“No one was willing to say for sure whether Billy Eriksen’s body was in the boat when they set it afire that night. I suppose it’s better that way: any certainty one way or the other would have raised uncomfortable questions about the disposal of human remains. And those non-committal “Hmms” from the boys down at the shipyard seemed to give everyone enough leeway to believe that things had been resolved in a way Billy would have appreciated….” –The Duchess

Hey – it’s a new story! And if you can’t tell from the first line, any sort of don’t-worry-nobody-dies assurances would be wildly out of place here. But we get the messiness out of the way like that, and it really is a lovely little story – probably my favorite for now.

As always, if you like the story, please feel free to share it with friends and click that little heart button at the bottom of the story on Medium to “favorite” it. The more people click it, the more total strangers on Medium will end up seeing it, and the more my fragile little writer’s ego will get stoked.

I’ve gone back to working on yet another rewrite of the novel, so I have no teasers in the short story queue at the moment. But I promise I won’t let you down for next month.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy The Duchess.