When his friend walked into his office, Butch saw Paul had lost his usual swagger. Dropping into the offered chair, he looked broken.
“You told her?” Butch pulled a bottle out of the desk drawer.
“Not everything, only that she’s gone,” Paul said, choking on the words. “Pauley thinks her mom died. How could I tell her Gail walked out on us?”
“She tell you why?” Butch handed Paul a glass of bourbon.
“Seems she suddenly got a conscience over my profession,” throwing back the shot in one angry gulp.
“She could just leave Pauley?”
“She wasn’t taking my girl!”
The 100 Word Challenge, a writing prompt created by Velvet Verbosity, takes a single theme to tell a story in exactly 100 words. This week’s theme is ‘Swagger.’
A tad more background on my favorite killer, Pauley. She was around 10 when her mother left. Raised by her father Paul, grandfather Leo, and other members of her father’s “Family,” she was sorely lacking in female role models as she was growing up.
Thin spiral notebook 
Bravo, Tara R.! Sadly, I know a couple of moms who have left their baby girls behind. Fortunately in both cases, it was for the better.
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Thanks for giving the background on this since I’ve clearly missed some stuff. Very interesting, I’m liking the set up.
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kind of wish I didn’t already know Pauley’s family background from our email conversations.
This is an important piece because you get Pauley’s stunted social graces. well done. I like our killers.
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Is there a place where oyu pull all hte really good stuff together?
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where YOU pull all THIS really … etc.
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I love a good backstory and wow does she have one!!! Plus I love a good juicy family secret!!! I think u checked all the boxes for suspense and interest. Love this story.
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Ah, the little blocks of information that you are dribbling…can’t wait to see how this ends up coming back to haunt Pauley…or make her extremely angry with dear old dad for not telling her the truth
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Woah! So Mom would totally have taken Pauley with her. Which means Mom is out there somewhere for Pauley to run into later in life and cause her own crisis of conscience. AWESOME.
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