Yes, this story is definitely reaching its closing. Enjoy the remaining chapters, friends!


Every Wednesday night, a woman named Georgia Madeline Leighton-Carlson sits at the edge of the bar and orders a single malt scotch. She dresses up in an emerald-colored velvet dress and pearls, with rings of sapphire upon her fingers. The 87-year-old drinks that, and then her whiskey. She's been coming every Wednesday night since I've been working here. I think even before then. But she never answers a direct question, so I couldn't tell you.

Tonight, I seat my stool next to her and prop up my elbow, inclined to rest since Wednesday is usually a slow night. She stares at me, her brown eyes too young for a face so wrinkled.

"And how are you, Ms. Georgia?" I ask courteously. Like men in her day used to.

"I remember being a young girl and watching my daddy knock back his whiskey," she answers as she sips. "A fine man. Smoked cigars and ran a good, firm, house. Kind to his children. Taught me everything a girl could hope to learn about mathematics and literature in that day."

"Did you grow up to be a professor?" I wonder.

"He didn't want me to go to a proper school, though. Didn't think university would be good for me," she says, tucking some of her silver hair back underneath an aged black hat. "I grew up pretty, and slightly smarter than the women I mingled with. I was not as clever as the men, but I made up for that."

"In sharp wit and lovely personality," I supply a continuation of her sentence.

Her lips turn up in a small half-smile. "Have you a wife like that?"

"Would you like to be my wife?" I question, taking her hand. She chuckles at me.

"I have three children, all grown now. They have all survived my beloved husband Ted Walter Carlson," she denies me. "They will survive me, too, soon."

"That is the natural state of things," I reply somberly, not liking the idea but knowing its truth.

She pats my hand and looks at me with suddenly soft and vulnerable eyes.

"Get me another malt scotch, would you?"

...

The next day, after my late night shift is over, I go home and open the paper. I more than usually leave it to rot away on my porch. But today I have a hunch, so today I spare this edition's fate and peruse its pages. I know it already before I see it.

I set aside the 14th for a funeral.


Not as happy as the other chapters, eh? But I did promise some sadness in the summary, didn't I?

PetalsFromTheForest