I'm actually working on some edits to Cruel Sister right now. This is the first I've done on the book since the flooring insanity began, and it may work to my advantage, since the six or so week hiatus away from the book brings me to it with fresh eyes.

For Photo 7:

That day was the last time I saw Robert. We had slipped away from our offices, meeting in the park across from his hospital. Sitting so close that I could make out the brown fleck in the blue of his left eye, I wondered if the warmth I felt was from the sun dappled across our backs, or from his arm brushing mine.

His voice cracked as he said, "I have some news." It seemed that his uncle, who managed the family trust, had seen us one afternoon at the theatre before the lights had fully dimmed, watching as Robert brushed my cheek with his fingertips.

Research, Robert said, took money. He couldn't risk that.

Three months later, he and Susan were married.

Photo #8

My God, I love those women. I loved them within a month of meeting them, and I still love them, even now that two of us are dead. We called ourselves the Fantastic Five, knowing full well we were a decade past the time for Fantastic Fives. It fit us, somehow, just as we fit with each other. I still remember the night we took that picture. It was late one night, a week or so before Spring Break our freshman year. Janet wanted pictures of us to show her parents, to prove we were all proper young ladies.

I’m pretty sure she didn’t show them this one.

"Look at Me" Challenge picture #4 .

I don’t know why my husband insisted on taking this picture. We have been married for five years, and there’s still so much I don’t understand about him. It was a Tuesday afternoon; I was sweaty, tired, and uncomfortable from kneeling on the rocks. He came down to the river and said he needed to take my picture. He said I looked especially beautiful in that moment. Beautiful while doing laundry? I told him he was talking crazy, and he responded by saying I am always beautiful. Maybe someday I will be able to see me the way he does.

These drabbles are all completely amazing. What a stunning topic and stunning results.

(Oh, and I totally also thought of Sophia.)

Photo 6

Alternate Memories

I found the photo among my mother's effects. Peculiar, really; my mother, although something of a magpie, tended to save material objects, rather than personal touches.

I recognised the room at once. That was my grandmother's study, where she wrote her terrifying books, the shelves of what she called "fodder", full of facts and statistics, completely devoid of enchantment for a child. Yet I loved being allowed to bear her company, although she mostly ignored me, concentrating instead upon the written page.

This morning, staring at the photo, I realised one final oddity; I've no clue who either of those boys are.

That's wonderful, Deb.

Ah, the Unknown Relative Syndrome. "Who's that?" "I don't know." "But Grandpa's got his arm around his shoulders." "Some buddy, maybe."

sj, I loved yours.

Heh. Connie, this was an oddity for me: total fiction, but transferring the woman in the photo to my grandmum.

We really did have a family photo, one of my father and my wicked cool Uncle Robert together, each of them with a hand lovingly on the shoulder of a boy about twelve years old. Not my brother Howard; not Rob's son Michael. I asked my mother who the kid was, after my father died and we were going through his photos; my mother adjusted her reading glasses, peered at the picture, looked baffled for a moment, and said something like "I haven't got the faintest idea."

No one else in the family recognised the kid either, including Rob.

sj, I loved yours.

Thanks, Deb. How have you been? I haven't talked to you in ages.