Main Dishes

The rhythmic, mechanical hiss of the ventilator was the only sound keeping me tethered to sanity. I sat in the uncomfortable plastic hospital chair, my hands wrapped gently around my seven-year-old daughter Lily’s fragile, pale fingers. She looked so incredibly small in that sterile ICU bed, completely surrounded by a maze of tangled tubes and…

I never thought the man I had loved for 25 long years would look at me with such cold, empty eyes. It was a Tuesday evening, raining so hard the drops sounded like stones hitting our kitchen window. I had spent the last six hours on my feet, preparing Robert’s favorite pot roast because his…

I never thought I would be a guest in my own home. Let alone an unwanted one. The smell of roasted chicken still lingered in the air from the Sunday dinner I had spent four hours cooking. I was wiping down the kitchen counters when the voices started. “She has to go, Mark. I can’t…

I never wanted to be a hero. I just wanted to pour coffee, smile at the regulars, and stay completely off the radar of Chicago’s worst monsters. For two years, I was just “Anna,” the quiet, clumsy waitress at Rosa’s Diner. I kept my head down, especially when Dante Russo’s men came in. Dante was…

Ten years. A whole decade of my life, poured into a man I thought was my absolute soulmate. I had spent three exhausting weeks planning the ultimate tenth-anniversary surprise. I booked a secret weekend getaway to the rustic mountain cabin where we first fell in love. My bags were already packed and hidden safely in…

PART 2 The total darkness in that basement pressed against my eyes like a wet blanket. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, couldn’t see Ranger, couldn’t see the lead-lined box I’d just pried from the wall. But I could hear. My own breath came hard and fast, clouding in the sudden…

PART 2 The name “Caleb” ripped through me like a round I’d taken years ago in a desert I still couldn’t leave behind. The mother’s scream still hung in the air, sharp and jagged, over the blare of the fire alarm. I turned from the back exit, where Mara was shoving the last of the…

“We need to wrap this up,” the funeral director hissed. She impatiently tapped her polished fingernails against her expensive gold watch. “I have a fully paid service starting in exactly twenty minutes, ma’am. We need this room cleared out immediately.” I swallowed the heavy, suffocating lump of grief in my throat. I had maxed out…

The heavy scent of exhaust and cheap coffee hung in the air at our Saturday morning meet-up. I was leaning against my Harley, smoking a cigarette, when she walked into the lot. She couldn’t have been older than twelve. Her brown hair was tied back in a messy, uneven ponytail. She was swallowed up by…

PART 2 I drove away from Naval Base Coronado with a war dog curled on the passenger seat of my pickup, his head resting on the center console, his dark eyes tracking every movement I made. He hadn’t stopped watching me since I stood up in that kennel. Not with fear. Not with suspicion. With…