My story “On Our Hands” will appear in the April issue of “After Dinner Conversation,” which collects short stories to spark long discussions on ethics. The narrator describes the day when her great-niece and great-nephew turned up on opposite sides of a tense political rally; of her unusual plan for stopping the rally turning into a brawl; and of the unexpectedly problematic consequences of that intervention. 
This was going to be a fairly straight-up feel-good piece about our shared human decency and why we should all just get along. It became something less straightforward and comfortable as both my narrator and I stared at the contradictions between our very real shared human decency and the very real and indecent harm we do to each other anyway. I don’t know the answers to the questions it raises any more than my narrator does, but I think the questions matter.
ADC’s stories used to be free on their website, but now you have to subscribe to read most of them. Supposedly entering the discount code “Dinner” on this page will get you one month’s subscription (plus access, for that month, to their back issues) free of charge. After that they charge $2/month unless you cancel the subscription. Single copies of this issue are available from Amazon.
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