Richard Bausch is the author of numerous novels, including Playhouse, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He has also published many story collections, including Something Is Out There and The Fate of Others (Knopf, 2025), which features six stories from Narrative, including the title story. He won the Rea Award for the Short Story, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. A devoted teacher, Bausch is a professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.

Photograph by Jebb Harris.

Trigger Warnings

A Short Short Story

by Richard Bausch

Contains vulgarly expressed suspicions of adultery by two major characters: protagonist Thomas Briley’s wife, Constance, with protagonist’s nephew Kirk, younger by seven years.

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