All Posts

At five o’clock, Uncle Dennis’s Camaro turns into the parking lot. The driver’s side window is rolled down and his arm is hanging out even though it’s sprinkling rain. I run to the car, but Mama takes her time. Usually, I sit in the front seat between them. Instead I open the back door, fling my book bag in the floorboard, and climb in. When Mama slides in the front seat, wet spots have dotted the shoulders of her outfit. Drops sparkle in her hair like glitter, pretty, if I w

Usually, Libby and Denny would chatter on about some animal or a new star the scientists had found. Not today. Together, they followed Gwen up the sidewalk, Libby sulking and still angry at her, and Denny, resolute about making this trip to Washington for the Poor People’s Campaign march. The week-long bantering to convince her little brother to go back to school instead had worn Gwen down. She had hoped he’d just drop her and Libby off at their apartment then leave.

Grant arrived with sweet and sour chicken, plenty for all four of them. Gwen ate quickly, quietly, allowing Libby to dominate the conversation then cajole Grant and Dennis into playing a game of LIFE. The two men sat with Libby cross-legged on the floor around the coffee table, the board in the middle. Gwen watched, her legs curled under her on the of the couch. She examined Grant’s handsome profile and couldn’t help but smile at the easy laughter between him and Libby.

The phone in the foyer rings, but I doubt Mama can hear it in the kitchen. I raise up on my knees and twist the volume button down on my Saturday cartoons. Then there’s a loud knock on the door. Mrs. Cosgrove yells from the other side, “It’s a man.” When Mama hears, she hurries through the living room. “Yes,” she says. “This is Gwen Billings.” A pause. “Wednesday?” Mama asks the person on the phone. She glances up and cocks her head sideways at me. “Yes . . . she was there.”

A directory of short fiction written by Gina Hogan Edwards and published on this website to read for free

The inspiration and foundation for the novel Dancing at The Royal Jade and the origin story for the Beaucatcher Chronicles, a growing collection of stories, short and long, set in the fictional town of Kent Creek, North Carolina. In "For What Nate Did," 15-year-old Libby Billings contemplates the circumstances surrounding a serious and unquestioned accusation from five years prior. Looking back on the incident, she dispassionately draws some tragic conclusions about the peopl