My sister Pat should be telling this story, but she’s dead.  My mother could tell some of it, but she suffered a stroke and now is somebody I don’t know.  My father probably could tell the story, too, but he died before I even knew there was a story to tell.  Of course, Esther Stiles probably would be able to relate it nearly as well as my father, but Esther Stiles died in a car accident around the time my mother had the stroke.

The night Pat died, I was staying with her in our family home in Connecticut, where she lived alone.  I had moved to Ohio after college, and our mother was in a nursing home.  That was why I was back that evening; I had come home on one of my frequent visits.  Pat and I talked for quite a while that evening.  I remember telling my sister that I thought she was being too hard on herself.

“Well,” she responded.  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore—ever.”

–M.M., Blue Eyes – Green Eyes – Short Story Submission

Reader:  Well, the author pretty much knocked off all possible ways to verify the story.  So, it was time to give the story-teller room to spin me a yarn, and a yarn it was and is.  We should all be asked to earn a living doing this.  Who knows how good some of these stories really are.  I do know that I’m having fun reading them and commenting on them.