She is here on Earth, the little girl now understands, to fix something, and that belief is bolstered every time her father looks at her, dew-eyed, and says, “Today, you look like my mother.”

My short story “Birthright” was published in August 2014 by Revolver and was called “The Best Short Story I’ve Read in a Lit Mag This Week” on the Ploughshares blog. Read it here.