Look at their body language: Henry grips the wheel with his left hand while the other chops at the air. Marilyn stares out the window. They are driving down a two-lane road charred silver by the summer moon. Without saying their goodbyes, they’ve left a house that...
I was in her backyard, the tiny fenced-in yard behind an extravagant Brooklyn brownstone. I had the baby, Violet, in my arms, and my son, Jasper, was running around with Mateo—both goofy and uncontainable. They were doing the work of four-year-olds—transmuting the...
The lingering perfume of a million flowers is so thick in the funeral home showroom that invisible rose petals plaster the inside of my mouth. Navy curtains hang heavy and block out the daylight because it really is easier to mourn in controlled lighting without the...
I watch her pocket two Snickers bars while I’m ringing up the guy who always buys a can of Skoal and a tallboy. His name is Billy. Nice guy, friendly. Works at the tire factory or the auto shop, I can’t remember which. He’s watching the girl, too, as she heads to the...
We put our seed in the ground and buried a body, but the land gave us nothing in return for the price we paid for it, for the weight of the earth that we piled onto someone who was our own. And after such a loss, what else did we expect? We wandered through our own...
In the bottom of Zadie’s purse, as she sits in a lightly upholstered chair at the DMV to get her license reinstated, everyone packed in side by side by side, Zadie number 23 with number 72 currently being served: A half-wrapped mint filched from the bowl on the...
Beatriz had been insisting since waking that we go to the house at the top of our road, on the rise above the sea. I was barely moving—even a four-year-old should sense something amiss when the full weight of her tugging on each of my limbs has not moved the hull of...
My father tells all three of us to write a eulogy and he’ll decide who gets to deliver theirs at our mother’s funeral in five days. Tom’s jaw sets, determined. Diane nods, eager to please. I narrow my eyes at Dad, resenting the competition he fuels between us, even as...
First: Make sure your patient is safe. Hope that you gave the appropriate caveats when you told them that this visit is confidential, and make sure they don’t have any plans to hurt themselves or others. If they’re a minor, you may have to call Child Protective...
There are six of them. No, seven. They cycle out of the tower and into the night, following their headmistress. Their headmistress wears a habit. The girls wear cloaks, cloaks to hide their hunger. I cannot tell you where they are going, but I’ll tell you this: they...
Transformation magic is easy. Gold into straw, carriages into pumpkins: the witch had done it a thousand times before. The man knew this. Or, perhaps more accurately, the pebble knows this. The pebble sits in her pocket. Its companions are a dirty, wadded up tissue...
When I meet her, I say all the wrong things first. Wind the beautiful. Hair is yours. Meet me nice. Name I have. All this to say: I will save the right things for last. I recognize her from the wanted posters in the city where we are no longer allowed to speak. She is...