I lay there, my body rigid. Every creak of the house settling sounded like a gunshot. 9:00 a.m. Nothing. My legs were beginning to go numb. Doubt began to gnaw at me. I’m paranoid, I thought. I’m a crazy mother spying on her innocent daughter. Mrs. Greene is just senile. 9:20 a.m. CLICK. The sound…
He just closed the door and turned off the porch light and left me standing there in the dark. I walked three miles to my aunt Rachel’s house. She was my mother’s sister, the black sheep of the family because she’d moved away and married a man my grandparents didn’t approve of and generally refused…
I knew when my father retired. I knew when they moved to a smaller place. I knew Vanessa had dropped out of college after her sophomore year, though I never found out why. I hadn’t seen these people in 19 years. And suddenly they’re on my doorstep like nothing happened. I let them in. Not…
My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I knew that car. I knew the man inside. And I knew that in exactly sixty seconds, my family’s entire world—the façade of perfection they had built on a foundation of lies—was going to go up in flames. My name is Maya Vance. For most of my…
I met Caleb at a seed convention in a dusty hall in Iowa. He was wearing flannel and work boots, his hands calloused and stained with soil. He was talking about regenerative farming with a passion that made the air around him vibrate. He didn’t look like money. He looked like the earth itself. To…
I knew nothing about this until a week earlier. I was in the middle of changing Ethan’s diaper when my phone rang. A government official introduced himself, his tone grave and respectful. I thought he was a telemarketer or a prankster until he sent over his credentials. He told me that my actions during the…
The name hit me like a physical blow, spinning me backward through time. Julian Hartwell. He had been Julian Blackwood when I knew him, before he dropped his father’s toxic name and built his own legacy from ash and will. Julian, who had held me while I wept over the child we lost. Julian, whose father had systematically…
Then, the garage light snapped on. It was harsh, clinical, spilling out onto the driveway. My father-in-law’s silhouette moved behind the frosted glass of the side door. Marcus. A man who wore three-piece suits to Sunday brunch and spoke of charity with a glass of scotch in hand. The movement was wrong—too sharp, too aggressive. Then…
I looked down at my hand. The skin was already turning an angry shade of red, blistering where the soup had hit. It stung, a sharp, biting pain, but it was nothing compared to the rot spreading inside my chest. “Are you listening to me, you old bat?” Vanessa poked my shoulder with a perfectly…
Daniel: Flight landed early. Skipped the layover. Home in ten. I stared at the screen, a smile breaking through my fatigue. I read it twice, convinced I’d misread his message. Relief washed over me, warm and intoxicating. Daniel hated surprises, and I hated being alone at night with our eight-year-old daughter, Emily. The storm had…