Date night had been such a great distraction for Macy. It had been a long week with the twins at home arguing over whose toys were whose and which one got the first Oreo at snack time. Grant had seen her

exhaustion and offered to get a sitter so they could enjoy her favorite Indian restaurant this rainy Friday night when he had a rare day off from the hospital, where he worked as a trauma doctor i...

Josie’s 3-month camping trip in her early twenties had been one of the riskiest things she’d done in her life. Nine countries in 90 days, all in a tent with her hunky husband, and their student mission group of 70 young people. It was her first trimester of her first pregnancy: she bought her first maternity dress in Greece, heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time in a Baptist hospital in Th...

Bettye Joe could see the desk from where she sat. She must get to it and find her tattered checkbook. The letter had said her account was about to be closed if she didn’t send a payment. She began inching one hip forward at a time: left scooch, right scooch, left scooch, reach, stretch, lean. She grasped one handle of her walker with the three fingers that could still extend from her knarled han...

This cold rainy morning Bernard had already welcomed three new customers to the secondhand shop. The drizzle’s soft shush above cluttered attics was more lure than most treasure hunters and gatherers could resist. Such weather nearly always guaranteed he would meet new visitors before the clouds retreated.

At precisely 11 am, the door clanged open again and a small elderly woman shuffled in, clu...

He plodded up the stony hill, the sun fading to deep purples on the horizon as he reached the peak. How long had he been traveling? The memory of his last night at the campsite, cold and rainy, soaked to the core, was still vivid in his mind. He must keep going. They had to know, and there was no one else left to tell them....