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Summer Dog

The Summer House was everything the Manhattan house was not. The old home was rustic and secluded, nestled just between the edges of the Adirondack Mountains and Blue Mountain Lake and provided the O’Malleys a respite from their fast-paced city life. Elsa’s father had spent his childhood in wide open spaces of rural Montana untethered by technology or helicopter parents. He had met his wife while they were both students at Columbia Law School and while they had chosen to build their lives in the city, they wanted the rugged life of the great outdoors to influence the character of their children. The summer house was about as rugged a life as they could manage. During the winter months, it was unlikely for the O'Malley clan to be in the same place at the same time. All four of the children played sports, musical instruments, and studied a foreign language with a private tutor. Both Mike and Sheryl worked long hours as attorneys, tag-teamed responsibility for their childre...

For Hire

Cassie fluffed the pillows on her bed and wiggled down under her comforter so that only the top of her head peeked out. Nestled in a pile of pillows and fluffy covers she sighed with contentment, pulled out her book, and began to read. “Cassie,” her mom bellowed from downstairs. “Cassie, can you come to the kitchen please?” Whyyy must everyone in this house always yell? She kicked off her comforter and lay strewn across her bed waiting in silence for her mom to yell up the stairs again. “Cassie...?” louder this time. She flopped out of bed and stomped down the stairs to the kitchen. “I need you....” her mother stopped talking long enough to peek at her recipe before continuing, “I need you...” she stopped again for a doubletake “... to take your brother to the park. He has been stuck inside all day and we finally have a break in the rain.” “Nooo....” Cassie moaned. “I have tons of homework. Why cant we just hire someone to watch him?” “I just di...

The Grab

Emily had just begun the long escalator ride down to the metro station platform when somebody grabbed her ass. She had been riding the metro on that Thursday evening wearing a shimmery dress and very high, very expensive Louboutin heels because she was meeting her boyfriend at his mid-week company party, which promised to be a ritzy affair. Admittedly, she wasn’t that excited about the party, but she loved her sparkly dress and was motivated by any opportunity to wear it. The dress was modest in cut, and yet it hugged her butt perfectly as the fabric narrowed ever so slightly over her hips to just below her knees. Her shoes were too high to be comfortable. She had paced back and forth across her apartment talking herself into-and-out-of wearing them before committing. Truthfully — she regretted her decision before she had even made it to the metro. In retrospect, she wasn’t sure if it was the force of the grab or the shock of it that caused her to fall. As she lost h...

New Beginnings

She may have waited too long. Francis’ aging body ached as she tended to her garden in the early morning, and she was relying on trickery more often than the gardening skills that she had so carefully nurtured over the decades. It was fall again and as she stared out the window at nothing in particular she wondered if she would live to see the spring. Francis’ house was in the middle of a small suburban block, just outside the city. It was a small white house with tidy black shutters nestled in a brilliant garden filled year round with flowers and vegetables, butterflies and bumble bees. A seemingly unending tangle of new growth and older shrubs and grasses – a busy nest of what could have been chaos were it not somehow, inexplicably, so beautiful. Although summer had barely made its exit, her garden was bursting with bold fall colors – bright orange tiger lilies leaning over the white picket fence, yellow sunflowers barely able stand under the weight of their majestic crowns...