The Blue Cookie Tin
The tape ran on for another eleven minutes. Judge Pickett did not speak at first. We heard only the creak of a leather chair and the tick of a clock, …
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The Friday Pickup
Dorothy Lund, I said to myself, and then I said it aloud to Agnes Brandt, because I needed to hear how it sounded. “Mrs. Brandt, stay where you are. Lock …
The Friday Pickup Read MoreThe Scorched Ring
Mr. Dalton did not need a microphone either. Ninety four years old, with a voice worn thin as paper, he lifted the oxygen tube from his nose and set it …
The Scorched Ring Read MoreDuke and the Collar
The box at the veterinary clinic in Columbus was a gray metal case no bigger than a loaf of bread. The receptionist, a girl of about twenty with a ponytail …
Duke and the Collar Read MoreThe Porch in the Rain
“Forty five years is a long time to carry a face,” my father said, “but I carried yours.” He sat in the doorway of the kitchen in his bathrobe with …
The Porch in the Rain Read MoreThree Rings
I did not sleep that night. I sat at the kitchen table of my father until two in the morning, turning the yellow phone over in my hands, trying to …
Three Rings Read MoreBooth Number Five
I sat in the office with the tape deck and a cold cup of tea until the sun came up through the window of the diner. I did not feel …
Booth Number Five Read MoreThe Tack Room
The caseworker waited until my father was asleep in the back of my truck before she told me the rest. The man in the suit was named Lyle Kessler. He …
The Tack Room Read MoreThe Nineteenth Bell
The fourth stair of the bell tower was a plank of old cypress, worn pale in the middle by a hundred years of boots. I knelt on the stair below …
The Nineteenth Bell Read MoreThe Hollow Beam
The man at the edge of the frame was Preston Vane, the developer from Seattle, who had sat in the third row of the funeral and shaken my hand with …
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