Blue Splendor

by Todd Banks

I vaguely remember what my Dad had told me on that August day with the hot sun at our backs and the lake spread out before us in its cool, blue splendor. His exact words are fuzzy you see, I was just a tot then, not aged more than three years. But, I do recall his putting an arm around my small, bony shoulders and looking deep into my blue eyes. “I need your trust, son - do I have that much from you?” I nodded in affirmation and he smiled in a way that caused me to shrink into myself. “Don’t worry, boy, we’ll be right as rain, you’ll see,” he told me, as I watched my mother’s body drift off into the murky depths of the cool, blue splendor before us.

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Todd Banks is a screenwriter.