Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin
Congratulations Shannon!
Shannon’s Bio:
Shannon Schuren lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin with her husband and three children. She is the author of several short stories and two novels. "How to Host a Ghost" is a middle-grade mystery published through Lulu.com and available at major online bookstores. Her second novel is a paranormal mystery for which she is diligently seeking agent representation. Shannon works at a child care center and spends her spare time playing with her children, cooking, or working on her next book -- anything to avoid cleaning her house.
Wilde Women
The photo was on the dresser, tucked behind a jar of cold cream and a basket filled with a jumble of costume jewelry: faux pearls, a silver cat brooch with emerald eyes, a pile of tarnished bangle bracelets.
I pulled the picture free and wiped the dust from the glass. A rugged blonde woman smiled out of the frame, pink cheeked and windblown. She perched on a rock, arms outstretched to hug a gangly girl on either side, while a third hovered just outside her grasp, a sour look upon her face. The youngest, hair in braids and knees in band-aids, clutched a book to her chest. The other looked wide-eyed and a little shell-shocked, as if too many days without a telephone and MTV had sent her over the edge.
Annie peered over my shoulder as I perched on the edge of the bed, careful not to muss the hand-stitched quilt that had lain there since before I was born.
“Ohmigod, Carly!” Annie squealed. She grabbed the photo with the authority of an eldest sister. “Do you remember that frightful camping trip?”
“You mean the one where you and Mom tried to ditch me in the woods?” Jenny inquired, poking her head through the doorway.
Annie rolled her eyes. “Please, Jen. When are you going to let that go? We left you clues in the dirt along the riverbank. You should have been paying attention when Mom gave us that survival lesson instead of burying your nose in a book.”
“It was ‘Little Women’!”
“The river,” I mused. “That was the first time we’d ever swum anywhere that wasn’t chlorinated. Annie had us convinced we were all going to catch some horrible disease.”
“I was teasing. That water was too cold for anything to live in it.”
“How about the food?” Jenny asked, breaking into a wide grin as Annie groaned.
“I still can’t eat beans and wieners without thinking about how I upchucked on that horse ride.”
“The horse ride,” I echoed. “Remember the green apples we picked in the orchard? They were almost too tart to eat.”
“Almost?” Jenny wrinkled her nose.
I pulled the photo away from Annie, gasping as it slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.
“No,” I wailed softly, kneeling down amongst the broken glass, tears on my cheeks.
“Calm down, Carly. We’ll get a new frame.”
“It’s not that,” I sniffled. “Mom wanted us to love camping as much as she did, but all we did that whole trip was complain. We never told her how much fun we truly had, never once thanked her for those priceless memories. And now it’s too late,” I added, casting my gaze to the empty bedroom piled full with the boxes of Mom’s belongings.
“Don’t worry, Carly,” Jenny said, crouching down to shake the glass from the photo. She flipped it over so that we could read Mom’s flowery script on the back. The Wilde Women - Best Vacation Ever. “She knew.”
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