The screenshot was Tate’s own video. The mocking one. Except someone had laid it side by side with the federal recall notice — his grinning face on the left, “burn and fire […]

Eleanor opened the folder, slid on her reading glasses, and said, in the mildest voice you’ve ever heard, “Roger, are you familiar with the bill the state passed last spring? The one […]

The question I asked was this: “The saffron. You bloomed it in something warm before you finished the sauce. What was it, and why that and not stock?” It’s a small question. […]

The voice belonged to Marv from the co-op, the same man who’d told me three days earlier that I was throwing good money after a lost cause. He bid the exact amount […]

“The Consumer Product Safety Commission,” I said. “Their intake office replied to me Thursday. The inspector assigned to consumer heating appliances has my full file — the March report, the test data, […]

The clerk made a phone call. Then she made another one. And somewhere in the second call her bored Monday-morning voice changed, dropped lower, and I heard her say the words “emergency […]

“Claire,” Annie said again, stepping out of the doorway and into the lamplight. “We don’t have much time. Read it. Read whose handwriting that is before he comes in here and tells […]

I don’t remember the drive to Allegheny General. I remember running the wrong way down a stadium ramp against the crowd, and then I remember a nurse saying his room number, and […]

Gerald set his glass down with a click and tried to put his face back together. “Well,” he said. “This is — wonderful news. A toast, everyone.” Nobody lifted a glass. They […]

The blue velvet box sat in his palm. The digital clock above us ticked to 0:16:10. The smell of damp asphalt and lake water hung heavy in the Chicago morning. The other […]