Nora Sheppard

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2019

Stories (8)

8 Stories

134 karma pts

?

“Cape May” by Nora Sheppard

“Houston, we have a problem.” William smiled at Stacy as he watched her splash around while directing her float over to the dock. It was good to see her smile, even in response to his lame comment. He handed her a plastic cup of wine. "Did you know that Captain Kidd pillaged these very waters in the late 17th century?" William asked, as he watched her lounge. She wore a big flop...

Read story

“Windward” by Nora Sheppard

"We have plenty of time." It had become our mantra. My husband, Bill, and I, Sally, met when we were both 40; we married at 41. Neither of us had children and were unsure if we could achieve pregnancy at our age. I knew the stats; on average, a woman my age had only 3 percent of viable eggs remaining. In...

Read story

“The Hidden” by Nora Sheppard

"Why won't you marry me?" "I'm 17, Peter. There are things I want to do before I get married." "Other girls marry at your age, Karin. Don't you love me?" I was an old argument. It seemed to come up every few weeks nowadays. Maybe Warsaw, Poland in 1941 made the young feel they had to hurry with life. Karin's brother, Alex, and his friends already had been ...

Read story

“The Darkest Year” by Nora Sheppard

The Darkest Year At first, it wasn't something you would notice. In the United States, people became sick here and there with something called a "three-day flu." That was the first wave. Life in 1918 was perilous. A high percentage of women still died in childbirth or from the after-effects of childbirth. Many children died before their fifth birthday of one disease or another--tuberculosi...

Read story

“The Last Bronte” by Nora Sheppard

The Last Bronte The bus took me to Haworth, my dream destination for decades, ever since I read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. How could sisters, sheltered and disconnected from much of society, create books of such passion and darkness? As we pulled up to the Bronte Parsonage Museum, I glimpsed the Brontes’ beloved moors. I didn’t know my companions on this excursion. It was a side trip...

Read story

“The Notice” by Nora Sheppard

Bennet Mason Jr. was born in 1902, at the turn of a century barreling towards industrialization. The small local merchant was soon passé. Goods could now be made at factories and shipped by railroad. Who needed a horse and buggy when Henry Ford’s model T could ferry you from place to place? Bennet was born in a mansion on 5th Avenue in New York City. Nannies and butlers saw to his every need. His parents, though often absent as they flitted from party to party, fawned over ...

Read story

“In the deep (Nora Sheppard)” by Nora Sheppard

It seemed to Kay that her family had always treaded deep water.Her mother, Marlie, was 23 when she met and married her first husband. Life was wonderful; they had two kids in five years. At the age of 32; however, Marlie was widowed. Her young husband, a salesman, died in a car wreck all alone on a road one day. His death, in many ways, set up what was to come in all the decades that followed.Kay’s own father appeared shortly thereafter. He had fought in two wars and had almost ...

Read story

“The Cardinal” by Nora Sheppard

The CardinalBy Nora SheppardKay sat watching the Destination board at Union Station. She rarely traveled by train, so she was excited to do so on this trip. She had visited her son, Ben, in Washington, D.C. and was taking a side trip to visit her Aunt Nettie in Newark. Nettie was the only older relative left in the family, following the death of Kay's mother the prior winter. It had been years since Kay visited Ne...

Read story

Author bio

Nora Sheppard has not written a bio yet!