Virginia found her father sitting on a park bench under the big oak tree. As she walked up to him she could see that he was carrying on a conversation with some birds that had made a home in its branches. It was the end of summer, and she could feel a chill in the air. She wondered how he could sit on the bench naked and not feel cold. She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and helped him stand up. That was the funny thing, how he was so sturdy and thin, she thought as she felt his wiry muscles stringing along his bones beneath the pale sagging skin, yet his mind was lost somewhere in the years before, sometimes looking out a dark window at the scary beasts, other days remembering details of a golden happy life before Virginia was born. And today it appeared to her that there was no connection between his body and his mind. He didn’t feel the chill, and he didn’t even recognize her. This she knew when he looked at her with amazement in his eyes, the look that warned her to talk low and soft lest she turn his mood sour.
“Come on Roland,” Virginia said. She found that he responded to his name better than the word father.
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I really liked all of the installments of this story, and could have easily posted any of them. I chose this one, I think, entirely on the last line. You tell us everything about Virginia's father, and his relationship with her, in that one line. Really brilliant!
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