William Edwards Leaves His Screaming Son on a Friday Afternoon in Hartford

The kitchen looked different without the highchairs and the three baby bottles drying on the rack by the sink. It looked like the house we had bought before the babies arrived, a quiet, sterile space where everything had its place and nothing was ever out of order. I walked back down the hall, holding the…

“Do you think she sold it?” Martha asked. “No,” I said. “She has it hidden in her closet. She thinks it is hers now.” I set the pen down and took a slow sip of the tea, the warmth spreading through my chest. The mahogany table was polished to a high shine, reflecting the gray…

By nine the next morning, the sun was high enough to melt the frost on the hood of my truck, though the air still carried the sharp, dry chill of early spring. The ranger station sat on the far edge of town, a low building made of square-cut lodgepole pines that smelled of damp earth,…

He had tried to build it himself, but the glue had dried yellow and thick, holding the blades at a slight, crooked angle. I set the windmill carefully in the center of the trunk, anchoring it with a heavy wool blanket so it would not slide during the drive. The garage was cold, my breath…

I went back to the kitchen and sat on the bench, waiting for the clock to reach seven. My black leather shoes were polished, sitting by the front door next to my small black purse. I did not feel the small, sharp panic that usually came when I thought about the school gymnasium. The fear…

I picked up the bank document, my eyes tracing the lines of text until they landed on the bottom of the page. My father’s signature was written in his sharp, angular cursive, the blue ink of the notary stamp sitting right next to it, confirming the freeze on everything I had left. The sun was…