In the empty hotel on the slopes of Vesuvius, after they’ve just met again – after how many years is it? Five, seven, more? – they drink one last glass of wine,…

Her name was Destiny and she told me I didn’t have long to live. Carpay something, she said, which I didn’t really get at the time. Car payments? House payments? The car’s…

Megan had been my best friend since elementary school and the way she tells it, I was on the swing by myself, running my jelly shoes over the pebbles, my shoulders hunched…

When they lived in a Victorian terrace, they used to joke that there was a body buried in the cellar, Dr Crippen-style. Now they’d moved to a 1930s semi, Paul said Emma…

Used car salesmen don’t smell like their dealership counterparts. Doesn’t mean we don’t try. We douse expensive colognes and deodorants on our wrists and armpits, but you can’t duplicate a dealership’s newborn…

I didn’t reply to Jacob’s last text message to me, but I did show up to his funeral. I’d spent the entire morning deciding what to wear. A lot of the clothes…

The boy smells of straw and stretches his s’s. When he asssks my name, the gas lamp on my corner hisses do not tell him. From Ssshropsshire, he says he is. And me? From the…

It all started when the books began speaking to her. It was innocent enough at first, just instructions on when to water the plants and recommendations for a new eyeliner. A recipe…

Ella XXXXX, age 10, of Medford, died passed away entered the next life passed away on November 9, 2005. Ella was the daughter beloved daughter of XXXXX and XXXXX XXXXX, and the…

He got skittish when I called him beautiful. He would change the subject, talk over me about something mundane. He would come on to me like this: he would stand in front…

Her summer job was to check off names on airplane boarding dockets against hotel rooming lists. This was so long ago that all documentation was on scraps of paper, often handwritten, sometimes…