Just like EAP’s Cask of Amantillado, which has a  vast layering of possible “who has the last laugh” mixture, so to does the ending of “Miller’s Girl”. Is Cairo crying tears of victory, remorse, loss, or perhaps inner terror that she found the feeling of a once in a lifetime soulmate and she will never have that feeling again? Is her victory empty? Her remorse may slide off her back like the melted ice cream she used for bait. Or maybe, she truly lost her most inner strength, to see the world unjaded.

Cairo could be  disappointed because she’ll never know if what she did to Jonathan gave him courage to write again. She may have found a kindred who needed her but she cut the bonds that were freely and innocently given as a present moment in shared existence.

She needed a “greatest achievement” for her college essay but destroyed the rest of her life to get it. She destroys lives just like an attorney can with a twist of an innocent answered question. She is her parents daughter. Their “attorney blood” runs in her veins. The slight addition or subtraction of a word, the mathematical brilliance brought forth to crush a future that could have been.

Is Cairo a tortured soul that is breathtaking to behold or is she a twisted soul with the ether always nipping at her heals? The answers lies in her tears… what do you see?

©️2026 Kat J Phillips

“I see what others refuse to see…” KJP