“Fairy Princess” in F & SF

As I said in a previous post, I’ve waited a long time for this.  I keep looking at the name on the cover.  Gordon sees fit to give the story an adult WARNING, so I suppose I should too.  Any adults out there?  Never mind.  Here’s the first paragraph to get you started:

Let’s start with the part where you won’t like me much, then take it from there.  No excuses.  I was married to a nice man with a little girl three years old, when I fell in love with another man and left my husband, lost my child in the custody battle, and ended up in the high Rockies with my lover.  He changed.  What did I know?  I’d known him nine months when he shot himself in our cabin, the dead of winter.  I dragged him outside so he’d freeze solid and I could figure out what to do with him, but before I figured it out, something dragged him off.  When the thaw came, I got down off the mountain.  I live in the city now, a different one from where my husband lives.  He’s remarried, moved on.  My daughter calls her stepmother Mom last I heard, though she’s old enough by now to have a daughter of her own.  I leave them alone.  That’s the only thing I’m proud of in that story, not that I ever tell it.  So that’s who you’re dealing with.  In case you think it matters—a person’s best-forgotten, sordid past.  For what it’s worth, I’ve changed too.

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