We didn’t hear the detective knock. Freddy was reading in his room. I was almost done working on a new painting in my studio, a figurative experiment, though it was getting too dark to see anything clearly. When no one answered the door, the detective walked along the side of the house and tapped on…

The first women returning to the shore found the handbag. Along the river, in a grassy hollow on the bank where they met each month, the purse went unnoticed by the women until they were just upon the spot where it huddled curiously among their towels and clothes.  The women had been out quite far…

We spent that winter underneath my thick, mothed comforter and the flannel sheets Ben’s mother gave us as a housewarming gift, sheets she hadn’t used since Ben was a child. The thermostat never eclipsed sixty-six. Each time I phoned my parents, my mother would pass the receiver to my father, and we fumbled through the…

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Does it scream in agony in a language no human can understand as it teeters and crashes to the ground?  

The woman in Van Nuys has a red bucket full of roses, enough for each visitor to this crook of the strip mall. Approximately 5,200 girls go to Van Nuys each year, give or take emergencies and second opinions and holidays; Van Nuys is not open on most holidays. There are the most girls on…

This was in 1977 when I was in nursing school, eighteen years old. The whole class was outside sitting in the colored leaves under a deep blue sky. The teacher was lecturing about oxygen. I wasn’t writing anything down. I first followed the path of a shiny jet above. Then, I secretly watched Sandy Devon.…

I amuse myself by timing Cassie’s whine: thirteen minutes over the dress shoes. Everyone knows they’re meant for Sunday brunches, church services, maybe picture day at school, but she wants to wear them for riding her bike in the street.  Cassie was born the year before me and will turn twelve soon. She’s starting to…

For a few months I went out with a lawyer who used to be obsessed with his body and its shape during college. To stock up on requisite fat macros and vitamin C when in a rush, he’d crush up peaches in olive oil and drink it all down. When his grandmother caught sight of…

Spore (noun). A usually one-celled reproductive body that can grow into a new organism without uniting with another cell. The man who abducted Claire’s daughter entered the room via a doorway in the air. Though Claire only had a moment to register what was happening—they’d been mid-argument about some frilly dress her daughter had downright…

Molly begins not with a plan but an unrecognizable inkling. She loves to read. Everything. Mostly, she reads what is around the house from Reader’s Digest to John Jakes to Little Women.  And Molly loves English class. But, she thinks, everybody—every girl—loves English.  But not everybody—not every girl—is good at the harder subjects like math…

That morning near Temple, Texas at a fallen-down saloon my cowgirl shirt fit me like a glove. Three buttons undone and tighter than my jeans. Looked down at my baby blue cowgirl boots and rucksack with my green army jacket inside, change of clothes and Mimi, my tiny pearl handled pistol used once. Shot a…

The dog blames me, refuses to poop for five days. The sixth day, he betrays himself and does his business on Joan Sellers’s lawn. Joan stands on my front porch. She’s holding a bag of dog excrement. “Is this yours?”  “Sorry, Joan. I’m out of bags.”  “The HOA has rules. My granddaughter almost stepped in…