The
Day After Saturday.
A
plaid shirt and a gold chain, a conservative pixie haircut. She looked innocent
enough. At first.
I met her on a lonely Sunday afternoon, on the path from the old town. The birch trees were singed yellow, their
leaves turning this way and that in the wind.
One wet leaf was stuck to her jacket shoulder, and another to her
leather shoe. She tried not to meet my
gaze as I approached but manners finally dictated that she look up, those cold
blue eyes. And that’s when I knew.
Leaving
Elisa’s cottage the day before, I’d left the door unlocked. It was nearly dawn and the clanking metal of
the key would have awakened her. When
they found her body, bloodied sheets stuck to her bare skin, her tips box was
missing, and there was a single yellow birch leaf on the braided rug.
Elisa
would have gladly given her the money.
And
made her coffee.
Had
she only asked.
Barbara
Boyle
Barbara
Boyle, after a long and colorful career creating advertising around the world,
now resides in a 300-year-old stone farmhouse in Northern Italy. She’s surrounded by orchards, vineyards and
barking deer. Her fiction has appeared
or is forthcoming in Star Island Journal and Star 82 Review.
