Author: Don

Wick didn’t behave like a normal dog. He didn’t chase seagulls. He didn’t bark at seals. He didn’t do any of the things that dogs are supposed to do when …

The midnight fog rolled heavily across the empty wooden platforms of Whistlewood Station. Elena stood beneath a flickering yellow lantern, shivering in her thin autumn coat. She reached into her …

The call came in shortly after midnight. A small house in a quiet American neighborhood had caught fire. When the first fire crew arrived, flames were already visible through one …

The mall was a suburban nightmare of fluorescent lights and pretzel stands and teenagers who looked like they wanted to die. I’d been dragged there by my stepmother for “bonding”—a …

Elias practiced at home. An upright Baldwin, 1962, out of tune because he had been too proud to tune it, too aware that his ears were no longer trustworthy. He …

At 6:18 on a cold Monday morning, an engineer was preparing to move a freight train out of a small rail yard in Montana. The train had nearly two dozen …

The studio had been my mother’s idea. A converted sunroom off the kitchen, bamboo floors, white walls, plants that I watered when I remembered and killed when I didn’t. It …

The midnight blizzard over Blackwood Pass was relentless. Wind howled through the towering pine trees, driving thick sheets of snow across the narrow, winding asphalt. Inside her SUV, Clara gripped …