping the urn part to the end?
~ Another thing you might consider: Mollie does a lot. Rowing, wiping her nose on her sleeve, pausing conversation for dramatic effect. You could probably take a lot of those actions out, in order to tighten up on the story and put more emphasis on the environment.
~ Back to her talking. It becomes such a central part of the story, that as I reread it, I wonder why she says hardly a thing during the trip to the center of the bay. It seems like she could talk while boarding, or during the first few strokes. I would find a way to justify that, either by having her talk more or having her steel herself for a conversation she’s not ready to have.
~ Good job capturing the environment. If that place really exists, you capture it well. If not, you make it seem real.
You have done it again. Have me sitting here tears running own my cheeks an a silly grin on my face. This is a story that makes one think about the truly disheartening fact of growing older. It also hooks th reader in and starts them thinking of a horrible gruesome end for old Henry. The reader prepares themselves for the inevitable murder of a man made a vegetable by his fulfilling of his own desires in life. We listen to the wife as she spills her love, alongsie her hate and her sense of great loss. We get to that final moment when she throws a living breathing vegetable of a man overboar and letting him sinnk into the night – then wait an urn. . . ashes . . . tears . . . goodbye. WOW I am soo impressed. Bravo!!!!
-‘brought into the fray a supporting cast of eight children’ This was a great description- the way you used ‘supporting cast’ (as true as it was not in the case of your characters), was fantastic.
-The whole first paragraph – well done. You make it super easy to picture the bay, from the sky all the way down to the water.
-You did a great job in the second paragraph of leaving the reader interested in reading more . . .the way you described the husband’s condition and what Mollie was doing with the body made it sound as though he were dead – but then you leave it alone for quite awhile, neither confirming or denying it. Good hook.
-Even though I had no idea what exactly you were talking about, you did a great job in describing the boat the husband had been building. I know nothing of boats, but you made it easy to picture! You’re obviously very skilled in descriptive writing.
-’..in a special bronze mount that Henry had fabricated for just such a purpose.’
’..two more bronze mounts, also fabricated by..’ With the rest of your writing, coming up with such vivid words and such, I was a bit disappointed by the use of the word fabricated within such short succession of one another. Maybe try another word for one of those?
-I enjoyed the way Mollie continued to talk to her husband’s body, and the fact that she not only brought two glasses for wine and two cigars, but that she poured for two, and set the cigar in front of her husband – although he clearly could not use either. It made her seem a bit crazy, which I’m sure she is a bit at that point.
-I loved that you kept me wondering. While Mollie was talking to her husband, I kept going back and forth in my mind about whether or not she killed him. For a bit, I thought maybe he died naturally, from not being healthy, but then it sounded like she was mad at him for money issues, and maybe she killed him. Good job keeping the reader on their toes. It definitely made for a quick read, I had no trouble getting through the sixteen pages – with some of the pieces on this site it’s tough!
-The ending was great. I was totally surprised by the fact that Henry was actually cremated and she’d been hanging out with an urn the whole time! At first I thought, ‘no that can’t work cause she kept propping him up and such’, but I guess you never really mentioned his body – and even if you did, the vision of his body could have just been in Mollie’s head, as she was obviously in distress. This was a wonderful story, well done. =)
An interesting story. I enjoyed the evolution and refinement of your protagonist’s feelings. if I had a criticism I would say that much of her inner dialogue seems mere exposition placed there solely for the reader. They don’t seem as much emotionally-tinged memories as a checklist of details. Put another way, they just don’t seem to be entirely in her voice. You need not explain why but to your mind does she have a reason for saying the things she says? More than one reason? Contradictory ones? Good luck. Keep writing.
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