This Great Love: A Short Story

By Valerie Geary

She's an introvert who never leaves the house. He's a loner who craves routine. A chance encounter puts them on a collision course with love.

 

Startled awake earlier than usual one morning, Prudence exchanges a glance with a man walking past her window. Though she knows nothing about him except the color of his suit and tie, she falls head-over-heels in love.

 

Cuthbert, a man whose best friend is a goldfish, studies the clouds on his way to work. He's so preoccupied with his own predictable existence that he fails to recognize the moment when his destiny changes.

 

When their paths finally cross, will it lead to happily ever after or end in disaster?

 

This Great Love is a whimsical short story about the complicated routes love can take. Get it today!

 

Bonus material included! Twenty Tiny Twisted Tales is a collection of flash fiction stories. Each story is 100 words long.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valerie Geary
• Release date: Oct 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201635671

Valerie Geary

Valerie Geary is the author of Everything We Lost and Crooked River, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband where they enjoy hiking favorite trails and discovering new ones together. If you'd like to go behind-the-scenes with Valerie Geary, receive exclusive content, pre-order information, reading recommendations, and more, please sign up for her monthly newsletter.

Book preview

THIS GREAT LOVE

&

TWENTY TINY

TWISTED TALES

A Short Story Collection

by Valerie Geary

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THIS GREAT LOVE

© 2014, 2021 by Valerie Geary

Broken Branch Books

Portland, OR

2nd Edition November 2021

1st Edition published in 2014 by Amazon Publishing

TWENTY TINY TWISTED TALES

© 2021 by Valerie Geary

Broken Branch Books

Portland, OR

The short story Liberation first appeared in Boston Literary Magazine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [e-mail].

www.valeriegeary.com

THIS GREAT LOVE : a short story

PART I

PART II

PART III

TWENTY TINY TWISTED TALES

1: OUT FROM THE FOG

2: COME BITTER WINTER

3: THE HAUNTED CAROUSEL

4: MAMA’S PET

5: THE MISSING

6: THE WATER WITCH

7: SIX MONTHS AT SEA

8: TRESPASSING

9: ADRIFT

10: ISOLATION

11: THE NIGHT CARL JENKINS DISAPPEARED

12: THIS STORM HAS BEEN BUILDING FOR MONTHS

13: DON’T LET GO

14: WE WALK AWAY FROM FLAMES

15: BEE BEARD

16: PAIR BOND

17: THE SPINSTER’S MANNEQUINS

18: RAINY DAY JAR

19: THE GIRL WHO FLEW

20: LIBERATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THIS GREAT LOVE : a short story

PART I

Cuthbert Wilson tries to wiggle his toes—and can’t. He tries to bend his knees—and fails. He’s lying down. Where? Some dark room, in a bed not his own. Dim light through a curtained window reveals shadow-shapes crouching nearby. A chair heaped and draped with dark coats hunkers in the far corner. Near his head and off to the right, a computer beeps repetitively, glowing a faint red and reflecting off the screen of a television bolted to the opposite wall. The bed has rails. The blankets covering him are bleached white. The walls, the ceiling, and what he can see of the floor: white on more white. A hospital room then, because his legs have stopped working—though how this all happened remains unclear, his memories over the past few hours either missing completely or too muddled and broken-down to be of any use.

The last thing Cuthbert Wilson does remember is this: walking his usual workday route, from his house on Southwest Jefferson, twelve blocks to the Standard Insurance building on Fifth, at his usual brisk clip, shoulders straight and arms swinging in a lazy rhythm. Right, left, right, left, up, down, up, down, excuse me, pardon me, coming through. The orthopedic insert in his right shoe had shifted and rubbed wrong against his heel, but other than that his legs were working just fine. And before that? As far he remembers, this morning started out like all previous mornings. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that might have brought him here.

His alarm rang at 5:00 a.m. exactly. He took a seven-minute shower, shaved, and dressed in a white-collared shirt, navy-blue tie, pressed brown slacks, and matching brown suit jacket. He combed his hair, parting it straight down the middle the way he always does. At 5:20 a.m., he was in the kitchen making the same breakfast he always makes: scrambled eggs and toast for one. He turned the small television on the counter to QVC and drank his usual cup of instant coffee with his eyes closed, imagining his house filled with laughing, talking people