Nettie, Rose, Daphne and Ginger

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First prize winner of the 10th Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest.

They are all ghosts now, Nettie Rose Daphne and Ginger. Poor Ginger we always teased her calling her ginger ale because she hated it. Perhaps that’s the reason that once she got her high school she ran away to Vancouver and never came back here to Nova Scotia. I heard she had a kid but no husband of course that was Ginger she couldn’t get enough of the movies with all those femmes fatales she used to moon over and she was the first to put on lipstick. Rose and Daphne were scandalized they were always so practical back then and swore they would be good Christians and always be doing good deeds and they married young and had long courtships like you did back then. Rose’s husband worked on the Abegweit from Cape Tormentine to PEI and used to be away for days which Rose took advantage of. Well she was the pretty one and that fellow that sold the new fridges she got one out of him if you know what I mean. Well we all get bored with doing the dishes and hanging the laundry. She had no kids so it was especially hard doing nothing. Of course Daphne was scandalized and never spoke to Rose again and it was rumoured that she was the one that told Rose’s husband about the goings-on. What a fuss that was with him all teary eyed and begging her to come back after she ran off to Moncton with the fridge guy and then she left him and last I heard she was in Fredericton with some French guy who had money. Of course Daphne wasn’t a saint herself no sirree not by a long shot if you know what I mean. Oh those two were at each other like demons accusing each other of fraud and infidelity at one point which was ridiculous since I doubt if they even knew what infidelity meant. Well Daphne’s husband did die in mysterious circumstances. One day he was fit as a fiddle, then he up and wasted away to a skeleton. We all whispered it, cancer? Some new-fangled wasting away that scared us all to death. Daphne up and got a nursing degree she was so angry about how her husband had died in such pain and she turned out to be a really good nurse. They even gave her a medal or some such thing at the end of her career. Of course Nettie had married up. Some lawyer in Antigonish and she went to the university there and got some learning. Her husband ran for the Liberals in the late forties but didn’t get in so he took a gun and shot himself dead. What a terrible sin and him a Catholic. Well we’re all dead now and ghosts so I’ve been told and Rose and Daphne are still not speaking. It’s a damn shame pardon my language but it really is a damn shame.