The Best American Short Stories 2024 by Groff Lauren

Author:Groff, Lauren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Marfa was on the highway. She had made it to the cabin, grabbed her keys and wallet and phone. She had quickly changed her shoes, leaving her plush robe and everything else behind, and run all the way back to her car, not daring to look anywhere but straight ahead.

Before she had pulled out of the Grandcourts’ driveway, she thought she had seen Penelope on the dark river in her canoe. Trailing her hand in the water and singing. Maybe Penelope had been in cahoots with the witch-cows.

“Yes, the cows are the murderers in this mystery,” Marfa said out loud in the car. “If Jerry and Bob and the Grandcourts are found dead tomorrow, I trust the cows have their reasons.” It was like one of those Agatha Christie endings where you kind of saw where the killer was coming from.

She drove as into a long dark tunnel, at the end of which was her house.

Marfa had never been so happy to see her small, neat house. She stood in the living room with all the lights on, crying, her gown tattered and covered in dust.

She visited all of it, all that was hers. The round dining table with its two chairs, only one of which was ever used; the refrigerator with the salsa jars, yogurts, and wilting spinach in a tub. The lamp with its cozy yellow light in her bedroom, the dresser with the birch box of pins and cheap necklaces from the grandmother she had never met. A brush wrapped in years of blondish hairs. Her bedside table, with the framed photograph of her parents, each with an arm around Marfa. Marfa beaming between them with her big simple face.

She got into bed still wearing the blue gown, turned off the yellow lamp, and sighed under the covers. The moon, which had seen everything, continued to watch her. A few crickets outside, a car starting. It was now perhaps one in the morning.

“The cows have had their revenge,” Marfa said out loud into her dark room. “The cows, the witches, have had their revenge on the ranchers for what they’ve done to the lands and the creatures. The witch-cows have done it. Papa, I have solved the mystery.” Her father would be proud.

Soon she felt the ants. They had come all the way from the ranch, or maybe these were local ants. It didn’t matter; the ants all had the same purpose.

Marfa lay there in the dark with the ants upon her, knowing herself to be the Queene of the Ants, her insides taking shape where they had been formless. The stars of her father and mother shone into her body. Residing in such a quickening space, the stars were not yet dead.

Our Queene, we are yours forever, the ants assured her, covering her shoulders and upper back with kisses. Our purpose lives on in thine own flesh.

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