Turn of the Card

A short story of 10k words, originally published in Tarot Fantastic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Lawrence Schimel.

Shelagh was a mother, living in a small home, on the edge of the rest of her life with a husband she adored.

Now, she lives alone. Her husband remains convalescent in a care facility, wordless and unable to walk. All of the promise of life, of future, is gone, and she wants no reminders of the past—but she finds one: a pack of carefully hand-crafted Tarot Cards that she made for him on a long-ago day when the future seemed to matter.

Those cards are one of the few remaining things that bind them together—but to what end?