Night Magnolia

To be published

Night Magnolia is based on a childhood experience of mine when I witnessed a similar crime in my neighborhood. This story begins with what I saw beneath that car but I’ve changed everything else after that point. This is my imagination at work for what I think happens to the family and the mess they get themselves in leading up to that tragic night.

Two legs sticking out from beneath a car. The delicate, white cotton of the woman’s nightgown. Those are the images sixteen-year-old Emma can’t get out of her mind when she sees Ms. Virginia’s body. The reality Ms. Virginia’s own husband has run her down in the front yard. But that’s not all Emma witnesses in their sleepy, Louisiana town that night. It’s what else she sees that soon releases a domino effect of strange behavior. First, by everyone at school, and then, by the dead woman’s son.

As Emma struggles to distance herself from the crime, the story is fueled with flashbacks from Virginia—a glimpse into that woman’s life before she died. Hadn’t Virginia had it all? Loving husband. Money. A good son. But when the good life begins to fall apart, when the simplest of pleasures starts to not go her way, she thinks she’s found a way to help. Trouble is, making the right choices has never suited her heart. As Virginia’s tragic choices plunge her into a world of murder and lies, the family’s secrets soon result in an explosive truth that no one is yet ready to hear. And young Emma finds herself trapped in the middle of it all.