UNCONFESSED CONFESSIONS
ALM No.94, October 2026
SHORT STORIES
Beth watched her older and only sister Ruth gasping for air as she lay in pain in her hospice bed. It was obvious that today her sister was worse. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside her, tears welling up in her eyes as she did so. She couldn’t have asked for a better sister than Ruth.
“You feeling a little better today Ruth?” asked Beth knowing she wasn’t.
Ruth moaned. “I’m taking your secret to the grave with me Beth just like I promised you and our folks that I would years ago.”
That was out of the blue. Beth had no idea that her sister would be thinking of her at a time like this. Why was she bringing that up? Perhaps she was trying to reassure her, comfort her, let her know that she cared about her right to the end.
“Ruth, how can you be thinking of me at a time like this? You should be praying for a miracle. Miracles can still happen, you know.”
“Be realistic little sister. Miracles don’t happen to someone with terminal cancer. If I was going to have a miracle, it would have happened by now. And don’t put in my obituary, ‘She fought the courageous fight against cancer.’ I’m not courageous. I’m giving up. I’m ready to go. I pray each night to pass away peacefully in my sleep. That’s the miracle I’m praying for.”
Silence engulfed the stale aired sterile hospice room, the only two there. Beth wiped away her tears. Ruth closed her eyes and laid there in a state of near death exhaustion. Yet somehow she found the strength to continue talking, to get out these things that she wanted to say before she died.
“I was lucky,” she said, her face grimacing in pain. “I had a full and wonderful life. I had a good loyal adoring husband in Mark, God rest his soul. We had a long, happy, wonderful, joyous, prosperous life together. Got a college education, got a good teaching job with a good pension and benefits. Got that beautiful home on the lake that we always wanted. Finally got that little girl I wanted after those three little rascal boys of ours. I was truly blessed and I’m not afraid of dying. I’m ready to check out. So stop worrying about me and get back to your own life Beth.” Ruth coughed and gagged a little, then sucked in some deep heavy breaths.
Beth reflected back on her own life. She had an associate degree not a B.A., still worked at the same small accounting firm that she had for years with no pension, no benefits, never had a husband and worst of all, she had no children.
“Yes you were lucky Ruth. I wish that I had been as blessed as you. Your daughter was so cute when she was little. Looks just like you. And as for those little rascal boys of yours, well they all turned out to be fine young gentlemen now didn’t they. I wish that I could have had a family like you have.”
Ruth always wondered why Beth never married, never had a family. She knew she wanted one. But whenever she tried to talk to Beth about it, Beth would always become upset and tell her to drop the subject. So she did.
Beth stared out the window into another world, the world of her past. “Bruce had a boy, you know. Looks just like him, I heard.”
“Quit thinking about Bruce Beth. Let it go. That ended years ago between you two. Like I said no one will ever know anything about all that after I’m gone except for you of course.” She was afraid now that Beth would fly off the handle and wallow in her own self pity as she always did whenever she mentioned Bruce.
“I heard when he moved away,” continued Beth, still staring out the window, “that he moved in with his mother in law after his father in law died and that she supported him and Mindy while he went to college and got his engineering degree. Then he got that good government job with the Corps of Engineers and started his family.” Beth’s bitterness was palpable.
“Let it go Beth please,” begged Ruth, still contorting in pain. “When you were going with him he was working at a cement factory driving a cement truck. Mom and Dad thought that he had no future. They didn’t want you married to someone with no future. In their own weird perverted way they did what they thought best for you.” Ruth gulped air, caught her breath.
Beth ignored her sister. “Oh he wasn’t good enough for their precious little daughter now was he. That’s why they broke us up. They never saw his potential. I always knew that he had potential. Sure he was just a kid then but he had plans to go to junior college at night and work during the day to get enough money for his last two years at State and get his degree. But our folks were so sure that he was a loser, that he would never amount to anything. But I continued to date him anyway, didn't I? And then after I got pregnant.” She stopped. “Well you know the rest of the story.”
But Ruth didn’t know all the rest of the story. That was Beth’s own little secret.
“Enough. Drop it please,” begged Ruth once again. “Forget the past. Promise me or it’ll just keep eating you alive.”
“Worked out great for Bruce didn’t it?” continued Beth ignoring her sister’s request looking off into space. “Him marrying Mindy, Mindy’s father dying, and then moving out of town to live with his mother in law so she could support them while he went to college.”
“For God’s sake Beth you’re repeating yourself. Besides that’s not fair to Mindy’s mother. She was lonely and grieving after her husband died. She was glad to have them move in with her into that big old house of hers for the companionship. So what if her son in law got an education? She was glad to help. There’s nothing wrong with that. So just drop it. Please, I beg of you.”
Ruth said all this knowing it would have no effect on her sister but she said it anyway even though it caused her skeletal body to ache all over as she did so. Her meds were wearing off.
But something was weighing heavy on Ruth’s mind too as she lay dying, her own little secret. Something Beth knew nothing about. Something that had happened when she was away at college in California. Ruth had planned to tell Beth what happened there before she died so that Beth wouldn’t feel that she was the only person in the world who had a tragedy in her life. But what’s the point of it now she thought. Even her husband Mark never knew, and if she didn’t tell him, why should she tell her sister and now of all times too. Yet her mind couldn’t stop playing the same old ongoing conversation she had been having with herself for years. “Oh, how I wish that I had kept my first daughter. Oh how I wish that I had had both my daughters with me. Oh how I wish they could have known each other.”
“Bruce passed away last year, you know,” said Beth, taking up the subject of Bruce again. Had a heart attack way too young. Mindy was a widow just like her mother was at age fifty nine.”
Ruth never heard her, her mind still fixated on her college days. It was just one of those stupid things college kids did back in the sixties, free love. But she had paid the price for free love then and had paid the price for free love ever after.
Nothing was said between the two of them for a couple of minutes or so. Beth staring off into space. Ruth lying there eyes closed, barely breathing, not moving, causing Beth to panic.
“Ruth you okay?” “You asleep? Don’t you dare die on me now.” Beth grabbed her sister’s arm and shook her.
“Stop it. That hurts,” yelped Ruth to Beth’s relief. She let go of her sister’s arm.
Ruth closed her eyes and went back to thinking about the daughter she never kept. Maybe one day the two girls would meet. The internet now has lots of sites to help an adoptee find their bio people. If that’s what fate wanted, so be it. Maybe both sisters would know each other after all. She would never know though. She’d be dead. But if it did happen, at least she would be spared all those embarrassing questions about who’s the father. Little comfort was that to her now.
“Ruth there's something that I want to tell you, something that,” then Beth stopped mid sentence. Ruth moaned rather loudly this time. “Oh never mind, I'll tell you tomorrow. You rest now.”
Beth had been contemplating telling her the rest of her story, her own little secret, that Ruth knew nothing about. Oh Ruth knew that their folks had arranged for Beth, just a teenager then, to have her and Bruce’s child aborted. This was the family’s dirty little secret they had kept from the world all these years. But what Ruth didn’t know was that Beth just didn’t have an abortion. Their folks went even further and had her fixed. Fixed like the way a veterinarian fixes a dog or a cat so she wouldn’t get pregnant again by Bruce. That had been eating at her something fiercely terrible all her life. That's why she never married. Because she didn’t want to have to explain why she couldn't have any children to any prospective husband. No man would marry her once he heard all that. Beth hated her folks for treating her as something less than human, like she was their pet. She had always wanted her big sister to hate her folks as much as she had all these years and most of all, now that she was dying, she had wanted a dying validation from her big sister that it was okay for her to do so. But now at the last moment she had decided to drop it, let it go into oblivion because that would be way too selfish of a thing to ask of a dying person.
Ruth moaned even louder this time as she rolled her head side to side. She too had planned to tell her secret. Tell Ruth about her first daughter, the child she put up for adoption, the child that Beth knew nothing about, the child that even her folks knew nothing about. Tell her so that she could hopefully find her daughter and tell her who her mother was and about her half siblings. But now at the last minute she too decided against baring her soul. She too thought it best not to burden her sister with all that. That would be way too much to ask of her and after all she’d be burdened enough with her passing. Besides, maybe the girl didn’t want to know. Perhaps she was perfectly happy with the family that she has and to subject her to a new family might be the wrong thing to do, might even be cruel. Perhaps it was best that all of this die with her and thus she too decided to drop it. Perhaps.
“I’ll let you rest now Ruth. Gotta go. See ya tomorrow.” Beth bent over and kissed her sister on her cold dry forehead.
Ruth never acknowledged the kiss. No response came from her crusted lips. No sound from her shriveled up body. She was gone.
Ruth had taken her secret to the grave with her. Beth still had to live with hers.
B. Craig Grifton is a retired attorney originally from Illinois now living in Texas who started writing in his retirement years for something to do. He has had a number of stories published in online magazines and anthologies. His legal fiction westerns and short stories are published by Two Gun Publishing, his twenty first century fairy tales by the Scarlet Leaf Review, and his crime spoof Blowed Up Good, Real Good by Nat 1 Publishing.
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