Segment 13.8

Sickness made the marriage sweet in a way health could never do. The fact that the divorce had not yet come through and cut Raisa off from Sydney’s insurance was the only bright spot in her new life as a cancer patient. Neither of them had used the policy before for anything more than initial [...]

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Segment 13.7

Licking her fingers made the pages spread more easily, but, more importantly, it drove up the drama. A delightful look of foreboding rose in the eyes of her audience and hands clutched more tightly in response. She kept her eyes lowered to the page, while monitoring the scene in the edges of her glances to [...]

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Segment 13.6

The pleasure of seeing one’s own name in writing drove him back to the school website news page daily. So little went on at Las Palomas Community College that the blurb about the Health Professions instructor who got honored by the governor as a key partner in the state’s future stayed at the top of [...]

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Segment 13.5

Ghosts showed up around every corner. They weren’t really dead people, at least not yet. It was just that everything in the mall brought up thoughts of Candy and Dad and those troublesome half-sisters. Shauna Rae couldn’t find a trace of that feeling that she had come to reclaim, the pleasure of lazy weekends browsing [...]

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Segment 13.4

From behind, the sameness of the condos only intensified. Each one hid behind a smooth façade of brown wooden fencing flanked by uniform fleets of gray trash barrels and bright blue recycling bins. Only the perfectly symmetrical white numbers painted beside each gate distinguished one unit from another.
Sam replayed the number of the Templeton [...]

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Segment 13.3

The address was right but it struck Wyatt as peculiar. Why would a grocery store request a food delivery to the premises? Sure, the bodega was small but even places such as these had their own delivery systems.
“Hello?” Wyatt called as he opened the door. “Someone call for a delivery?”
The clerk at the counter snorted, [...]

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Segment 13.2

Numbers lined up but wouldn’t balance. It was not that something was wrong with the accounting. The numbers just refused to resolve themselves into something intelligible.
“Did I do good boss?” the clerk asked.
“I can’t tell,” Candy muttered. The clerk’s eyes widened and her breath stilled. “I’m sorry,” Candy said. “It looks like you had [...]

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Segment 13.1

The achy cramp in the middle of her feet let itself be known as Petra swiped her i.d. card to sign herself out of work. A good soak in Epsom salts would do nicely. However, there was that trek down the block to the bus stop to conquer. Other nurses, nurse aides, food service workers, [...]

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