Tendy

by John Bosworth

About the Author: John Bosworth lives in Seattle and can be found on Twitter @JGBosworth. His writing has appeared in Switchblade and the Akashic Noir Series.

Excerpt

When it rains, it pours. It’s funny, I must have heard that saying a million times. But I never really thought about it until just recently.

When it rains, it pours.

That’s certainly true where I live now, in South Florida. The rainstorms that blow in off coast here can be truly frightening. Of course, the saying isn’t about the rain at all. It’s actually about life, and how bad things tend to come in bunches. And that certainly seems true to me, too.

And there’s no sense in blaming Florida or the weather for it, because my bad things started last year at our old house in Massachusetts when Randall died.

I had been nagging him all day to shovel the walk, and he didn’t want to.

“Shirl, it’s five degrees out there,” he said.

“You big baby,” I said, “a little cold won’t kill you.”

“It will if I slip and crack my head open,” he said.

And I’ll be darned if that isn’t exactly what happened.

I shouldn’t have let Tendy out to piddle in the yard. She’s so small and white, he probably just didn’t see her in the snow. Somehow she managed to get underfoot, and down he went, just like that.

I had to track Moira down to tell her about the funeral. I must have talked to four or five of her old roommates before I found her in Ohio. Then she missed her plane, so I had to send her more money for a bus ticket, and she almost missed the service.

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