The first time Jonah saw her, she was standing barefoot in the hallway of the hospital, her gown askew and her face turned toward the flickering fluorescent lights above. Her hands trembled. Her eyes were closed. And she was singing.He wasn’t supposed to be there.His shift had ended two hours earlier, but he had fallen […]
The eviction notice was folded neatly and stuck to the corner of her mirror, as if that made it less threatening. Mira stared at it each morning while brushing her teeth, a ritual now laced with dread. The pink slip had been taped there for three days. Ten more, and she’d be out.It wasn’t the […]
She had never known silence.From the moment Eliana was born, the world around her had been filled with shouting, with sirens, with the crack of glass breaking and fists pounding through the night. Her father was the kind of man whose anger didn’t end with words. Her mother was the kind of woman who stayed. […]
The church had stood for over a hundred years, its bricks faded with time, its bell tower leaning just slightly east, as though bowing toward something unseen. Tucked behind the sanctuary, half-shaded by a crown of oaks, was a small, round baptismal pool made of cracked stone and worn marble. Most had forgotten it was […]
They say the courthouse was cold that morning — not from lack of heat, but from something deeper. The kind of cold that settles in the bones when justice feels like a distant echo. The man in the defendant’s seat, Ezra Cain, sat still, head bowed, wrists cuffed loosely before him like a man who […]
They found the journal in the bottom drawer, under a folded hoodie and a pair of worn ballet slippers that still smelled faintly of dust and rosin. It was a simple thing—leather-bound, corners frayed, the pages slightly curled like leaves left too long in the sun. Her name wasn’t on the cover. But anyone who […]
The day started with a stillness that felt unnatural for spring. No birdsong, no breeze, only the heavy hush of clouds swollen with something they hadn’t yet spoken. Thomas stood by the window, coffee cooling in his hand, watching the pavement darken with the first drops of rain. He hadn’t been to church in six […]
It happened on a Tuesday, sometime between the cracked silence of morning coffee and the low hum of fluorescent lights at the office. Nathaniel Crane, forty-seven years old, senior analyst, wore his usual pressed shirt and carefully measured smile. The mask, as he’d come to call it, had long since become second nature—a composite of […]
They named her Eden.Not because they thought she’d live long enough to need a name, but because it felt right. Like a small return to a garden lost. Her skin was bluish when she arrived, lungs barely catching, a tangle of wires around something so fragile it looked like breath might shatter her. The doctors […]
The first thing Thomas noticed when he stepped into the church was how quiet it was.Not the sort of silence that feels hollow or abandoned. It was thick, like a quilt wrapped around the bones of the old wooden pews and faded stained glass. He hadn’t planned to go inside. He’d only meant to walk […]