Excerpt: Once In A Life Time

Honor, Country, Family
Alexandro del Toro looked around the corner of the hallway to see his father’s bloated shape lying on the couch. His dress shirt and tie had already been discarded, and the beer bottles that had pushed him into the drunken state he was now in were littered across the stained carpet. His carefully ironed pants were rumpled and about his knees and the television flickered over grey glazed eyes.

Through A Lens

Craig Walters had his camera bag and two tripods in his arm when he pushed the doorbell at the house he had written in his day planner. Just a few family photos and it will be all done.

The door was opened by a man in his thirties in a grey sweater vest holding a newborn in his arms.

“Oh, you’ve come. Great. My mother has been setting up all day.” The screen door opened up and Craig stepped inside, scraping his feet on the welcome mat out of habit before continuing on.

No, I Would Not Give You False Hope
Letters From Parent to Child

To Baby Gross #1, welcome to the world little one. You have the gift of all the people who already love you.

Dear Baby,

I know you are already here.

Yesterday I took a home pregnancy test and found about your very existence.

I cannot wait to meet you in the future.

I told your father yesterday and he was thrilled to learn that after a year of trying we are finally going to be starting another chapter in our family’s existence with bringing you into our lives in a few months.

I love you.

Unlike the fact that it took me three months to know that about your father, I know that I already love you.

Love,

Your mother

A Twilight Interlude

Part One

Carol leaned back against the leather seat of the limousine. Tired of sitting and staring out the window she fought the urge to stretch. She had been in the back of the car for nine hours on the way to a place she had not been in fifteen years. She could no longer see very much outside the tinted window as the sun was only gracing the top of the green hills and the main road had been left some two hours ago.

She had almost wished she had worn a t-shirt and jeans, but instead she had worn something much more appropriate to her mother’s station—a navy pencil skirt and an ivory blouse. She had kept her long brown hair down, and it reached her waist in silky tresses that would later fuss if they were not eventually put up.

This world of shadowed trees that lined the thin highway was her mother’s world. Never once as a child Carol could have imagined that her mother longed to live a life style that to most would seem very unusual to the rest of the world. Once, she had come for three months to see what this world was like simply to satisfy her curiosity.