A Hearty Summer Salad

and another fiction piece

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My flash-fiction piece was originally published on Medium. It comes from a series that I call “Conversations” and have set in different decades. I hope you enjoy it!

Conversations in a Ford Model T: June 1933

Her silence was audible.

“What?” he asked.

She turned toward him. “What?”

“What’s the matter?”

She shrugged.

He threw one hand up in the air, the hand that was on the steering wheel jerking perilously to one side from the force.

She settled further into the passenger-side door. The top of the car was down, and the sea breeze blew through the tips of her curls. The top of her head was wrapped safely in a shiny blue silk scarf that offset the bright blonde of her hair perfectly. She knew this. She had chosen this blue from three similar shades in the shop precisely because she knew that this was the shade that would highlight her hair the best. He’d watched her do it.

She tilted her head up and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as the sun washed over her face. He could see her do it out of the corner of his eye. Her skin was made perfectly matte with makeup. Not a crease, not a line, not a freckle, except for the one small, brown mark drawn on with a pencil right at the base of the sharp bone under her cheek.