Stories
The Room You Stopped Sitting In
The sofa was a Restoration Hardware, the color called Dune, chosen during a phase when she believed people would come over on Saturdays. The cushions still held...
Stories
What nobody finished saying: The afternoon we sat down and talked about our wishes
Gus set the mug down without looking at where it landed, and some coffee sloshed onto the Formica and he left it. The legal pad had one line on it: Renata's nam...
Stories
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 read her sister's note again, then folded ...
Stories
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 set the thermos between her boots on the ...
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...
