Smokin' Six-Shooter

A daughter who’d been found drowned in the creek.

The short story had to be about the same woman and her child, didn’t it?

She put the critiqued story installments into her backpack, although she wouldn’t be returning them until the entire story had been finished, turned in and graded.

She didn’t want to stifle their creativity with her comments on the earlier assignments, although her comments were very complimentary of their endeavors. The idea was to encourage her students to write freely. She understood the fear some people had about putting words to paper.

As she zipped up the backpack, she looked down at the murder story on the table where she’d left it. She would hide it in the house for now. She didn’t want to take the chance that someone would find it in the schoolhouse and read it.

The story was becoming more and more like her dark secret and that should have made her even more uneasy than it did, she thought.

As she headed to bed, Jolene realized that the author of the murder story had gotten to her. Not only couldn’t she wait for the next part, but she now felt personally involved in solving the mystery.

Reading Monday’s and Tuesday’s assignments in order, she had looked for some clue as to the writer. Was the writer just someone with an active imagination? Or a local gossip who thought she knew what had happened that summer, if indeed the story was about Laura Beaumont and her daughter, Angel?