When Lucy is little something happens to her brother. He disappears for months and when he returns he’s not the same. He’s not her brother. At least this is what Lucy believes. But what actually happened? Comic, melancholy, haunted, and endlessly inventive, Gregory Howard’s debut novel Hospice follows Lucy later in life as she drifts from job to job caring for dogs, children, and older women—all the while trying to escape the questions of her past only to find herself confronting them again and again. In the odd and lovely but also frightening life of Lucy, everyday neighborhoods become wonderlands where ordinary houses reveal strange inmates living together in monastic seclusion, wayward children resort to blackmail to get what they want, and hospitals seem to appear and disappear to avoid being found. Replete with the sense that something strange is about to happen at any moment, Hospice blurs the borders between the mundane and miraculous, evoking the intensity of the secret world of childhood and distressing and absurd search for a place to call home. "...a haunting take on one life on society's margins." ― Kirkus Reviews “Howard's enchanting Hospice obeys its own magical inner logic with excellent prose and a sadness that will split open hearts. You have in your hands a story that is inquisitive, gripping, and triumphant.” ―Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution, Vacation, and Minor Robberies “In Gregory Howard’s beautiful, brilliant first novel, stories spill out of other stories to swim, swirl, dance (sometimes giggling, sometimes smiling gravely), and collide. One thinks of the Calvino of Invisible Cities , to be sure, but also of Bruce Chatwin and his In Patagonia , in each of which a highly inventive voyager goes wandering through the world and/or through the world’s endless tales of itself. Still, deeply felt loss is the engine of the ludic impulse in Hospice , and the many games played, rituals enacted and songs sung by its characters evoke, with grace and power, our oldest truths, our most challenging conundrums, and the exhilarating ebb and flow of our sleep-wrapped lives.” ―Laird Hunt, author of Kind One and Neverhome Gregory Howard teaches fiction writing, contemporary literature, and film studies at the University of Maine. His work has appeared in Web Conjunctions , Harp & Altar , and Tarpaulin Sky , among other journals. He lives in Bangor, Maine. Hospice By Gregory Howard The University of Alabama Press Copyright © 2015 Gregory Howard All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-57366-051-8 CHAPTER 1 By the side of a road, the boy and girl are playing. The road goes on for miles in either direction. No houses are visible. No buildings at all. It is just the road. The road, the meadow, the woods. And, in the distance, the sea. The smell of it. The boy and girl each have wispy, mud-colored hair of equal length. If not for a slight height difference, they might be identical, interchangeable. The girl has a sharp rock in her left hand. She places the tip against her brother's forehead, right between the eyes. Ok, she says. This is going to pinch a little. Get it out, he says. Just get it out. She begins to push the rock into his flesh. Wait, he says. She pulls the rock away and fixes him with her eyes. You forgot to say: in case of accidental death is there anything I wish to express to my loved ones. She looks at him for a moment. He is serious, concerned. She rubs the rock with her thumb and forefinger; caresses it. In case of accidental death, she says, her voice calm, low, is there anything you wish to express to your loved ones? He looks down for a moment as if considering the dirt. In the woods around them birds skitter and call. No, he says finally. She quickly thrusts the rock into his head. Blood trickles down the bridge of his nose. She steps back and peers into herhands. Well? he says with a concerned look. Her hands open to reveal a small violet. His face transforms. I told you so, he says triumphantly. She hands him the flower and the rock. Now it's my turn, she says, smiling. CHAPTER 2 Then she found herself caring for the memory of an old woman's dog. Of course this wasn't how Lucy first understood the position. At first it seemed like any other job. She went out in the afternoons, the woman said, as she led Lucy from room to room, to run errands and occasionally play some bridge and needed someone to look after her dog, Popsicle, who really wasn't much trouble now that he was getting on. The job was easy. Feed Popsicle at three and let him out into the backyard afterwards to do his business. That was it. That was the whole job. The food was kept in an opaque plastic bin underneath the sink, the treats in a shiny blue jar with the word "woof" inscribed in wobbly black letters. There was a number for—God forbid—the emergency vet and the thermostat had to be kept at seventy degrees at all times. It helps with Popsicle's bones, the woman sa