Not much could be said about the stuffed badger on Grandma Daley’s mantel. It was a stuffed badger, nothing more, nothing less. No one paid it any mind.
The family talked in front of it, even argued in front of it. Uncle Pete cursed Grandma Daley in front of it, and Cousin Ritchie got cut out of the will in front of it. And then Aunt Karen—well, no will ever forget that Thanksgiving.
One day someone killed Grandma Daley in front of it. There were no witnesses—except for the badger. But it didn’t make a peep.
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Reaching Out
I promise her. I'd do anything for her. She's my mom. Even as Lanie and Deanna are flying home, Mom is scrappy fighting dying. She lays too still in that too-big bed with all the toasty white hospital blankets, in the south tower, at the broad end of a long slow-turning corner that delivers me again to her private room with the view she can't see through, with the beeping that tells us nothing new, and all these ice chips she can't swallow, and a flood of well-intentioned nurses who cannot do a damned thing all the same.
By Christy Munson5 days ago in Fiction
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