Happy Drabble Sunday ~ Gracie's Mom

Yet another gray day up here on the mountain.

I’m off to K-town for another visit with the nephrologist this week. I’m hopeful my function is still holding up even if I’m still shedding protein.

I asked my rheumatologist, “What’s the worse than can happen—I mean, I’ve got years before this thing really whacks me, right?”

“You might have to go on dialysis.”

Urghh. Well. We don’t want that, now do we? I already decided to pull an Art Buchwald if it comes down to that. I just don’t have the sort of support I’d need to weather that. My independence is sacrosanct to me.

I have a little mystery drabble for you today. If you are just tuning in and are wondering what a drabble is—it’s a story with exactly 100 words.

Gracie's Mom

We rode insane Shetland ponies and petted rabbits at Gracie's house. Her dog bit me but it was my fault. Her mother, a dark-haired beauty, cleaned the punctures and kissed my forehead. I apologized to the dog and we went back to play, running on the dock over oyster shells.

Her father was big and scary, a crabber--rough and stinking of brine and shellfish.

I had not thought of Gracie in years, until her mother disappeared.

Missing Persons assumed she had run away. But the townfolk, they whispered Gracie's father cut her mother up and used her for crab bait.