All Stories

My younger half-sister fell thirty-seven feet from the Canyon River Bridge sometime between 11:30 PM and 1:30 AM on a Thursday in early January, and I, being the coroner’s assistant, would have watched her autopsy if Dr. Stevens hadn’t led me into the stale, frigid morning, under a monochrome sky with its heart ripped out. […]

Phyllis and Davina lived at the superior end of Almiston Green, furthest from the cricket pitch and the little houses that so cluttered the lower slopes.  Their homes were large, detached and sprawling, commanding chocolate-box views of the church, the war memorial and, across the green, the thatched Duke of Almiston public house.  So much […]

Game six of the 1982 World Series had been a damp affair, and the skies in St. Louis were opening again as the tarp came out for yet another rain delay. In his basement workshop, Kevin Watts grimaced but did not actually look up at the small TV in the corner as the announcers settled […]

I flick my tongue across each individual tooth to busy my mouth with something other than talk. I am rooted to the spot in the backyard―once my yard, now Kate’s―and also rooted to something else. The soft whisper of a time not so long ago, when Kate was younger and more vulnerable, and I stood […]

She stood in the attic, holding the thin blanket to her chest, transfixed by the dark stain on the mattress. It was summer and the heat here under the slanted raw wood beams lowered itself like a cape around her shoulders. High up she heard a buzz, a fly banging against the one window, a […]