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The Weekend With Nothing on It
The lake was already dark at the edges when she set the duffel on the porch boards. She unzipped the front pocket and...
The Window Seat
The seats were still cold from the night cleaning. Delia pressed her palm flat against the glass and left a print. She...
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Stories
The Rake That Came With the House
It hung tines up on two nails over the workbench, an ash handle gone the color...
Stories
The First Tomatoes at the New Place
Eight rows shrank to two half barrels on a patio, but the hornworm still found...
Stories
The Second Set of Books
Forty-one composition books in his draftsman's print, and a small green address...
Stories
How Smart Irrigation Systems for Home Gardens Quietly Humbled My Raised Beds
I pressed the first emitter into the tubing with my thumb and felt it click...
Stories
Finding the Best Diner in Every Town You Pass Through: Ray's Menu Lesson
Ray reads the laminate before the menu and turns the hot sauce bottle over, and the good places arrive penciled on the backs of damp church flyers.
Stories
The Things That Can't Explain Themselves
Aunt Vera set the sugar bowl down, picked it up, set it down again. The dent on the left side caught the kitchen light the same way every time. She pressed her ...
Stories
What I learned from letting one corner of the yard go wild for the bees
Twelve square feet of clover behind an orange stake marked WILD, a wasp nest the size of a playing card, and Roy at the chain link, quietly revising something.
Stories
The Dry Highlighter
The map of the Douro had been folded in a drawer for years, from the trip she and Tomas never took. A story about finally planning the one that counts.
Stories
Learning to Say No: The Word She Never Had a Word For
Norma left Saturday's square white in the rooster calendar and told Bev she wasn't driving to Millbrook, and the world did not end. It didn't even slow down.
Stories
The last slow walkthrough of the family home always finds what the paperwork missed
The pot was lighter than she remembered. She turned it upside down and there was the dent, same dent, from the time her father dropped it on the back porch in 1...
Stories
The Hands You Recognize
Ray stood at the back of his truck and didn't look at the trowel, but Darnell kept touching it the way a kid touches a new watch. The supply house doors were pr...
Stories
Let the Grandkids Teach You for Once
Donal set it face-down on the placemat and then picked it back up. He pressed the button on the side and the screen lit blue and he flinched like it had bitten ...