All Good People Here

by Ashley Flowers

And because the people of Wakarusa were churchgoing, law-abiding, capital-G God-fearing people, the Story was always adorned with pearls of sweetness to coat its sharp edges: Bless her heart, but…I’ll be praying for them, because did you hear…? Lord have mercy on their souls.

Here something was horribly, horribly wrong, and all she’d been able to think was What will the neighbors say?

Both the old name and the new struck Margot as uncanny in their appropriateness. One evoked the killing of innocent girls, the other insinuated just how hard it was to leave.

The one person in a town of fakes who’d always speak the truth.

Or perhaps, more to the point, because everyone knew moms were to blame just a little bit more than dads: bad mom.

“People tend to like Elliott when they meet him. He can be very…charismatic. And when he pays attention to you, it’s like you’re the only thing on earth. He’s passionate too, always working on some project. But he gets bored. Itchy. As a kid, he’d always get some grand idea and get all excited about it, then he’d work nonstop for a week, maybe two, but eventually, he’d burn out and move on to something else. “Jobwise, I can imagine he’s great at interviews, but the whole working every day nine to five? That would get old to Elliott very quickly. He had the same thing with places. After he dropped out of college, he was always moving. For a few months, he lived in North Dakota, then Illinois, then Nebraska. It was impossible to keep track of him.”

Margot couldn’t help her gaze drifting to the white walls where those terrible words had been written all those years ago. It was ironic, knowing they’d been written out of love rather than hate.