Louise Marburg, a finalist in Narrative’s 2023 and 2017 Fall Story Contests, is the author of the story collections You Have Reached Your Destination (Eastover, 2022), No Diving Allowed, and The Truth About Me. A graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, she holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Charles Marburg.

Even-Steven

A Story

by Louise Marburg

“They say I’m dying.” My stepmother’s voice on the phone was full of gravel from forty-plus years of smoking.

“Who says you’re dying, Bree?”

“My doctors at Sloan Kettering,” she said. “I have tumors everywhere. They want me to go to a hospice to die.”

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