The Archivist

My wife, Maeve, is the kind of person who texts me if she’s going to be ten minutes late. I need you to understand that before I tell you the […]

“Sarah, I need to apologize before I thank you.” I read the first line twice, standing in my kitchen still wearing my coat, the mail spread across the counter where […]

The first thing I noticed was the color. Bright yellow. The kind of yellow that looked almost fake against the white paint of my SUV, like someone had spilled a […]

Robert had always treated taking out the trash like it was a personal insult, so when he started volunteering for it night after night, I knew something was wrong. What […]

I came home a day early because I was tired down to my bones and all I wanted was my own bed. Instead I found strangers walking through my living […]

For fifteen years, my father told everyone I was taken care of. He said it at birthdays, mine and everyone else’s. He said it at funerals, standing beside caskets in […]

I’d always believed bad behavior eventually sent you a bill. I just never expected my sister to make billing our seventy-nine-year-old mother the reason I finally started believing it. But […]

Diane used to say that a house was not the walls. She said it first when we were thirty-one years old and looking at the property on Elm Ridge Drive […]

“Can I have ice cream?” I didn’t even turn around from the stove. “No. Close the freezer.” Tyler stood in the kitchen doorway with the freezer door wide open, cold […]

The first thing Diane said to me that morning was, “You need to move out. You’re just a guest here.” She said it in my kitchen. Under my roof. While […]