Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

and she took her muffin and wandered off. She had a habit of doing that, wandering in and out of rooms and conversations like she’d never quite grasped the concept of saying hello and good-bye.

I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference. They hid behind weapons of mass destruction: big guns and bigger bombs. They were small, small, small—

The dead loved promises; the living loved promising.