Kinship

Editor’s Note: We received 72 entries in our first ever (but we hope not the last) Short Story Contest. Our four judges chose this moving story of friendship by Teresa Burns Gunther as a runner up. To learn more about Teresa and the other winners click here.

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Natalie hunted her front yard for her paper beneath a silver morning sky stained with crimson. The kid who delivered, from a dented Camry blasting death-metal at 4:00 a.m., had an unenthusiastic arm. She found it near the sidewalk, wedged in a creeping rose whose thorns drew blood from her wrist. She didn't know why she bothered; it was only ever bad news. Across the street a blue tarp flapped loose like an ill-fitting toupee on the bungalow that stared back, empty. Empty of Natalie's closest friend, Carla, who'd moved across the country to New Mexico thirty-seven days earlier in search of a drier climate for her husband's lungs.