The Cherry Robbers

by Sarai Walker

Picture taking off in an airplane from a city where the weather is too bleak to bear. The airplane climbs and climbs and finally breaks through the clouds where there’s nothing but light and blue sky. That’s my life with Sylvia, she said.

Women are raised to be accommodating, so I suppose a woman who draws clear lines that others are not allowed to cross becomes remarkable for that fact alone.

Whenever anyone talked about the wedding, they spoke about it as the start of something exciting for Aster but as an end for Matthew.

Was Belinda actually sick? I didn’t think so; it was more that she couldn’t be tamed—that’s what they didn’t like, and since they couldn’t tame her, they sedated her.

Once the Gilded Age estate of a rich family, it had been converted into a sanitarium for wealthy New England women, some of them insane, some of them only unhappy.

But I think I’ve finally come to realize that it’s my destiny to be one of the madwomen. One of the women who speaks the truth no matter how terrifying it might be. One of the women who stands apart from the crowd, focusing not on their angry faces and disapproval but looking above them at the sky, which is in a vibrant shade of hyacinth blue that matches the flowers growing in the garden.