“No, wait, wait. I’ll come with you.” His words emerged as a breathless plea. “Don’t leave me here.”
Nita looked up toward the house, then she and Alberto moved off.
As Gregory discarded the need to make sense of anything, his breath returned with a shuddering heave, filling his lungs and pushing him to his feet, his heartbeat now strong and steady.
The moon appeared, and his ghosts dissolved in the fractured light of swiftly moving clouds.
Gregory’s arms hung at his sides. A gaping hole inside slowly filled with possibility.
The earth settled.
He wiped the rain off his face with his sleeve.
From a long way away, one of the horses snorted.
Peering up toward the house, he saw Sophie silhouetted at the window. She was looking out over the garden and the small cemetery.
Gregory slowly made his way up the slope toward the barn and stables. The horses nickered when they saw him, and he checked on each of them, taking time to inhale the scent of their manes and shaggy coats.
He’d make an uncertain but inescapable choice that signaled a turning away from the past. Away from Nita and Alberto. Perhaps Gregory was safe to make this choice and still keep them in that part of him that would, could never forget, a place that they would share for as long as he lived.
As he made his way around to the front door, the air moved like a wave above him. It was the festival condor, rising high above the rocky crags to circle the sky.
Gregory stepped inside, and as he climbed the stairs, the house itself sighed, stirring on its worn velvet sofa, and slept.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to you, the reader. You’re the final stop on this book’s journey, the landing where all the long hours of imagining, research, and writing come together. You give the work meaning.
Thanks to my San Francisco State University peers and professors, Maxine Chernoff and Robert Glück, who taught me so much about storytelling and, in the end, found this book a worthy thesis for my MFA. Thank you, too, San Francisco State University, for choosing the work as the winner of the Clark-Gross Award in the Novel.
To my fellow authors at Author Salon, thank you for the hours you devoted to feedback that proved so illuminating.
Love and gratitude to my darlings: Amber-Mae, Hylda, and Bev, for believing in me. It all spins around you—you’re my center. And I like to think this is a book that my father, Maurice Skutelsky, would have been proud of.
Thank you, family and friends, for your invaluable support.
I’m grateful to Caroline Carr, Zach, and the Kindle Scout team for their energy and effort. Caroline, thank you for believing in my work.
Carmen Johnson of Little A, all this is possible thanks to you. Working with editors of your caliber and that of Jerri Gallagher and Janice Lee has been a revelation. The novel is all the better for your generous and gracious input.
Thank you, Samantha Neukirch, for your beautiful illustration, and Adil Dara, for your cover design. You managed to get to the heart of what has affectionately come to be called “Grave.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Amber-Mae Skutelsky
Jennifer Skutelsky was born in South Africa and now lives with her daughter and three immigrant pets in San Francisco. Her first book, Breathing Through Buttonholes: The Story of Madeleine Heitner, is listed at the Yad Vashem Library, and her memoir, Tin Can Shrapnel, was an Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist. Grave of Hummingbirds, her MFA thesis at San Francisco State University, won the Clark-Gross Award in the Novel. With roots in ballet and sculpture, everything she does now revolves around books.
Grave of Hummingbirds Page 18
