Confident Writing sponsored an end-of-the-year Group Writing Project to which authors were asked to submit a single post representing their best 2008 work. I selected An Unexpected Independence Day Celebration because I believe it is one of my best-crafted short stories. It is based not upon one particular person, but, rather, several people who are dear to me, including a special couple in whose honor I wrote the piece as a way of demonstrating my affection for them upon the occasion of their wedding. My second choice for 2008 is The Keys to Her Future.

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Nearly every morning, he managed to be in the parking lot at the precise moment she arrived for work. And even though she worked on the third floor of the ten-story building, and he was assigned to the fifth, he not only walked into the building with her; the last few mornings, he had gotten off the elevator on the third floor, walked with her down the hall and opened the door to the office for her before ducking into the nearby stairwell and bounding up the final two floors to his cubicle. The last few nights, she had also encountered him in the lobby and they walked to their cars together.

“How ’bout lunch tomorrow?” he asked as they arrived at her vehicle. He reached over, took the keys from her hand, placed them into the lock just under the handle, and popped the door open for her before handing the keys back to her. “I can meet you in the cafeteria at noon, if that’s all right.”

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When she walked into her new apartment for the first time, she burst into tears as a plethora of emotions rushed over her. Alone with Timmy in a city with which she was completely unfamiliar and where the only person with whom she was acquainted was the kind stranger who had met them at the bus depot and escorted them to the housing project, she considered her sparsely furnished new home.

Sitting down in the overstuffed chair next to the living room window, she took a deep breath and quickly dabbed her face with a tissue so that Timmy would not see her cry. A huge black cloud hung over the city, just moments from unleashing more pounding, bitterly cold rain. As she gazed through the dirty, wet windowpane, all she could see in every direction were more apartment buildings as ugly and nondescript as the structure in which she found herself now residing.

Pulling Timmy onto her lap, she held him tightly as they sat quietly for a few moments watching the rain begin again in earnest. She could barely believe that the two of them would be spending Christmas in this drab, rundown building in this dreary city on the opposite side of the country from the only home she had ever known.

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“He’s flirting with you,” Marilyn whispered as she leaned toward her coworker’s side of the long reception counter where they worked side by side each day.

“Stop it. He is not,” she protested through slightly clenched teeth as her gaze again wandered to the intriguing stranger seated on the couch near the door to the interior office suite.

“Oh, yeah, he is,” Marilyn pressed. “He is checking you out.”

She could feel heat radiating from her flushed cheeks and the inside of her mouth had suddenly become dry. If Marilyn only knew, she thought to herself.

Just then the intercom buzzed. “Yes, Mr. Bascom, I’ll send him right in,” she said politely before replacing the receiver. “Mr. Bascom is ready to see you now,” she advised him, standing and coming around from behind the counter in order to escort him down the hall to the office of the company’s Vice President for his job interview.

Neither of them spoke as he followed her down the corridor. When she stopped in front of Mr. Bascom’s closed office door, she tapped lightly with her right hand as she turned the doorknob with her left and then gestured to him to enter. She mouthed the words “good luck” to him as he walked past her before gently closing the door and returning to her work station. There, she began her morning transcription.

An hour or so later, her headphones on, she was typing furiously and did not hear him re-enter the foyer, so she nearly jumped out of her chair when she turned to find him leaning on the counter watching her. He was smiling broadly.

“Oh, my gawd,” she shrieked. “How long have you been standing there?”

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It was more like a plaintive howl than a scream. Visceral and primitive, the sound filled the small room and echoed down the hall, but she did not hear it as it emanated from somewhere deep in her soul. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that she asked her good friend, as they sat at the dining room table writing “thank you” notes, “Did I scream that night?”

Her friend put down the pen with which she was addressing an envelope, reached over and squeezed her hand as she said gently, “Yes, honey, you did.”

“I keep hearing this horrible sound in my head,” she said. “I didn’t realize what it was until just a few moments ago. Isn’t that odd?”

“Not really,” her friend assured her. “It was a horrible shock. People react all sorts of different ways when they receive such terrible news.”

“I guess,” she said absent-mindedly as she stared at the blank envelope in front of her.

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“Well, like I said, I slapped her the first time when she was pregnant with Timmy. She must have been about six months or so along. It just . . . happened. Before I even knew what I was doing, I heard the sound of my hand slapping her cheek.” He sat for a moment, breathed heavily. “I’ll never forget that sound as long as I live. Which, according to the doctors here, won’t be much longer. And brings me to my first question.”

“Shoot,” Kevin said, anxious to see whether the question he anticipated hearing would be the one that was actually troubling Jake. After so many years in the ministry, it was like a little game he played as he counseled his parishioners, hospital patients or the other folks who occasionally found their way into his church. When his prediction was wrong, he made a note, sometimes using the insight revealed during such exchanges to punctuate a point in his weekly sermons.

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He stared out the window, considering the cloudless blue sky. From the bed in his third-story hospital room, he could see the tops of the trees in the parking lot below swaying softly with the light summer breeze. He wished that he could return to the marina, hose down the decks of his small vessel, and point its bow toward the San Francisco Bay. He would sail out to sea, allowing the wind to carry him and his boat in any direction it wished for as many days as he had left on earth.

He sighed deeply as he shifted his gaze back to the I.V. pole from which hung several plastic bags containing clear liquids. Three separate tubes carried the substances from the bags to his veins. He winced as he moved his left arm. Looking down, he noticed that a new bruise had developed where the nurse had unsuccessfully tried to reinsert the needle earlier in the day.

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“Another one,” she said matter-of-factly.

“What? Who?” Karen shrieked through a loud yawn. “Oh, man, I really wanted to get through the summer without going to a another freakin’ funeral!”

“Huh? No, no . . . nobody died.”

“Then what are you talking about?” Karen mumbled, still half-asleep.

“You obviously haven’t read today’s newspaper yet,” she replied. “Go get it. Look at the ‘Birth Announcements’ on page eight. I’ll get another cup of coffee while you do.”

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Welcome to the Just Write Blog Carnival, featuring a diverse and information-packed collection of articles about the various aspects of writing. Be sure to convey your appreciation to the participants by joining in the discussion at their respective sites and submitting their work to your favorite social networking groups. Enjoy!

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