Jeffery Eugenides is the author of the novel The Virgin Suicides. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review and Granta.
On my day off, I drove my aging father to his death in the quaint town he had frequented after the navy when he was bouncing between jobs. On the phone, two nights before the fated trip, was the first I had heard him speak of this place. Though I believed him, doubts soon set in, and I wondered whether his claim was a phantom of his condition.
Christmas Night lies bitter cold and silent over the capital, and all life seems frozen. Even the wind is still, and the stars flicker like minuscule fires that strive to keep life going.