“We have to have these finished by two o’clock,” the assistant manager says as he dumps a stack of reports in front of Tilden Sunderland. Tilden rankles at the note of arrogance in the command. He takes a quick look at the clock and sees it is twenty minutes to one. He has been at […]
← Read Part 1 The next few days passed peacefully enough. Order was restored to Mrs. Gessler’s house. Her cats came out of hiding and approached the cage with great interest. They stuck their paws inside and batted playfully at the two mice, but Mrs. Gessler wouldn’t allow them to maul or eat Sir Isaac […]
Bougainvillea Dankhurst had never had a husband but had been familiar with wayfaring men so that she had two children, a boy and a girl, that she never wished to have. When she had to go away to deliver herself of a third child, she left the children, Sir Isaac and Edith, with an old […]
Two weeks out of a small, liberal arts college, Gwen found herself lost in the dark, somewhere in the deep woods of Wisconsin. She was one of two adults in charge of sheparding four inner city Chicago youths through a month of camping and basic survival skills. She was hired thanks to her recent degree, […]
The summer of my junior year, I killed my best friend, Tony. True, it was a car accident, but I was the driver, and it could have been easily avoided. We hung upside down in a tree, the result of speed, a five-beer buzz, and cresting the hill we’d jumped a hundred times going faster […]
Where there are women there is safety. I am on the couch in my grandparents’ living room. My grandfather’s arthritic mutt, Prince is on my lap. I stroke him calmly while my mother, grandmother and aunt clear the dining room table. Their voices rise and fall reassuringly. This ocean-like murmur is interrupted only by my […]
For Anne Burton My daughter hates magic, which is to say that after all this time she still hates me. Her mother was a tight rope walker. Sometimes I want to tell her of the extraordinary, gravity defying love she was born out of. Getting pregnant threw off Angel’s center of balance, and then rooted […]
<< Read Part 1 << Read Part 2 << Read Part 3 I followed her out and around the corner. We stood fifty yards away under the shade of an alder. The man, if paler, could’ve passed as a statue. The cast his silhouette on the dirt pile in front of him. “How long has […]
<< Read Part 1 << Read Part 2 A knock startled me. I coughed and turned around. I coughed again when I saw that it was Diana Salvaggio. The Diana Salvaggio. The alive one, at least. Her hand was still in a fist against the doorframe. I gave a smile, which she reciprocated. I couldn’t […]
