First things first. Every night, Frank gives his wife two calcium tablets before they go to bed. She opens her rosy palm and he plops the white capsules on top of soft flesh. She always laughs, joking about what’s really in the tablets but swallows them obligingly. He kisses her cheek before turning out the […]

The girl scoured the boggy meadow for wild violets and daffodils. Her burnt hair looked like smeared blood under the pasty sky. She feebly wobbled across the spongy earth, and I watched her from the shade of an apple tree. “Miss,” I said. “Are you feeling okay?” My voice echoed across the hollow, and I […]

“Ollie, stop it. You’re rubbing yourself again. Stop it.” This was how it began. Age six, barely weaned off the pacifier and there was little Ollie in his train-patterned pajamas, lying face-down beneath a baby blanket that ought to have been retired two years ago. He was short, so ostensibly he was covered, but his […]