The River Widow

by Ann Howard Creel

What did one take from a house that had seen so little happiness?

At that moment, an icy wind

swept in and captured her guilty soul, dumping it in a place of shame so intense that it paralyzed her, and she could not move, could barely breathe. Hell was not a place of fire; it didn’t burn. Hell was the opposite: arctic air so brutal it could break every bone. Numbness everywhere, no longer human, only a husk of a being. She was already dead.