Category Stories

I didn’t go up the trail right away. First I got those two kids inside, wrapped them in the quilts Grace had left folded at the end of the bed, and put […]

Marcus didn’t sit down. He stayed at the front of that little chapel, one hand resting on the edge of my mother’s casket, and he looked out at the crowd like a […]

“‘If Nell is reading this,’” I read, “‘then I need all of you to put your forks down and listen to me very carefully.’” Nobody moved. Diane’s polite smile had frozen into […]

I got them inside before the cold did. That part wasn’t a decision. You don’t decide to pick up two freezing children; your arms just do it. I lit the woodstove. I […]

I wasn’t in the room for the question. I heard about it later, from three different people who were, each of them delighted to tell it. By Monday morning I was on […]

The first name my father’s letter said was Greg’s. “‘To my son Gregory,’” Mr. Abernathy read, in that flat lawyer’s voice that makes every word weigh the same. “‘You called the house […]

I took the other end of the bag, and Daniel and I swung it onto the wall together, and that was the first thing the two of us had built instead of […]

I pulled the fireproof box out from under the counter and set it on the wood between us. Brandt actually smiled. “What is that, your recipe for potpourri?” I opened it and […]

I put the phone on the table and turned it to speaker, and the whole dinner party leaned in without meaning to. The voice that filled the dining room was crisp, accented, […]

Sofia answered on the second ring, like she’d been holding the phone. “It’s you,” she said. “It’s really you.” Neither of us knew how to start. So we just breathed at each […]