I finished the book, entranced by the personal meaning I gathered from the story. He wrote with passion, and I understood why he had become successful, if not why that success led him to feel guilty for his loss. He sought treatment for grief, but what he perceived of as grief, seemed to me to [...]
I do not know why I was so uncomfortable with our first meeting. From his intake record, I knew he had requested a grief counselor. The service assigned new patients based on a system that could have paired him with any of my partners. Most of our cases involved grief counseling; death, divorce, retirement, and [...]
He said she couldn’t take his truck, but never imagined it would become his home. He didn’t blame her. He thought there were two types of people in this world, and it had nothing to do with pessimism and optimism. It was all about blame. People either took credit, or blamed someone else when things [...]
¶ Baptism
A chair gouged the stone floor and a man dashed after the fisherman. Someone silenced the music and the barista stood frozen, stirring. A tide of voices floated to the back of the cafe as gossip turned to speculation. The man in dripping waders had gulped a single word and disappeared. Now a woman in [...]
¶ Auspice
She clutched the paper-wrapped package and splashed across the street. Others viewed her life as disorganized, chaotic. But beneath the frayed surface there was rhythm and structure. This meeting was not planned. He left a message while she was at the gym. The coffee shop was across from the printer and she was able to [...]
The report was due in three hours. It was the same each time. For six years he had neglected it until the final hours, possibly with hope he would be gone before it was due again. He crammed his gear into a bag and left the office, driving in search of an anonymous coffee shop [...]
Metal scraped stone, sweeping back rays of autumn afternoon. Customers posed on chairs and couches, faces bathed in blue light and restrained emotion. He shuffled forward in the line, squinting at the neon hieroglyphics on the menu board. The young woman in front of him recited her order, and though he recognized the words, they [...]