What he brought her was sweet stems of honeysuckle and thorny roses wrapped partially in a wide satin ribbon. It was so out of the blue.

She’d just come from the shower, her hair all turbaned up, a thick terry robe wrapped around her body when she heard the doorbell ring. No one good rings the doorbell at 7 a.m. Her chest clinched. Who? Wha?.

She cracked open the front door—as far as the secu...

The key they’d given me still fit the lock, but the house no longer felt like home. I’d been away a long time, so logically there was no reason for it to be anything more than a house I once lived in. A house that had captured my childhood and locked it away. Yet as I wiggled the key in the lock, its reluctance to give way a mirrored how I was feeling inside. I felt the tears come. Maybe from l...

She was buried deep in sleep, submerged in the warmth, on the outskirts of dreams, when she felt him shift and quietly slip out of bed. That was Jim, her sweet, always (almost) considerate husband who always rose from bed before her. Showering in the downstairs bathroom so as not to wake her. She sighed, turned over and began the slow and faltering ascent to wakefullness. NPR came on the radio p...