Diavola

by Jennifer Marie Thorne

There was something careful about the energy here. Not calm, exactly. More … preserved in amber.

Anna realized she didn’t trust anything in this house. Not even the walls. Definitely not the people.

Less amusingly, shadows had gathered over it, creating the effect of something dangling. Almost a figure. Hanging. But only if you squinted, which Anna decided to stop doing.

Just before she drifted off, in the in-between between consciousness and oblivion, she realized what had bothered her about her nieces whispering in the hall. They’d been speaking Italian.

It seemed to Anna that the concept of “vacation” was antithetical to the concept of “family.” Vacation required vacancy. The abandonment of all scraps of everyday life.

“Okay. So. When I said ‘we’ just then, it was me being polite, but what I meant was ‘you.’ You got the day wrong. I’ve done zero planning for this week, but that’s fine, blame me if you feel like it.”

They were alike, Anna and her father, but often in the wrong ways. They were identical magnets, she thought, turned to repel.

“Listen, there’s nothing wrong with anybody, is the truth. We’re all just doing our best at being ourselves.

“Ask for forgiveness, not permission,” Anna said. “From God, I guess.”

Control was antithetical to life. To be alive is to be battered about. To endure and adapt and keep stumbling onward despite it all.

I’m not a lost lamb. I’m a black sheep. These are two very different things.”

“The rot got to them,”