I need to ask, are you afraid of spiders?”Nicholas blinked, suddenly caught off guard, “Yes, I’m afraid of spiders.””Were you always?””What are you, a psychiatrist?”Pritam took a breath. He could feel Laine’s eyes on him,...

Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas had talked about ghosts and magic and woven a bit of a spell himself. He’d sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she’d found...

Hannah expected this to make her sob even more, but instead she found her tears drying up and her tummy growing warm. How dare they? How dare they do this to little girls? She understood...

After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis,...

But a smell shivered him awake.It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of...

The rain thundered down so heavily that Pritam could imagine that space itself was made of water and was pouring through rents in the sky’s tired fabric.

Christ can forgive you,” he whispered, though he didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a hint of compassion in those ice-blue eyes.”That’s grand,” she said.Her features became again those of the pleasant brown-haired nurse. She smiled,...

Tears sprang from her eyes and she bit her lip to stop herself from howling at the bright pain.

She put her tongue out and felt the raw edges of the torn silk. She looped her tongue around them and drew them into her teeth. Just a little bit, she thought, that’s all I...

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks’ notice. “I’ll get a job around here,” he’d told her. “Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We’re not paying rent, and Dad’s left us plenty. You should...

And the kids?””Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn’s rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he’s…” She looked at Nicholas. “He’s like you. Gifted, but ignorant.”Nicholas...

Laine taped the last box shut. That was it, then: All of Gavin’s belongings put away; some for charity, some for the dump, some to be saved for a happier ‘one day’ that Laine felt,...

Laine slowly rolled out of bed. The queen size was one of the few new things in the house. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-spring monument to lies, a...

His hatred for her was now as solid as the boards he lay on, as the stones ringing the firepit.