Category: Fiction

  “I don’t want to play soccer this year,” Charlie told his father, who coached the team.   “Why not?”   “Because I don’t like soccer.”   “But you signed up again last year. You’ve played for two years.”   “But last year I...

Niema sets her wine glass on the bedside table next to a burning candle in a glossy brass holder. She removes her clothing slowly and quietly, her eyes intent on Sebastian. Curled on his side, he could sleep through...

“Spring is so beautiful this year it almost breaks my heart,” she thought, passing beneath the sap-green trees studded with starlings. The woods surrounding her college in the central Pennsylvania mountains were just coming to...

The turkey was placed upon the table a full five hours later than the Laurintzes’ invitation had said it would be. Tammy, their daughter, had gotten stuck in traffic on Highway 5 coming up from LA with her new boyfriend. I could...

We met on the outskirts of Kalamazoo in a laundromat, hers tumbling in a dryer, mine still swirling in a washer. She had a boy with her, a runt with blond curls playing a video game on his phone. He didn’t look up when she...

In June of 1988, Sherry Fieldhouse ca­lled to say we would be getting a new resident, one she thought would fit well in the Tretton Place family. I went to Salem Avenue to pick up Alexandra Paredes’s chart, and to chat about her...

“Hello.” Open line sounds, but no voice; “Hello.” Now I recognize it, it’s the pause before the human comes on once the dialing app has reported that I’ve stopped eating dinner to answer the phone. I start to hang up. “Theresa?”...

David and Barclay visited a café that existed as a few silvery tables beside the street. People smoked water pipes as if they were meditating. Every ten minutes or so, an old man, thin with white hair and brownish teeth, popped...

He was a very calm person. But he struggled with his place. The way everyone does sometimes. Only for him, the struggle never ceased. Mid-April saw a chill arrive from the north. The furnace roared to a start. They’d just opened...