What the story’s introduction calls an absence; its circumstances belong to that particular story.
An absence may be named, felt, or documented. Its circumstances belong to the story in which it appears.
Cycles, Series & AnthologyIn Belvaux-sur-Rive, the absent have names. Not birth certificates. Nora Valette knows how to put a room, a register, a calendar in order. Nothing prepares her for a town whose inhabitants remember people who never existed. An empty chair becomes a sign. One private story calls forth another. Soon doubt itself looks suspicious.
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Cycles, Series & AnthologyIn the 1912 portrait, someone has disappeared beneath the scissors. In Camille Vallet’s family, the frame has always been there. They knew the faces, the places, the story passed down with the picture. But a cut turns the portrait into a question. Then an intact photographic plate reveals a fifth woman: the one the family had stopped seeing.
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Intimacy, Family & RomanceA body rises from the bayou. Lena recognizes her brother. She has never had a brother. In Louisiana, identification should return a dead man to his history. Lena Broussard’s account complicates everything: gestures, a name, family memories no one can confirm. She knows this man the way someone knows a brother. Saying so immediately makes her a suspect.
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