Robyn Parnell

My story "Maggie's Rain" appears in the current issue of the literary journal Talking River Review (Spring 2010, Issue 18). An excerpt:

How curiously normal it had all become. Flipping through the family photo albums with her brother TJ at her side, Maggie looked at pictures containing the Maggie-face she had come to know from the mirror. It was the same face that, according to TJ, had suddenly declared one morning that nicknames were passé and that they should use their given names: Margaret Ruth and Thomas John. That was just before the accident; now, Maggie had no preference for one name over the other. What did it matter?

Was it strange that this TJ or Thomas John was the only thing she seemed to recollect? Maggie remembered him as a set of feelings, as kindness, confirmation, and protection. During the groggy days of limbo when she was back home, after her release from the hospital and before her stay at the rehab facility, TJ appointed himself Maggie's occupational therapist. Standing before the bathroom sink, he tied his left hand behind his back with his belt, gleefully announced, "I've been working on this!" and demonstrated his one-armed face-washing technique.

TJ was a sense wherein Maggie knew she was safe. She also knew that she in turn had to become stronger. She would save TJ from whatever it was that made him declare that he wished he had his mother's and his sister's soft-warm brown eyes, and not his father's cold and jagged, dark blue.