By Caitlin Cusack

Soaking in the tub, the drone of her children muffled by the bathroom fan, she planned her escape: she’d disappear and reemerge, untracked and unidentifiable, faraway. She would live her version of Hammett’s “Flitcraft Parable.” Her falling beam was the near-hit of her car against a tree, that instant that lifted the lid off her life and convinced her to start again. Unlike Flitcraft, she would transform, forever. She’d miss her family; she loved them. But this was about self-preservation, of some yet-to-be-known self. She’d Flitcraft, first thing tomorrow, after the school bus drove away.