Quarta touches her cheek. She can feel the beginning of a small swelling. She takes out her Charles Mallory compact mirror and glances at herself. It won’t get larger, she thinks. In the mirror, Quarta sees the reflection of JJ’s tan Brioni sweater moving toward the entrance. She turns her head and glares at JJ’s escaping figure.

As JJ steps out into the sunshine, she sees Prima’s limo pull up. The door opens.

JJ bows his head and steps into the vehicle.

These Old Bones

“Nobody wants these old bones,” Annie muttered at the early morning sunrays dipping into her living room window. She looked out onto the quiet street. The leaves were tumbling to the ground in droves. The wind was up, or as the locals called it, “the sea breeze.” How did she ever end up here? On an island in the Pacific Ocean?

No friends. No man in her life except one son who never wanted her here. She knew to keep her distance from her boy. To stay away until Sunday, when they would visit over breakfast. Her life was full of time limits.

And him. Her soon-to-be ex. All those years with him. Erased. Gone. She was solo and coming up on sixty. She was living in an apartment that cost way too much, on an island almost completely alone and away from her people. It had been her great escape. Every penny that she had saved was put into this one move. The last one. The end of the road move.

No more Arctic winds. No more cold tundra. No more wondering where the next meal would come from. When she had flown away from him and his church and all the Bibles that he stacked in their tiny one-bedroom house, she had sighed the biggest sigh of relief. Finally, no more praising God or just praying for things to happen. No more people dropping in with their hearts aching and ripping and bleeding. No more having to be the good Pentecostal Wife.

She was here, stuck in the silence of her own thoughts. Stuck like a prisoner taken hostage by her one dream. To be away from all of them. From all the hurt. From all the legal battles. Away from lawyers and church people and sin and sorrow. In her mind she was free, but it was hard to be alone. Without anyone to talk to. Without anyone to hear her thoughts. Some days she wanted to scream just to be able to hear her own voice.

Some days she hungered for people. Anyone. Someone. A person to talk with. Hunger pangs that stayed deep inside of her mind’s belly. Moving to a new town is not easy. It’s lonely, and what brought her here were sad circumstances. Starting over when your life is in its final quarter was harder than she expected. It was pain-filled, but she told herself that it was a choice she had made and to live it for now. She told herself if it didn’t work out, she could always move again. To where? She had not one clue.