Excerpts

“It is spring when she receives the invitation, and the dogwoods are flowering. The envelope bears no stamp, merely a note, By Hand, in the top right-hand corner. Jocasta’s other post—the bills from her landscaper, the pool-cleaning company, the piano teacher with the azure eyes—tumbles to the ground. She edges a finger beneath the fold. The card within is of crisp, woven linen. It smells of chrysanthemums tinged, oddly, with the faintest whiff of sulfur.”

In The Wasp’s Nest, Amarillo Bay, August 2014

“Agnes and I wandered about the house, uncertain of what to do. We had never applied ourselves; we were utterly unaware of how the world worked. Instead of clearing cupboards and donating furniture and sorting through the clutter that filled the attic, we took refuge in the garden, Agnes on a rug in the small orchard, and me on the swing. Fat wasps delved into the flesh of the fruit; we tread warily in our bare feet for the ground was littered with decaying plums. We ate mulberries until our mouths and fingers were stained almost black and the day had dissolved into evening, the pale ice cream sky melting above us. We waited until bats had begun to swoop and dive and we could smell the night-flowering jasmine commingling in the air with the scent of apples. At last, cold in our thin dresses, we would go inside to find the kitchen empty and Nuisance hissing in his cage; for even our maids had disappeared when our father had died. Agnes proved more practical than I; she cracked eggs into a bowl and scrambled them up with milk and butter and served them on bread she had toasted beneath the grill, but I could do nothing because I had never even opened a tin before and could not make any sense of the can opener and its bewildering mechanics.”

The Heartbreak of Long Division, Wild Violet, January 2013

“In the evening, as light transforms the Seine into an electrum ribbon, she crosses the bridge back to her flat. Her legs are weary from standing all day, and in the crevices of her brain, little dust balls of Japanese tumble around. She thinks of all those scarves she has sold being opened in hotel rooms across the city, that cool, thick silk pressed against skin. It was not something she ever anticipated putting on her resume, but she has become, she realizes with slight surprise, a Purveyor of Dreams.”

Curious Things That Happened to her in Paris, [Pank] 9, Fall 2013, Print and recognized as Notable in The Best of American Nonrequired Reading 2014

“At night you put the children to sleep with stories. I love to listen to you, be close to you, so I tiptoe up the stairs, pressing with my feet only in the places I know will not creak. Outside the bedroom, I crouch upon the homespun rug (fashioned by The-first-Katy on her loom that gathers dust in the shed) and rest my head against the wainscot. A spider labors over her web above me, leaping and jumping with such a clear plan, I am encouraged each day to brush down her work so I can see the artistry anew. You do not know I am here, or else you would invite me to join you. But I prefer to hear you like this, from afar, the way I used to see you.

Do not go into the deep woods, you read to the children from your book.

Be wary of the kindness of strangers.”

Shadowmate, Forge Journal, January 2014  nominated for the storySouth Million Writers Award 2015)