Wilton's Proof

2022 - short stories The dozen stories in Wilton’s Proof cover a surprising range of characters, relationships, and situations. In the title story, a middle-aged systems engineer, on assignment away from home, has an unsettling encounter with a vulnerable stranger. A prank phone call resonates across decades in “Something I Need from You,” a father cannot shake overwhelming anger at the idea that a stranger intended his eight-year-old son harm in “Crest Road Choir,” and interactive alien intelligence contacts earth and moves on with maddening indifference in “Traveler 3.” On a country drive with only a dog as his companion, a lonely old man acknowledges what he can no longer do in “Ruger Bites,” while another man, on a tractor ride with his grandson in “Herkimer at the Wheel,” contemplates what he might yet do to hang on. A gruesome find during a walk on a beach coincides with a couple’s realization that their relationship has unraveled in one story, while in another a man and woman discover common ground between mental illness and addiction. Hilarity and injury ensue when a favorite ’70s band’s Final Reunion Tour comes to town in “Farewell, Stonedale,” and a woman realizes her dark secret must be revealed in the heartbreaking final story, “Near Beyond.”