Fiction

Michael Croley, born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Corbin, Kentucky, is the author of the story collection Any Other Place, winner of the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Weatherford Award. He is also the coeditor of Midland: Reports from Flyover Country. A graduate of the creative writing programs at Florida State University and the University of Memphis, Croley teaches at Denison University and is on the visiting faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Since the Accident

A Story

by Michael Croley

They never call it what it was. They never discuss what happened. Emma thinks she can get past it, that it’s just a phase, and that when she does, her life with Richard, their marriage, will return to normal. But in quiet moments—as in the shower this morning—she can’t remember what normal was like, how everything felt four months ago, before the misshapen hoods and the hissing steam and rising smoke. She sometimes feels like a child who has let go of a balloon in the wind and run through a field after it, only to watch it fly farther and farther away.

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