There was banter at the dinner table. People laughed at somebody’s jest. These boisterous gestures of joy distracted me. There were at least twenty people seated here, and the clamour of cutlery and talks rose to high-pitched peals. Then the butler entered with a tray in his beefy hands. On the tray, I saw many […]

1 Thomas was hungry. He had been hungry before, but this was different. During community college he dizzied himself with a restricted diet of instant noodles and peanut butter that did nothing but prevent the walls of his stomach from eating each other. College hunger was a rite of passage, and even a source of […]

“That’s one peppermint mocha and a large iced coffee,” he said as he reached into the cold and handed them their drinks. She carefully placed the drinks into the cupholders and slid her fingers down the straw to remove the wrapping as he sped away from the window. “Where are we off to tonight?” he […]

Twins Rusty and Dusty Buckamo, along with their cousin Billy Gray and his wife, Sadie, founded the mega-popular Christian rock band, SugarCoatIt, in the late 90s. Their debut album, “Jesus Is More Than Just Alright,” was considered the cornerstone of what Christian music should be: catchy tunes with strong visceral messages of burning bushes, parting […]

Her life is a jeweled lavaliere of loses, each loss an onyx milestone: two later-term stillbirths, a dead brother from a hunting accident, there had been failed marriages, a son’s suicide by cop. Saffron was all about sailing. If only she could’ve collected a bounty of crystal ships that drifted the high seas. Admittedly, that […]