K is for Knucklebones
Continued from 08/05/2026
Her hand stopped an inch from the latch.
For a moment, she thought she had won.
Then she spoke without meaning to, using the same calm voice as before, she whispered, “Not yet.”
Destiny backed away from the basement door until the backs of her knees struck a chair. She sat because standing had become too difficult. Her right hand remained lifted in front of her, fingers curled, waiting for permission to finish what it had started.
“All right,” she said to the house. Her voice cracking on the second word. “If you want me to remember, show me something true.”
The sentence frightened her more than the whisper had. It was too close to asking. Like casting without bones.
Nothing answered at first. The house made its usual old-house noises. Pipes ticking, rainwater sliding through gutters, wood popping as it swelled in damp places. Ordinary sounds. Then, from the parlor, the piano gave one note.
That solitary note faded to silence, hanging in the air like a question, or an answer she had yet to decipher.
She crossed to the parlor because she could not bear the basement and could not continue sitting still. The room looked different in the morning light. Less theatrical, more accusing. The photographs on the mantel were gray and flat. Jonah’s printed hand still held her printed wrist.
She took the photograph down.
The frame was dusty, but the glass over Jonah’s face was clean, as if someone had wiped it recently with a thumb. She turned it over, bent back the tiny metal tabs, and slid the photograph free. On the back, in Elsie’s handwriting, was written: Last summer. Before the counting.
The words pulled at something behind her eyes and she closed them.
Summer came back all wrong.
Not as a memory, with the edges softened by time. This one was , sharp, crowded and too low to the ground. She was small again, barefoot on the kitchen linoleum, looking up at Elsie’s apron. Jonah stood beside her with his hands behind his back. Something clicked between his palms.
“Where did you get those?” Elsie asked.
Jonah looked at Destiny. Not guilty. Proud.
“They told us where you hide the sugar,” he said.
Elsie struck him so fast the sound became part of the click of bones. Destiny remembered the shock of it more than the blow. Elsie, who saved spiders in teacups and cried when calves were born dead, hitting Jonah across the mouth hard enough to split his lip.
Then the memory changed.
She was outside by the bone mill. The air stank of wet lime and animal fat. Jonah was crying, but not because of his lip. He was holding the velvet pouch against his chest, and Destiny was angry with him.
That came first. The anger. Hot, pure, and childish. He told Elsie. He ruined the game. He made her feel stupid for believing the bones liked her best.
“Give them back,” she said in a hard voice.
Jonah shook his head. “They said you’d be mad.”
“Who did?”
Jonah looked past her toward the mill door that hung open into a bleak emptiness. “You did.”
She opened her eyes, but the parlor did not return. Memory had her by the throat now.
Another scene broke through. Kitchen again. Night. Rain. Elsie asleep upstairs or pretending to be. Destiny and Jonah crouched beneath the dining table, the seven bones between them. Jonah wanted to stop. She remembered that now. He had one hand over his mouth, tears standing on his cheeks.
“It knows my voice,” he whispered.
But Destiny felt important, chosen, furious he was afraid of what had chosen them. “Ask where we should hide,” she said.
The bones made the crooked ladder.
Something climbs, Elsie’s notebook had said. But she didn’t know that at the time. Yet the answer emerged in her own head, sweet and certain.
Below.
To be continued 08/19/2026
Richard Schiver 
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