Twice Shy

by Sarah Hogle

“She said she was going to leave me everything,” I murmured, “but that was forever ago. I was a kid.” “She loved you.” “She didn’t love anybody else better than me, in the twenty years since we saw each other?” “Those twenty years didn’t stop you from being her niece.”

Part of me has never recovered from my disappointment that we weren’t followed.

The little girl on the burgundy sofa has grown up, but being a grown-up isn’t at all the way she thought it’d be. She’s so lost now that it’s scary. The only one who’s ever looked out for her is gone.

think he’s under a curse—if he laughs, he’ll die. This is a sensible explanation to me. It isn’t that I’m not a joy to be around, it’s that he’ll literally die.