Michael Malone - Weebly

into the silence. The bolt was locked, the chain was on.
Judith turned off her lamp and forced herself to
draw open the new drapes that covered the picture
window of John's new house. High in the jet void
around her, stars held their places, unmoved by the
sorrows of the world. There was the bright star the
Sisters had told her to wish on, when, like geese with
wings spread, they had rustled on warm evenings down
the corridors to bob good night beside each bed. Wish
for God's grace and a good Christian husband.
And yet it couldn't be the wishing star that she saw
now, Judith thought. In so many years the heavens had
shifted. She had been a young girl then, when she had
wished for her heart's desire. She had gone to sleep
more easily, hours earlier, while Venus still brightened
the summer night. While she dreamed that the mystery
of her parentage would end happily ever after with the
recovery of some beautiful mother and noble father, or
the discovery of how the two had died together in some
tragic, romantic way, leaving her the sole testament to
their love. As she fell asleep then, sometimes she would
imagine reunions; the faces of her parents faces of