If I could choose, I’d stay here, he’d written. But that’s just not the way it’s supposed to work. Not with family.
He’d signed it Mark. It was the first time he’d ever used that name for himself, but it was what the rancher and his wife had called him and so it felt right. The experience of signing it felt different, though, a physical sensation of change, cutting things off before they dragged on needlessly.
Mark. Standing alone, with the us that his family had insisted on adding. A shorter name, cleaner, not dragging extra characters along. He thought he might use it at his next school, wherever that would be. Try it on, at least, see how it sounded.
By the end of his time at the ranch, he’d almost grown to like it.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Koryta
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5564-2
Published in 2018 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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