More on: Fiction

Nadine swiveled toward the oddly familiar voice, seeking a face. All she saw at first were bare feet propped on an armrest.

Apparently, thank God, they have a tour guide, swaying upright, a column of shining, jeweled scales. The guide investigates them with faceted, ravenous eyes.

Dad passed away overnight. It was a message from my ex-husband.

We are entering in reverse order of our deaths. You don’t need to translate this.

Somewhere on this parched estate a beggar is looking for me. So says the boy.

Olive doesn’t know why she’s rushing to the brick building with the barred windows and parquet basement floor, and this is itself a kind of proof of urgency.

They had set up tents. Not all; some had a few blankets thrown down and were lying on them. Often there was a man with a woman and child on each blanket. It seemed a little odd to me, because some had dug a hole and built a shallow shelter with the blanket on top. It might get very windy and cold at night.

The signs of where Esme had gone wrong, she thought, must have been there from the beginning—probably in primary colors. She wondered if burning the toast was where she’d gone wrong. Each mistake led to another, she thought, wishing she could be perfect.

Twenty years ago, we brought the first child home. We held him, and the silence before us then was the deep, vast thrum of all we didn’t know. We were here, suddenly parents. The silence weighed down the air like boulders on silk. And then, of course, he cried.