Hello, my name is Amanda Creasey. I am an educator, author, and the outdoors writer for Cooperative Living Magazine. I write the Explore More column for that publication. And I am here today to share with you a reading from my debut novel, a work of literary speculative fiction, entitled An Expected End. And what I would like you to know about this novel before I begin reading is that although it's a book that takes place in a near future where everyone can find out when they're going to die, , it is not A book about death and expected end is a book about life and how we choose to live it.

About time and how we choose to spend it. About love and some of the many ways in which it comes to us. And it's a book about acceptance and belonging and family essentially. An Expected End is a book about being human, and the portion I would like to read to you today comes from the epilogue, a reflection on the important things are in life.

After the cake and the balloons. and the presents. The day faded into evening and Eden was a year older, another year without Penelope. Marshall stood at his daughter's bedroom window and stared at the night sky. He listened to the sound of Eden sleeping and looked up at the moon. The high, wispy clouds looked like the feathery frost Old Man Winter had painted when Marshall slept on winter nights as a boy.

He would wake and trace the delicate ice crystals on the other side of the pane with his finger, and his mother would tell him to try to memorize the way it looked, Winter's artwork, because it would melt as soon as the sun found the glass, no matter how cold it was outside. And Marshall thought of Penelope, and all the beautiful and temporary things that make life worth living.

Flower blossoms, and icicles, and sunrises. Marshall looked at his daughter, sleeping soundly in her new big girl bed. He looked up at Bea, rocking in a chair across the room. And down at Toby, graying now, asleep on a rug at the foot of the bed. He had stopped counting down his days. He had stopped counting time.

From Penelope, he had learned to start living. And he knew that Penelope was not dead, not really. He had read somewhere that time could be measured according to the good that unfolded. The good one achieved. With time, it was quality that mattered, not quantity. If that were true, Penelope would live forever.

Her good timeless. Her time limitless. She lived on in this little girl. The little girl who wore her mother's blonde curls and smiled her mother's warm smile and delighted in things Marshall never would have taken notice of before. The plushness of a certain soft blanket, the number of airplanes streaking their white tails across a blue sky, the yellow of the forsythias in the garden outside.

The breeze wrestled the barren branches of the cherry tree, keeping vigil outside Eden's window. In just a few months, its branches would be lush with delicate, pale pink petals, petals that would drop and float away, replaced with summer's green leaves. Eden stirred. Read to me, Daddy. She whispered, Mama's favorite poem, please.

Marshall sat on Eden's bed. He opened the book and took in a long, deep breath. Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky. A little breath of a breeze disturbed the cherry tree again, and a pale pink petal drifted down from the ceiling. Landing on the page, Marshall and Bea looked up wonderingly.

Toby thumped his tail gently against the floor. Eden smiled.

Once again, my name is Amanda Creasey, educator, author, and outdoors writer. You can find me at amandasuecreasey. com

, and on Instagram where my handle is simply Amanda Sue Creasy.