The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

I feel loss and lost, a hole in the place of what I believed, what I should believe.

When things get stuck, change the scene.

I won the fellowship with a story about Geraldine, and the kind of destructive grief left in the wake of shock, the long road to rebuilding family without her, the inconsolable rage of my mother, the withdrawal of my father, my determination to find sense and purpose where there was none. The resultant novella had been a kind of scream, pain and guilt and hope with a denouement of desperate and exhausted hope. That it had won the Sinclair had stunned me as much as anyone, and now, if I allow myself to think about it, I worry that it was all I had. There is no more pain to draw upon.

“I’m older than you.” “And that makes you care less?” “Not at all. It just makes me more inclined to wait and see.”