She has always known she was different — shy, thoughtful, and torn between her Plebeian roots and whispers of an ancient secret that her family refuses to speak of. But when an unexpected tragedy thrusts her into the dangerous political world of the Early Roman Republic, she faces truths that will alter the course of her life — and Rome's history — forever.

She kissed him goodnight, aware he wouldn’t remember her in the morning. The taste of coffee and lemon soap lingered, familiar but fading. For a brief moment, his hand cupped her face like it still knew the way. His thumb shook slightly, his mouth shaping a word that almost sounded like laughter from another time. He blinked, as if trying to pull her back into focus, but the moment slipped away. Then he looked at her politely, already gone somewhere else.She had learned from the quiet persistence of the disease and from the kindness of nurses how to let go in small ways. She knew how to guide him through fragments, names shortened, stories softened, facts turned into gentle fictions. In the kitchen that evening, beneath the warm cabinet light, she rehearsed beginnings and endings without knowing which she'd just spoken. Her wrist still carried a pale line from a fall years ago, the one where he had caught her with an easy kind of laughter. Tonight she chose to live as if being remembered were as simple as showing up with grace.Sometimes he called her Helen. She didn’t correct him anymore. She answered as though responding to an old bell in a foreign town. It steadied him, and for that moment he was himself again. The doctors said Alzheimer’s, but his family said smaller griefs, one after another. She thought of it as weather that never left. He remained a house she could still walk through in her mind, the porch where he fixed bicycles, the bed where their daughter began, the library of his books left open to half-read pages. Some halls she could still enter. Others stayed locked.“Do you know who I am?” she asked that night, a question more ritual than plea. “You’re...Mary?” he guessed, reaching for something that once fit. “No,” she said softly. “I’m the one who sang at your graduation. The one who burned the toast every morning.”He smiled faintly, as if catching a melody from far away. For an hour, they pieced together the past—recipes, storms, lines from half-remembered novels. Each memory was a stepping stone she tried to lay across the water. Each time he crossed, she felt joy; each time he forgot, the bridge collapsed.Hours later, while he slept, she stood by the window. Across the field lay the spot where they had once danced laughing under stormlight. The same field now breathed in its quiet way. When he murmured a strange name in his sleep, she let it pass. Correction no longer mattered. Kindness did.By morning, the details would be gone. But in the sleepless night, she could still sit beside him, tuck in the blanket, and read from the book he never finished. She could still be his voice when his words failed.She often saw him in her mind as something larger than his illness—a great old cathedral, cracked but still full of color when light passed through. At other times she felt more like incense, faint and temporary. Which was better, she wondered: to be the altar or what lingers after prayer?Their daughter Clare arrived on Tuesdays. Her voice was firm but her hands were gentle. When she spoke his name, his back straightened for a heartbeat. Then came the fight for recognition—a stuttering light in his eyes that flickered and sank. Clare asked the questions her mother avoided: about care, about time. Later, she read aloud while the room breathed easier.“How long can you keep this up?” Clare once whispered.“As long as I can,” her mother said. “But not forever.”In time, even she began to forget—small things at first. The name of Clare’s cat. The right amount of sugar in his tea. Those small erasures frightened her. She wondered how memory forgives reciprocal loss.Then one night she asked him, quietly, “Would you like to walk tomorrow?” He smiled sleepily. “Who are you again?”“A friend,” she said. “We’ll go to the river.”The next day they did. He walked between them, content, making up stories that no one corrected. Clare listened, holding steady in her quiet mourning. When he dozed off later, his wife touched his forehead like it still belonged to the world.That evening, she kissed him goodbye. The gesture was slower, gentler, carrying what words no longer could. “I’ll be back,” she said, though she knew time was folding in strange directions now.She paused before the old photo—two young faces bright and certain. Her hand rested on the glass. “Remember me,” she whispered. Whether it was prayer or promise didn’t matter.He woke the next day humming, tracing the photograph’s edge as if rediscovering a stranger. The name escaped him, but peace didn’t.That night she returned, told him stories from their walk, made the world smaller and kind again. She kissed his forehead, turned off the light, and left the door open. “Goodnight,” she said. “Remember if you can.” In the end, remembering wasn’t the measure. What counted was the care: the cup filled just right, the curtains drawn the way he liked, the stories folded into his pocket like small spells. She would keep being his witness to love, even when memory lost its shape.And when there were no words left, she would still hum the songs. Even in silence, she would stay. Because love, like remembering, needs no permission to begin again.

The room goes dark and Jessica hears a voice saying her name and she learns that she has a choice; she can go back and fight or she can go on.

She runs through an old dark house, as she suddenly sees lights and a costume party. Well, nothing unusual on halloween, but are those really only people in costumes? Why is she hearing her name more than once and why seems to follow her a mystery mist, everywhere she goes? And for all, why she seems to be transparent. Who is the ghost, who is the living person?

Jennifer was a smart girl and knew a lot of things... But there was one thing she didn't know... and that was who she was.

somewhere far away, julie hears a voice.

Millie knew what was coming. She didn't know just how much it would cost her.

Donut Trumpet has only one wish: to be king!

Ted’s Shorts – and no, before you ask, this has nothing to do with my choice of summer wardrobe, although I am partial to a comfy pair in the summer, nor is it a reference to my modest height of 5’6” when standing proudly in socks. Instead, within these pages you’ll find a collection of twenty-one short stories – my “shorts” of a rather more literary kind. 

Harper Vance is an architect obsessed with perfection, a drive born from a catastrophic professional failure. She designed Serinity Tower and its governing intelligence, Serinity AI, to be the ultimate self-optimizing environment, flawlessly eliminating all human error and anxiety—or Cognitive Friction (CF)—from the lives of its inhabitants.