No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the...

Anything can happen. But almost always, just normal things happen and people have happy lives.

So a dog’s value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines – the particular dogs in their ancestry – and all the information in the...

It was one of the many rules in the kennel, rules that didn’t always make sense, or even seem important, until some situation drew the lesson out.

Edgar, there’s a difference between missing him and wanting nothing to change,” she said. “They aren’t the same things at all. And we can’t do anything about either one. Things always change. Things would be...

AlmondineEventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her.All that winter and all through the spring Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find...

Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the...

A person could stop a specific thing, but they couldn’t stop change in general. Rivers can’t run backward. Yet, he felt there must be an alternative, neither willfulness nor resignation. He couldn’t put words to...

She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they’d established during the intervening months. in that way, their life...

Come morning, his memory would be of a night spent watching over them all. And each of them – dog and boy, mother and old man – would feel the same.

Just when normal life felt almost possible – when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing...

And from the look on his face I could see he was one of the lucky ones, one of those people who like doing what they’re good at. That’s rare. When you see that in...

AlmondineTo her, the scent and the memory of him were one. Where it lay strongest, the distant past came to her as if that morning: Taking a dead sparrow from her jaws, before she knew...

Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There’s no rule book that says how to do this.” She laughed, bitterly. “Wouldn’t that...

I think it’s just as likely that someone could say that this place, right here, is heaven, hell and earth all at the same time. And we still wouldn’t know what to do differently. Everyone...

He woke one morning tantalized by an idea: if he could catch the orchard trees motionless for one second — for half of one second — then none of it would have happened. The kitchen...

Do you think there is heaven or hell? he signed.‘I don’t know. Not in the Christian way, if that’s what you mean. I think people have a right to believe in whatever they want. I...

…do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone?

That was how it was, sometimes. You put yourself in front of the thing and waited for whatever was going to happen and that was all. It scared you and it didn’t matter. You stood...

He had also been demonstrative and intelligent from the very beginning, his questions startlingly insightful. She would watch him absorb a new idea and wonder what effect it would have on him, because, with Edgar,...

We’ll know we’ve got it right when they choose for themselves,” he used to say. That doesn’t make sense. ‘That’s what I thought too. I asked him what he meant, but he just shrugged. I...

…in that dilated moment after sunset when the sky holds all the light…