After My Husband Forced His Sick Father Out, I Cared For Him Alone While Working Two Jobs

had been married for forty-one years to a woman named Irina, who died when Viktor was twenty-three. He had worked as a machinist, then as a foreman, then in retirement had spent his days in a workshop behind the house where he repaired clocks and watches—not for money, but because he said the mechanisms made sense in a way the world didn’t. He drank continue reading …