Run for the Hills

by Kevin Wilson

This was the way a normal family worked, she reminded herself. It came together and broke apart over and over again, all the amorphous ways it accommodated expansion and contraction.

She closed her eyes and she centered herself. She was Madeline Hill. She was the sister of Reuben Hill and Pepper Hill and Theron Goudy and Reuben Chelmsford. She was the daughter of Rachel Daggett. She was the daughter of Charles Hill. These things anchored her to the earth and she could feel her body take up space in this world, insisting upon itself. She listened to the sounds of the farm, and when she opened her eyes, she knew where she was. She was home.