(Part 4 of 4)

So far it had been a brutally hot summer in the city, and throughout the rest of southern Ontario. The elderly woman in apartment 307 had had a restless night until the early morning hours when she finally fell into a deep sleep. But she was too soon awakened by the phone ringing on the bedside table. When she answered it someone spoke her name and asked if she was there. It was confusing. She was still half asleep.

“Yes, of course, I live alone.”

The person on the line identified himself as the administrator of the long-term care facility where her very elderly father lived.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“My father’s dead.”

“No.” Continue reading →

(Part 3 of 4)

Since they buried his little sister, the boy took to going for long walks through the woods on weekends after morning chores to escape the tension at home.

At first his parents had made half-hearted moves to stop him. But finally his mother had said “oh, let the boy go,” and with a shrug, his father had acquiesced. In his heart the boy felt they didn’t care. He could fall off the edge of the world and it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter to me either, he thought, wondering at the same time if that was in fact what he was doing – searching for the edge of the world. Continue reading →