The Pacific was doing that thing it does at six in the evening in July, turning the color of a bruise before it turns gold. I...
Nobody expected the diner to fill up on a Tuesday morning in late September, but by six-fifteen the parking lot off Route 9 outside Millbrook, New...
Margaret Ellison had a nickname for each of her three children, and she used them like tools, each one shaped for a different job. "Bug" was...
The funeral ran forty minutes over, so I missed the open house. Not that I’d have gone anyway. I was at the mortuary in Portland, signing...
The first time I walked into that little church outside Tulsa, I was not looking for God. I was looking for a place to sit down...
I teach fourth grade at Lincoln Elementary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I've been filling in for Mrs. Kowalski since her maternity leave started in February....
The Boy Who Chose His Family My husband Mark and I tried for six years to have a baby. Six years of ovulation tests, fertility clinics,...
I spent forty-five minutes ironing a tablecloth I'd owned for eleven years and never used. That's how nervous I was. My daughter Renata is thirty-one. She...
Every year in October, when the leaves turned and the wind cut sharp off Lake Erie, Walter Kessler counted his daughters like a man checking his...
**My Apartment on Route 9** Naomi didn't slam the door. She just stood in the doorway of the sunroom holding my file folder like it weighed...