Purest Fiction: Offensive Apostrophe

When she walked back to the bureau and delved in the suitcase for her bag of pens and pencils, she scraped her knuckles on her “souvenirs.” Despite what she’d told Ed O’Connor, there were rocks in her luggage. A palm-sized lump of pink and gray granite came from the Continental Divide.
One dark jaggedly fractured chunk of stone commemorated a trip to an island in Lake Huron. When she pulled out the flattest fragment, picked up on Mount Washington, mica glared in the harsh light. Would she add Pennsylvania bluestone?
She took them all to the table, to use as paperweights.
Two hours later, she had written a solid outline, character descriptions, and her usual list of scenes to include in the storyline. Bacon Grease Sally had a life of her own.

One thing kept her from sleep: that offensive apostrophe.

She set aside her pen, left the chair, and stepped to the suitcase. Groping in its recesses, she pulled out a flashlight. The author turned it on and cupped the bulb end in one hand. She descended the stairs, unlocked the door, and eased into the restaurant.
Allowing a sliver of light to penetrate the gap between her fingers, she made her way to the chalkboard. Mavis had used a stencil, so there’d be no telltale change in handwriting. Swiftly, the writer edited the spelling of Fillets, deleting the offensive apostrophe, and spelled out the pronoun.
When she reached the top of her stairs, the author staggered to the lumpy bed. Would this wandering never end? As always, her mind sought escape in the lives of her characters.
With or without a publishing contract, the tales of Ruarri and Shona, characters in her first novel, were still playing out; more real to her than her own life. In her drowsiness, the salty, fishy scent of Boston Bay gradually overwhelmed the essence of bacon burgers from years past.

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Purest Fiction is a short story with twelve parts. Stay tuned for Purest Fiction: Morning Coffee
Read more of my published short stories here.