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dot com and secure your seats today drive mary by archer sullivan from the ellery queen mystery magazine may june

two thousand and twenty three edition from the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May June, 2023 edition.

It is 1992, and you are about to be born.

Your mother is sitting in the kitchen on a yellow vinyl chair, one ankle propped on the other knee.

She is sweating. She is heavily pregnant.

It is a Tuesday in July smack in the middle of Georgia, and there is no air conditioning. She is deep into a thick paperback novel

about a man who lives on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, which she has never seen,

and smoking a camel. She turns the page, flicks the ash. Ginger ale fizz dances at the top of a tall plastic cup. Her mother is a camel. She turns the page, flicks the ash.

Ginger ale fizz dances at the top of a tall plastic cup. Her mind is filled with pictures of the seaside, the salt smell, the shells in the sand, the voice of the man who lives by the Atlantic

ocean. His name is Oysen, a name she has never heard in real life. She thinks about naming you, Oisen.

She does not know how to pronounce the name, but the man in the book is a good man,

a fisherman who wears wool sweaters and stares at the sea.

She wants you to be able to stare at the sea.

She wants that for you.

A dream come true.

Darkness crawls over the land.

Mary turns on the dim light in the kitchen, looks at the clock.

...