This is the story I wrote the other night. Thanks to Frank for suggestions on how to fix the earlier draft.

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Dinner was served promptly at 6pm every night. Allison knew it was old-fashioned, but it felt important. The stoneware her Aunt Kathy had given her and Bradley for a wedding present sat on the table, the matching serving dishes in the center. Tonight was baked chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, and small dishes of chocolate pudding. Nothing special, but pride filled her every time she fed her family. Catie would roll her eyes at that, having a mother in the 21st century who chose to stay at home, raise her children, and served a meal to them every night. Once, when she was 11, Catie came to her mother, childish indignation on her face.

“You’re setting the Right of Women’s Movement back a century, Mom!” This was during Catie’s phase of wanting to be a lawyer. The previous month she’d wanted to be a television news anchor, before deciding they were vapid supermodels. There was no halfway with Catie.

“Sweetheart, the Women’s Rights Movement was about choice and opportunity. Those women, including your Aunt Kathy, marched so that women could choose the path they took in life, rather than having it chosen for them, right?” Catie eyed her suspiciously, certain she was about to be tricked in some way, but unclear on how. “Well, this is the path I chose. You wouldn’t want to oppress me, would you?” She said the last with a bit of a laugh, lightly tapping her daughter’s nose. Catie stomped off through the house as loudly as possible, swearing with her tiny voice that she would no longer play a part in her mother’s “enslavement”. At 6pm she joined her mother and father and younger brother for supper.

Allison turned toward the sound of Brad’s car pulling into the driveway. Ten minutes until supper, just enough time for him to take off his tie and roll up his sleeves before the meal. As she poured the drinks, she heard Chris, her youngest, throw his backpack in the corner and race up the stairs. When he’d joined the basketball team she’d worried, like all the mothers, about whether he’d be hurt, how well he’d handle the disappointment of the inevitable losses, or if his grades would suffer. Though she never said anything, she had also worried that the supper ritual, for lack of a better word, would be interrupted. As if reading her mind, Brad had moved his schedule around at work, so that he could pick Chris up on his way home.

Glancing at the clock in the living room, she laid out the cloth napkins, and smiled at the sound of her family coming down the stairs. Chris sat down without a word. Bradley, right behind him, paused in the doorway and sighed nearly inaudibly. Allison smiled up at her husband, and he took his seat. Allison listened, almost happy, to her family sharing the events of their day with each other. She imagined how Catie would respond, the passionate proclamations she would make, which she would soften with a well-timed laugh. About this time, Catie would be stressing about which college to choose, how she did on her SATs (little worry there, the bright young girl had grown into a bright young woman), and all of the traditional things that women her age worried about.

She felt her husband’s arm around her shoulder, felt the warm, wet tears on his face as he held her, and only then realized she was crying. She saw him nod to Chris, who stood up and cleared Catie’s dishes off the table.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I’ll stop. I’ll stop.” She knew she wouldn’t. Every night, as she had done for the last twenty years, and for the last eleven months since Catie disappeared, she would make supper, setting a place for her daughter, for her family, and wait for them to come home.

It is a powerful thing to be able to do so much with a single word ("disappeared", in this case).

Well done, sir.

How should I put this?

The story was quite well-done. I think it's your best character study yet. The characters really came to life. And Frank is right about the sudden power of the ending--if it takes one by surprise.

But I saw that ending coming. Why? Because all of these Very Short Stories have struck me as rather angsty. About two paragraphs or so from the end the thought popped into my mind "Okay, what's the most angsty way for this piece to end? I know, we'll learn in the last paragraph that the kids have met a tragic end." Sure enough, that's what happened.

It's not good to get too predictable. Any time I hear that DC is bringing back character who hasn't seen the light of day in a long time, I know for certain that the poor thing is marked for death. Because that's ALWAYS what happens. Done to the point of predictability, this sort of thing loses its effectiveness. Good things happen in the world too. Writing about them is also art. And you're too good to let yourself get this predictable.

That's a fair point, D.L., and something I've tried to avoid. "Money's Fool" and "As The Crow Flies" and "Song of Silence" are less angsty.