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Hello, this is Stephanie Danler.

This is the Storybound podcast.

Okay. is Stephanie Danler. This is the Storybound podcast. Welcome to Storybound, presented by LitHub Radio and the podglomerate. I'm your host, Jude Brewer. Welcome to season two. We're excited to be back and we hope you're doing well.

This first episode you'll get to hear from Stephanie Danler. She'll be reading from her newest

memoir, Stray, accompanied by an original musical score by Naomi La Violette.

Thank you for tuning in, and now for the show.

Long Beach, California.

The children who stayed at daycare until dark had stories to tell but not the voices to tell them. It was a Catholic school. So divorces weren't as common as the national

statistics of the 1980s reported, and those of us coming from broken homes were acutely aware

of how different we were. Most of the other moms didn't work. The staff handled all of us who stayed until dinner time gently.

A car door would slam, and I would lose focus on whatever I was drawing or painting or gluing.

My entire body is satellite searching for her high heels on the asphalt.

She would appear in the doorway, nothing like the other moms with their smudged faces and skewed ponytails, sweats,

minivans, packed lunch sets. Her legs shimmered in her nylons, which she shed like snake skin when we landed back home.

She hemmed her skirts an extra inch, because I'm short, she informed me, but my legs are long.

Those legs appeared than the rest of her in silk skirts, blazers, camisoles, or buttoned-down blouses.

Then the eyes, bright, my eyes, she would say, while considering my own,

...