Rebecca's Story: An Excerpt from The Last Straw

I thought he was perfect. He was perfect, actually, right up to the end.

Except. . . .

Track star. Yale. Wealthy family, nice teeth, fluent in Italian, never sped. I loved his dog.

So one day my brother is visiting from Arizona and Karl suggests they go to the rec center while I finish up a paper I’m writing on, oh who cares, some nineteenth-century ghost or other. Half an hour later, Bill is back. He's white, stricken. When I ask where Karl is, my brother just sucks in his chin and shakes his head. Something’s happened. He can’t even speak it. “Is he okay?” I’m panicking. “Say he’s okay.” Bill just stands there shuddering. Finally he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and blurts it out, the horrible truth: “Hairiest dude I ever saw.”

And that was that.