As a young man of about 40, single, and in possession (of as
much debt as) good fortune, I took a wife. Not long thereafter, my father said
to my new bride, "Yeah, we tried to find Marie's sister, but we never
could." This was a bit of a shock to me as for 40 years, I'd thought my
mother, Marie, was an only child like myself. But no, it seems she had a
sister, and my grandfather, a Greek ne'er do well, whom I like to call Kouros
of Athens (Kούρος της Αθήνας), abandoned Marie and my grandmother, took the
sister, and was never heard from again.
That's about all I found out. Some years later, my dad had
died, and my mother suffered from dementia, and couldn't shed any more light on
what became my family mystery. I did find among Mom's papers a birth
certificate for an Esther Kouros, strangely on the same day as Mother's
birthday, but a year or two earlier.
Fast forward to a couple years ago and I'm taking a class with
the inimitable Con Lehane who assigned
a writing exercise, the purpose of which I forget, to compose a story that
explains a family mystery. I didn't spend too long on it, but I wrote, "An
Untrustworthy Woman," a little under 700 words.
This fall, I ran across "Shotgun Honey," which publishes flash
fiction in the crime mode and limited to 700 words. Why not? I says to myself. I
dusted my Untrustworthy Woman off, and why not indeed, said Shotgun Honey. The
result is that An
Untrustworthy Woman is now live and a free read online.
If you stop by, I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to
leave feedback with Honey, or comment below.
