Mom danced fluidly with an infectious smile. Then, some upbeat excuse, “We ran the 5K.” No reason to add downer to congestive heart failure and cancer.

After recovering, Mom smiled, bobbed to the music, and another took her hand to dance as her less vivacious contemporaries, with longer futures, watched.

J. Scott Merrick lives in Portland, Oregon and writes fiction when he is not in Portland. He has a few degrees. However, when applied to Mr. Merrick, MFA usually means Mother-F’ing Attorney. Previously, he has not published in Paris Review, Tin House, or New Yorker.