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Ann Hartwell

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Nov, 2025

Stories (5)

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5 Stories

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The Glass Invitation

Ann Hartwell

Submitted to Contest #338

Arthur Pendergast was a man of precise habits. He liked his tea at 178°F, his books alphabetized by the author’s last name, and his life entirely devoid of surprises. As a professional archivist for the city’s historical society, Arthur spent his days in the basement, cataloging the leftovers of dead people. He found comfort in the predictable decay of paper and the silence of the vaults.The invitation did not fit his schedule.It appeared on his desk on a rainy Tuesday—a heavy, cream-colored envelope with no stamp and no return address. Insi...

4 likes

The Empty Plate

Ann Hartwell

Submitted to Contest #333

TW: MiscarriageThe siren screams through the apartment, sharp and accusing. Tessa and I bolt to the kitchen, our socks sliding on the hardwood as we round the corner. Thick, acrid smoke pours from my pot of green beans—or what used to be green beans. Now they’re just blackened offerings to the god of my inadequacy in the kitchen. “Jesus, Viv!” Tessa coughs, already grabbing for a dish towel to wave at the detector. “I told you,” she attempts to make me laugh through the chaos, her voice strained as she fans the smoke toward the open window. ...

6 likes

The Last Goodbye

Ann Hartwell

The coffee maker gurgled its familiar song at 6:47 AM, seven minutes later than it used to. I’d reset it three weeks ago, after Derek mentioned he’d been waking up earlier for his new commute. I’d done it without thinking, the way you adjust to someone’s rhythm after five years of being together. Now I watched him pour two cups with the ritual, adding the exact amount of cream to mine. More than he thought I needed, less than I actually wanted, the compromise we’d landed on somewhere in year two. He slid the mug across our kitchen island, an...

0 likes

The Summer of the Blue Dress

Ann Hartwell

I’ve told this story a hundred times. At dinner parties, to therapists, to anyone who would listen during those dark months after the divorce. It always starts the same way: the summer Hannah wore that blue sundress, the one with the tiny white flowers. The summer I caught her cheating. Except that’s not what happened at all. I realized it last week, twenty years later, when I found the dress in a box of Hannah’s things I’d been storing for our daughter. Not blue. Yellow. A faded yellow cotton dress with red poppies. Such a small thing, you ...

0 likes

The Lighthouse Keeper

Ann Hartwell

Submitted to Contest #327

The storm had been building for three days, and Margaret knew what that meant. By the fourth day, they would come.She stood at the top of Gulf Point Lighthouse, watching the gray-green waves slam against the rocks below. The beam from her lamp swept across the churning Atlantic, regular as a heartbeat. Thirty-two years she’d kept this light burning, ever since her father’s hands had grown too unsteady for the work. Thirty-two years of solitude of fog and salt spray.And every seven years, for one night only.The visitors.Margaret descended the...

11 likes