Ten for Ever and Ever for Tenner
This story originally appeared on January 23rd in the Piltdown Review. Across the valley sat a small house made of earth. From my front door I could see the thick, shallowly sloped, sunbaked roof and squat chimney, pale between the pines. No smoke ever rose—the house had been abandoned for twenty years. When I was younger, a woman had lived there alone. Smoke rose then, and sounds of chopping wood if the wind and weather were right. The woman had disappeared the day my mother