I don't entirely know what this is. But I like it. 228 words.
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She folded her arms over her chest and one hand twitched,
missing something. She put all her
weight on her bad hip before she could remember the years of falling down
followed by surgery, winced, and immediately hid the pain. No weakness – no mercy. The picture would have been complete with a
magnifying glass, a little more titan sheen to her graying hair.
“So,” she said.
“That’s it then.”
I shifted from foot to foot, like I was twenty again and
being told off by my girlfriend. Old
habits die hard. “That’s it,” I agreed,
unsure what else she wanted to hear. I
wouldn’t look at her.
“Seventy years, Ned? Seventy?
And you don’t have a word to say about any of it?”
“I guess we’re just…”
I took a breath, let it out. “I
guess we’re just going our separate ways.”
Her hand clenched around the imaginary handle and she raised
the fist, as if about to strike me down with her wrath. I left in a hurry, unable to say another word
to assuage her. There were no
words. There was nothing I could say or
do to sum up our years together, nor to explain why it was time we part ways.
I could only thank my good Nickerson family fortune that I
hadn’t had the guts to tangle with Nancy Drew in her prime.
