Fiction from NER 35.2.
Just as Dafne finished her rousing—if she said so herself—lecture about the limited choices for women in nineteenth-century America, much less Britain, and had called on the dependable Serena for a response, the door to her classroom nudged open. And there, peering around the doorjamb, was Edward! Dafne’s heart lurched like an old car. The whole of Friday night tumbled at her, an Atlantic wave full of force and silt guaranteed to knock her over the fence and into the moon. “Professor Hartman!” she said. That horrid betraying flush was, she knew, making her face look as if she’d been in a boiler room shoveling coal. Edward nodded, pushed open the door the rest of the way, and tiptoed, elaborately, to the nearest available chair.
Sands Hall is the author of the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine, 2000) and a book of essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft (Moving Finger Press, 2005). Her essays and stories have appeared in 2paragraphs.com, Green Mountains Review, and the Iowa Review; the latter, “Hide and Go Seek,” was listed among 100 Other Notable Stories in Best American Short Stories, 2009. She is also a singer/songwriter and playwright; her produced plays include an adaptation of Alcott’s Little Women and the comic drama Fair Use.