When the Impossible Becomes Possible
by Anne Anthony
Katherine drove past Miller’s pond where she’d learned to swim, followed the ridged mountain pass with its switchbacks and frozen edges that led to her father’s cabin where he lay breathing the shallow breaths of the dying. She’d fallen asleep on her sofa listening to acoustic guitars with fiddles, so the midnight call woke her. Two full minutes passed before she recognized the low-pitched voice of her father’s neighbor, the woman who disbelieved her own daughter’s whispered confession. Disbelieved what he’d done, the same as he’d done to Katherine.
“Come home,” the woman said, “before he’s gone.”
Returning home was something she thought impossible. Years before she promised never to go back to the girl hiding in her heart. They talked late into the night, Katherine and her younger self, reasoning why they should drive seven hours from North Carolina to Pennsylvania for a man they’d left behind. Their conversation ended tense and willful.
“You need to speak your mind, whether he can hear you or not.”
“But he’s going to…” The girl started crying before finishing her thoughts.
“He can’t hurt you, Kitty. Not anymore.”
The woman hugged her pillow against her chest as if she could squeeze out fear.
“Promise? He can’t do nothing?”
“He’s weak now. Cancer’s eating him from the inside out, Honey. It’s called karma.”
Katherine felt the girl calming; they both agreed it was possible, no, necessary now to face him. “We owe it to ourselves to watch him die.”
Anne Anthony’s gritty, tender, and amusing stories feature compelling but flawed characters. She’s been published in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Dime Store Review, Carolina Woman’s Magazine, Dead Mule School for Southern Literature, Literary Orphans, and elsewhere. Her poem, She Wants, published by Blue Heron Review, was nominated for a Pushcart Award. She recently released a short story collection, A Blue Moon & Other Murmurs of the Heart. She lives and writes in North Carolina. For more about Anne’s writing, check out bit.ly/anneanthony or discover her work-in-progress on Instagram: #roadtrippingwithMP.