Where the River Ends

“Unlike rivers out west that cut canyons down into and through rock walls, the edges of the St. Marys ebbed and flowed depending upon rainfall. One day the river might be teen feet wide at a given point, but throw some rain in and that can widen to thirty or forty feet in a day, only to recede back to ten or expand to fifty before the next day’s end. While the headwaters bubble only sixty crow miles from the ocean, she is in no hurry to get there. Abby new this. She had chosen the river because it was the singular place on earth where time slowed down.”

“I’m no expert on women and their feelings but I think they have two unspoken, fundamental wants that occur as soon as they open their eyes. They want to be pursued and they want to know that they are beautiful. Abbie had always been pursued and everyone had always told her she was beautiful. She’d never been anything but. Then cancer. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. Slash, but and poison. In her mind’s eye, sitting on that bathroom floor, she saw a remnant of her former self. I did not see that. But how do you convince her of that? How do you tell her that she is not the sum of what she sees in the mirror?”