Gwenn Wright

All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father__ home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in.

You may suppose that perhaps this Walter T. Wallace found his destiny in food and passed down to his progeny a legacy like that of the great Colonel Sanders. The folks here in Wallace County would love to be able to tell you this is so. But no, like their granddaddy, the Wallace men were thievin_ crooks, always with a scheme ready to separate the weak from their hard-earned money.

We ran on the fuel of youth and hormones and ignorant arrogance, imagining we had the whole world and the workings thereof figured out.

If he looks at me like that again Dottie will need a bucket and mop to get me back to my room.

Tragic tales rarely do make sense.

Even then his thoughts did not turn to prayer but to Abbie and to what she would think about his lack of prayerfulness and that surely she would have immediately broken out in prayer. __oesn__ matter now,_ he whispered and felt that he could not cry out to God.~William Drexler the Third

You can cower,_ she told them in a clear voice, wrapping her long shaking fingers around the cold iron bars. __ut I will stand.

Maybe love, unfathomable love, was too much for people, so they had traded it for something easier.

Whatever happened in those more than one hundred years, from the time my great-great-great grandfather studied law to the time when my own father took his bar exam in 1989, I may never know. Perhaps it was just greed and the good, old-fashion corruption that comes with power. The Drexlers have moved from the fight for human rights to the fight for corporations and wealthy individuals. We file their taxes, write their contracts, clean up their messes. As I see it, we have become little more than glorified Public Relations reps

I just want to make sure Mama. Sometimes I don__ even know what I want. A lot of times I__ just tired._ Mama reached up and smoothed Liza__ curls away from her face. __ell darlin_, that__ the sign of a life being lived. I think we__e all tired when we__e giving it our best.

Liza took her time sipping her tea. __hat__ what I hear Janet. Of course, living it up can take years off your life and add them to your face.

I had turned to leave and he had called after me. __iss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men__ trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It__ a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!__ had turned to call back to him, __ doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!

How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?

It was enough to drive me mad. I was no longer myself and yet I was so much more me than I had ever been before. ~Katherine Demure

They don__ teach kidnapping at Eton, dad

He had touched her. Bare skin to bare skin. She needed a bleach wipe. She would absolutely use a bleach wipe on her leg. Even if it ate her flesh off.

He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball. No. I really don__. He assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It__ a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal__ fan. __oyal,_ he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.

Kevin looks at me and I know he isn__ seeing the little girl I use to be, all pigtails and gangly limbs. He isn__ seeing my mother__ daughter or even my mother anymore. As his eyes linger over me, stopping here and there in the most uncomfortable places, I know he isn__ really even seeing me as I am. The bloodshot eyes staring out of the alcohol-flushed face are seeing a girl, nearly of age, who owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.--Rocky Evans