On Choosing the Perfect Peach Dress

By Kari Kilgore

An Impossible Task Filled with Love

Michael faces an empty house full of countless memories close to his heart.
Struggling to find the perfect touch for his beloved Auntie Ellen's farewell.
How will he choose the best way to send her off in style, and with love?

 

Also available in the collection Passages in the Real World: Six Stories of Life's Transitions

 

An excerpt from On Choosing the Perfect Peach Dress:
A choice too big for a broken heart

"Peach, peach," he said under his breath, not sure why he was worried about the empty house hearing his shaky voice. "Peeeeeeeach. A simple peach dress."

Maybe if he said it enough he'd find a way around the giant roadblock in his mind, in his heart. The one that kept reminding him that no matter which dress he chose, it would be the last one she ever wore.

He was perilously close to fifty himself, and felt stable and sane most days. He didn't exactly need his auntie to wipe his little boy tears when he escaped from his stern parents, all too often confused by their overly sensitive youngest son. Or from the school and church that were determined to shove him into the correct social and career box, no matter badly his misfit edges pinched and scraped.

But the reality of the loss of one of the most important people in his life still clenched up his chest and made his throat ache.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Nov 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201413224

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

On Choosing the Perfect Peach Dress

For all the beloved Aunties in my life

ON CHOOSING THE PERFECT PEACH DRESS

KARI KILGORE

SPIRAL PUBLISHING, LTD.

ON CHOOSING THE PERFECT PEACH DRESS

Auntie Ellen’s overstuffed walk-in closet might as well have been as big as the Atlanta Falcons football stadium downtown. Michael would have had pretty much the same chance of picking out the right dress for her last big party.

He felt like he’d stepped into the vast Easter section at Davison’s, that revered Atlanta shopping institution down on Peachtree Street, circa 1983. Except everything here was better organized than any clothing store he’d ever seen. All the dresses hung at his eye level since Auntie Ellen had been a touch over six feet tall. And those dresses covered all of the available shades of the pastel spectrum,