{"id":1429,"date":"2025-08-13T01:29:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T01:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/?p=1429"},"modified":"2025-09-08T01:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T01:29:56","slug":"the-cost-of-words-unspoken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/the-cost-of-words-unspoken\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Words Unspoken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe cost of words unspoken\u201d can bankrupt us, trap us in unending regret. For Dearnon, the shop owner in \u201cThe Broken Place,\u201d the tentacles of regret have spread to every part of his life, to every crevice of the little shop he once treasured. He no longer feels their grip. Not until a customer in trouble stumbles in, a diabetic on the verge of losing consciousness. This wandering stranger also mourns what could have been\u2014and makes Dearnon wonder if it\u2019s not too late to change the past.<\/p>\n<p>Crazy Mary, a smelly, homeless old woman who talks to herself, may be the most \u201cunforgettable character\u201d in<span>\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.maryannmcguigan.com\/books\/that-very-place\/\">That Very Place<\/a>. She\u2019s also the last person young Terry wants anywhere near Grandma Hilda, whose dementia is becoming more evident each day. But she can\u2019t get rid of Mary. Nor can she rid herself of the fear of what will happen if Grandma Hilda gets \u201cput away.\u201d Hilda is all she has. Hiding her grandmother\u2019s worsening condition from her friends at school\u2014and even from family\u2014gets harder for Terry each day, her schemes more desperate. She sees no other way to protect herself, not until a disheveled, repulsive old lady offers her one\u2014in \u201cHere and Now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe cost of words unspoken\u201d can bankrupt us, trap us in unending regret. For Dearnon, the shop owner in \u201cThe Broken Place,\u201d the tentacles of regret have spread to every part of his life, to every crevice of the little shop he once treasured. He no longer feels their grip. Not until a customer in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}