A woman’s ruminations about her estranged daughter may have undone a magic show that her husband takes her to on her birthday.
This feels a bit like “Our Town’s Talent” from the same collection, with a performance that is both more than and less than it seems, and with suggestions of a truly weird world grounded in mundane detail. The denouement is a little bit of an anticlimax – ending the story just a little sooner might have maintained the tension and mystery more effectively – but all in all I enjoyed its dream-like strangeness.