Marilyn's Musings

This essay, in large part was my first published story.  It was published more than 30 years ago in Home Life Magazine.  This updated version was published in Mystery Readers Journal .  I hope you enjoy it.  The illustration is by Padgett. ***                 She was 71 and lived alone in the cluttered attic of an old, two-story frame building with her easel, her paints, her brushes and sometimes, me. Her name was Lillian May (Watts) Hall.                   When neighbors spoke of my grandmother, they said, “A nice woman.” Then frowning and in whispers, the added, “but kinda funny.”  And in the early fifties, to the people who lived in our small, unsophisticated town, there was indeed something ‘kinda funny’ about an old lady who sat alone in her attic room and painted pictures.  At ...

THE DEEPEST DARK By Joan Hall Hovey A novel of suspense “Before I began to write The Deepest Dark , I asked myself what would be the worst thing that could happen to a woman.  And the answer was of course, to lose a child.”    Novelist Abby Miller has lost not only her ten year old daughter Ellie in a horrific head-on collision as they are returning from Christmas shopping, but her husband, Corrie, as well.   Following their deaths  Abby sinks ever deeper into a black depression. She contemplates suicide as a way to be with them, and to end her unrelenting pain. In a last desperate effort to find peace, she drives to the old isolated cabin in the woods where they spent a magical vacation together, wanting to believe they will be there waiting for her.  At least in spirit, which she is not sure she believes in.  Barring that, there are always the pills in her purse the doctor gave her to help her sleep.   The cabin at...