The doves stare through the bars of their cage, the opened slats of the blinds, the tight mesh of the window screens, into the dismal, sunless morning. They are mystified, it seems; the world is as much a mystery to them as they are to Mary. She watches them while she waits for the water to boil; she can smell the newly ground coffee.

She wakes Tennyson with a kiss and a glass of orange juice. He is the only little child she has ever known — heard of — who likes to sleep in but, this morning, he wakes with a huge smile and throws his arms around her neck, surprising her and spilling a few drops of her coffee onto his favorite pajamas.

"Oops!" he says. "I got it dirty." She smiles.

"It’ll wash out," Mary tells him.

He sits up, takes the oj and swallows it in one large gulp.…

Read more: “The Thing with Feathers” by Evan Guilford-Blake

Just east of New Orleans, outside of the town of Slidell, something in the rear axle of the car gave way with a bang. The wrecker, when it showed up, was an old Ford with rust stains streaking down the fenders like stripes. A black-painted legend on the door read Dan Hebert Towing. Dan Herbert himself was thirty-ish, sun-dark, wearing Rayban sunglasses and a Peterbilt cap. "You called for a tow?" he asked them.

The garage that Dan Hebert towed the car to was just a large tin shed, open on one side, a concrete slab for a floor. It was set back from the road in a field by itself, surrounded by the rusty frames of twenty or thirty stripped cars. Dan eased the Monaco backwards into the shed, onto a waiting hydraulic lift.

Dan pointed out a wooden picnic table under an oak tree, among the carcasses of the parted-out cars.…

Read more: “Low Tide Turning” by John Blair

I never wanted to have kids. I had mom and dad. And that was enough for me.

Ever since I can remember, they’ve behaved like children, bratty, infantile and unrestrained. Amid all the melodrama, someone had to be the adult in the family. And on my sixth birthday, it was decided it would be me.

That year, dad showed up late for my party, smelling of cigarettes and cheap perfume. The kind his secretary wore to the company Christmas dinner a few days earlier, when she sat next to her boss looking more like his wife than my mom did. Her left hand never made an appearance at the table that night. "The whore" barely touched her food, so busy was she touching my father’s T-bone. I wasn’t there. But I got served all the sordid details with my slice of triple chocolate birthday cake. So did my classmates who looked terrified under their party hats.…

Read more: “Scrambled Lives” by Doris Chauvancy

"So what do you think?" she asks, sitting across from me wide-eyed and terrified.

"What do I think?" I repeat. I’m totally unprepared for this.

—

I haven’t seen her in at least a year, and other than the occasional online exchange, we haven’t had any real contact since that random beach outing last summer when she called to see if I had any interest in an F-train journey to Brighton Beach.

"Brighton Beach?" I asked at the time, flippant in my tone, "why would I want to go there?" Now that I think about it, perhaps our entire relationship has been a series of her asking me questions and me asking them back.…

Read more: “Old Friends” by Ruvym Gilman

I am my mother’s daughter. Our faces align themselves in the mirror of her bathroom. Our eyes large and blue-green. Hers are mostly green and mine are mostly blue. Our hands are making the same movements, applying dark mascara to the length of our eyelashes, our birthmarks brightening with concentration. Her lips are moving, and I am mesmerized. I’m not really listening. I’m following the sound of her voice and wondering if this is what I sound like to her. Our hair is brown; our skin is fair. She is much taller than I am, but if I wear heels it’s hard to tell us apart. The lines around her mouth and eyes are the only things that give us away.…

Read more: “The Week My Sister Died” by Kari Wicker