HOW THE STORY OPENS:"In the end, I listen to my fear. It keeps...

HOW THE STORY OPENS:

"In the end, I listen to my fear. It keeps me awake, resounding through the frantic beating in my breast. It is there in the dry terror in my throat, in the pricking of the rats’ nervous feet in the darkness.

Christian has not come home all the night long.

I know, for I have lain in this darkness for hours now with my eyes stretched wide, yearning for my son’s return.

Each night that he works late, I cannot sleep. I am tormented when he is not here—I fear that he will never return. I lie awake, plagued by my own fears of loss and loneliness.

But my fears have never come to pass.

So on this night, I tell myself that the sound I hear is frost cracking, river ice breaking. I lie to my own heart, as one lies to a frightened child, one who cannot be saved.

All the while, I know it is a fire. And I know how near it is.

First, I could hear shouts and cries. Then there was the sound of rapid running, of men hauling buckets of water and ordering children to help.

A house burns.”

— opening lines from the novel Sinful Folk