The click of toenails against the hardwood presaged Esther’s arrival. She poked her head around the doorframe and acknowledged me with an exhaled hu...f. Then she turned and made her way back down the hall. I heard her lumber slowly up the stairs. The music grew louder. At first I’d thought Nate was upstairs listening to a recording of the music but I realized with a jolt that he was playing it. I pictured him at the piano, still rumpled from the night before, in a pair of flannel pyjamas, his. After the weekend of last year’s prom, Carol tentatively moved in with us. Penny let that news out of the bag, too. Carol never went back to her small condo except to pack up and bring more and more things to the house. A month later she sold the place. We’d become engaged by then. I felt as in love with Carol as I did with Penny and Misty, and earlier with Julie; Joan was in that mix, too.When we got married, we invited the whole high school and did an outdoor ceremony in front of the school. "I'm just saying what you won't."It would have been the height of condescension to tell her this was just a phase and she'd find someone else - someone not related to her by blood - and someday this would all be a weird memory...I had come home that afternoon with my bag slung over my shoulder, with stories and weariness to share with my father about grad school. He, my mother and my sister had gathered around the table and eaten dinner together for the first time in ages, and there was no. Someone in a red cloak enters with a burning torch on his hand, his face hidden in the shadow of the hood. “Meet the inquisitor” said the jailer before closing the door. You know their reputation for pyre building and stare at the man with fear. Even if you know that you are innocent of the murder, the trial and the look of the villagers has inserted doubt in you. You remember wishing dead some of the people who later died including your parents when they didn’t let you go outside with the.