“The Rest of Her Life” by Steve Yarbrough was a rather difficult read. After finishing the text, I found myself trying to understand what happened in the story. The back and forth nature of the stories timeline makes it a bit hard to keep track of when scenes take place, and as a result what the overall plot is. Going back and taking a look at the story a second time though yielded a somewhat better understanding of it. Dee Ann goes through a lot of innocence following her mother's murder, at the hands of her father. With this event, her life is forever changed. Dee Ann's loss of innocence comes as a result of lying on the stand at her father’s trial even though she knows he killed her mother (Yarbrough 644). She had made the decision …show more content…
Dee Ann was left obsessed with what had happened. Every year her husband brings up the names of those involved, hoping he would say them and she would just let it go like nothing happened (Yarbrough 632). Because of this, her inability to let go, Chuckie was often away from home, and Dee Ann feared he was cheating on her. She almost questions his friend, but “if he has looked surprised, it would have worried her, and if he hadn't, it would have worried her more…” (Yarbrough 637), so she doesn't ask. What he's father did to her mother caused he to have no trust in her own husband. Their daughter also suffered as she “bunches over as she walks… her posture and the concentrated way she gazes down suggest that she's a girl who believes she has a problem” (Yarbrough 642). It is hinted that she might have been thinking about hearing gossip, which might be the gossip of the town about her family. As for what “The Rest of Her Life” has in common with “Caviar” by , there doesn’t seem to be all that much. The only real thing that they have in common is the fact that both stories involve a husband cheating on his wife. In “Caviar”, a husband cheats on his wife with their surrogate. He thought that he was in love and would have a happy ending with her, only to be devastated when he discovers she didn't have feelings for him (Boyle 91). This ending if similar to “The Rest of Her Life” as Dee Ann’s father leaves her mother only to be left by the woman he had been having an affair with (Yarbrough