The Red Maple “Either get that junk off your house, or I’m calling the police!” Mrs. Whitmore was standing at the end of our driveway in a long gray coat […]
No Bus Fare The scratch-off was the only birthday present they gave me that year. It was sitting next to my plate when I came back from the kitchen with […]
The envelopes were tucked under the Easter plates. One at every place setting. Each with a name written on it in my mother-in-law’s round schoolteacher handwriting. Kim opened hers first. […]
The insult came before I’d even finished setting down the peach cobbler. I’d baked it at five that morning in the kitchen of the lake cabin we’d rented, and it […]
The Wrong Kind of Rescue I had forty-seven cents left. I knew the exact number because I’d counted it four times that afternoon. A quarter. Two dimes. Two pennies. Sitting […]
The scream tore through the dark airplane cabin like a fire alarm. “IT’S LOOKING AT ME!” All around me, people jolted awake. A man two rows up flung his pillow […]
“Forty dollars,” Dale said. “For an afternoon.” He said it with his hand resting on the splitter. The way a man rests his hand on something that belongs to him. […]
My son held his hand out across my birthday cake, palm up. The way you hold out your hand to a child who has something in her mouth she shouldn’t. […]
“I believe that boy right there knows something.” Betty Shears was standing straight up at her table near the front of the fellowship hall. She’s seventy-nine years old. She’s buried […]
“You’re not here on vacation, Daniela. You’re staying for free, so you’ll be cooking, cleaning, and keeping this house spotless. Every day.” My sister-in-law, Lauren, said it before I’d even […]