The bed is as difficult to sleep in as the house is to come home to. The silence isn’t the problem. She’s used to that. It’s the thought that no one will join her. The thought slams, hard, when she tries to find a comfortable position in the bed. Alone.

As she stands by the rumpled comforter, the sheets she’s just tossed off, Margo’s hand shakes. She’s waited until after Christmas to do this. For a week, she’s worn a pad in anticipation of the sudden rush of red that would soak her if she didn’t keep checking each time she used the bathroom. Nothing. No red. She won’t see it now. The pregnancy testing stick she is holding has a plus sign on it. (read on…)

1

It was nine o’clock when Chuy Sandoval called home. After a long day, Chuy had a few drinks at Rico’s and thought better of driving. He was far too tired to walk. His wife teased him a little, then rattled down there in her old station wagon and picked him up.

“I’m glad you called me,” Teresa said. “It’s good you didn’t drive.”

“I couldn’t drive if you paid me,” Chuy said. (read on…)

The rains came early. We are supposed to be back in Durban, but it’s been bucketing for three days and we can’t get out of the game reserve. I’m suffocating in this one-room tourist rondavel. It’s bad enough sharing the room with Ray and Frank, my sixty-five year old bird-watching identical twin uncles. They’re glued together like two old women. They sleep on the floor. Then there’s my brother Pete and his wife Clare, endlessly bickering. They have one of the single beds. Then there’s me and my husband, Nick. We have the other single bed. Our flight back to Detroit is in two days. We’ll miss it. I walk out the door, trying to get some space. Trying to not yell at everyone to shut the fuck up. Rain pours off the thatch, a sheet of water between me and the storm. Pete follows me, hangdog, trying to get me to talk to him. He’s my big brother but sometimes you wouldn’t know it. I refuse to look at him. (read on…)

Everybody always says that I left Meagan at the altar, but that’s simply not true. I left her on the living room couch.

She was staying at her mother’s house that weekend – she thought it would make the wedding night more special – but she was, incredibly enough, the only one home when I went by the morning after the rehearsal dinner. I wasn’t prepared for how blonde she would look when she opened the door. (read on…)