Richard Bausch is the author of numerous novels, including Playhouse, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He has also published many story collections, including Something Is Out There and The Fate of Others (Knopf, 2025), which features six stories from Narrative, including the title story. He won the Rea Award for the Short Story, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. A devoted teacher, Bausch is a professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.

Photograph by Jebb Harris.

Isolation

by Richard Bausch

She stands at the bedroom window, her robe clutched tight at her throat, watching dawn rise over the trees and the river, and the towering shadow-shapes of the buildings beyond. The street below is empty, all the cars parked, nothing moving. It looks like an abandoned city. It’s been twenty-nine days, and still, each morning the sight of her neighborhood from this height is a shock.

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