Written for Muse On Monday.
David challenges us to write a
story involving a distant relative.
Deb hadn’t seen her cousin Fiona since a family wedding nearly twenty years ago and barely remembered her. When the woman landed in Omaha by way of London and called from a payphone claiming her new apartment wouldn’t be ready for another week and she had nowhere to go, Deb didn’t hesitate. Family was family, even the kind you barely knew.
Fiona arrived with one suitcase and a laugh that filled the kitchen. She admired Roy’s woodshop, asked endless questions about Deb & Roy’s retirement plans …. the little place on Oahu …. the boat Roy wanted. So many questions.
One week stretched into two.
Deb noticed it first as a feeling; Fiona’s hand lingering on Roy’s shoulder, conversations that stopped when Deb walked into the room. Then, one night, she heard them in the kitchen …. Fiona’s voice low, her fingers tracing Roy’s forearm like a woman drawing a map she intended to follow somewhere private. “You work too hard for people who don’t see you. I see you, Roy.”
Deb went back upstairs but didn’t sleep.
By the third week, Fiona had a proposal. An investment, she called it …. a property developer she knew in Honolulu, pre-construction condos at half-price, a win-win. She had documents. She had statistics. She had a cousin’s smile. Roy, flattered, wanted to believe her.
“It’s our whole retirement,” Deb said, the papers spread on the table between them.
“It’s an opportunity,” Roy said, not quite meeting her eyes.
That night, Deb couldn’t sleep, so she did what she should have done from the start …. she called her cousin Cynthia in London …. the cousin she actually remembered.
“Fiona?” Cynthia asked incredulously. “Deb, cousin Fiona died eighteen months ago. Cancer.”
Deb didn’t sleep a wink. In the morning she called a detective she knew from church. By afternoon she had a name, three states, three victims, and a warrant out of Tulsa for aggravated fraud.
She waited until Roy left for the hardware store and Fiona was in the shower, then went upstairs to Fiona’s room. The suitcase was already half-packed …. cash, a second passport, folders of documents with other people’s names on them. Deb’s hands shook as she photographed them with her phone.
She never heard Fiona come in from the bathroom.
“Looking for something?”
Deb turned. Fiona filled the doorway, all warmth gone from her face, something flat and appraising in its place. “You called someone, didn’t you?” Fiona asked. “I heard you on the porch.”
“Get out of my house.”
“You don’t understand what you’ve started.” Fiona stepped closer, and Deb saw, for the first time, how much bigger she was, how the softness had always been a costume. “Roy trusts me. He likes me. One word from me about what we’ve been doing behind your back, and he’ll believe I’m the victim here.”
“He hasn’t done anything.”
“Hasn’t he?” Fiona smiled, and lunged for the phone in Deb’s hand.
They struggled in the hallway …. Deb screaming for Roy, who’d forgotten his wallet and was already coming through the front door. He took the stairs two at a time and pulled Fiona off his wife just as she raised her hand ready to strike.
The detective’s contact at the police department arrived minutes later. Fiona didn’t run. She simply looked at Roy and said, “You could’ve had a good life with me.”
They watched the police cruiser pull away. Roy took Deb’s hand, and for a long moment, neither of them said anything at all.
NAR©2026
This is “Stray Cat Blues” by The Rolling Stones
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
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