'Laura is sitting up late with her old friend Maurice, a poet, deeply engaged in discussion when he is moved to reveal the great tragic secret of his youth: the woman he loved was driven by financial need to marry a cruel man who isolated and tormented her and destroyed her writing, which in Maurice’s opinion was quite fine. At last, with her child’s death, Claire took her own life, leaving behind a manuscript, which was found scattered on the floor near her husband’s corpse as he lay with his face “frozen into an expression of indescribable terror, and entirely blanched, as if vitriol had been flung across the features.” This manuscript eventually came into Maurice’s possession, and it has haunted him ever since, although he has never been able to finish reading it.'
Source: Locus Magazine (www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2011/08/lois-tilton-reviews-short-fiction-late-august-2/). (Sighted: 30/11/2016)
