“Tell Maddie we miss her.” Mrs. Pruitt said it with a little smile, holding a box of oatmeal in one hand and her basket in the other. We were standing […]
The card on the front row said MOTHER OF THE BRIDE. It was printed in gold letters on thick, creamy paper, the kind that costs three dollars a sheet. It […]
“It’s only fertilizer, Carolyn.” She said it over her shoulder, the way you would tell a child the shot would not hurt. It was half past six on a Friday […]
“Smoke’s good for the sinuses, Sandra. Clears a person right out.” That is what Lyle Becker said to me across four strands of wire fence, with a piece of rebar […]
The frost was so thick on the windshield that morning that I had to scrape it twice. It was the first week of November. Cold enough for frost. Not cold […]
The seventh babysitter quit on a Thursday, standing in my front hallway with her car keys already in her hand. Her name was Tessa. She was twenty-four, with a nose […]
“I don’t think we’re meant to grow old together.” That’s what my husband said to me on a Thursday night in October, standing in our kitchen with his coat still […]
The first thing that broke me wasn’t hearing another woman’s voice. It was hearing my husband complain about the pictures I sent him of our daughter. “She sends them all […]
The bell over my door didn’t ring that morning. It slammed. I was behind the counter, pricing a box of canned peaches, the same way I’d done every Tuesday for […]
The river came up in April. It came up in the night. I didn’t hear it. That’s the part that still bothers me. Fifty-one years I lived in that house […]