Sometimes you have to quit everything before you’re able to find anything, Ember decided. Clear your mind of all the clutter you’ve amassed over the years. Take a deep breath. Don’t look back.

What do you value in this world?

She asked herself this daily in an attempt to focus on what’s important to her. “Discard anything that isn’t useful or doesn’t bring joy to your life,” was the adage she t...

Deep, sun-damaged creases meandered across his weathered hands as if each day he had been alive etched a road map of his travels across them. His veins raised in topographical opposition. If life’s design could be interpreted, it would clearly tell every detail of all the hard days he had endured. It was written across his hands, his face. He sat alone. Porter held his stories close to his chest a...

The unexpected note she pulled from her windshield read, “I liked the green sweater you wore today. The lake seemed quite choppy with all the wind. Didn’t it? See you soon.”

The paper trembles in her unsteady hands. Her heart pounding in her throat. Her eyes jumping here to there scanning for who could have left it. The leaves scatter across the parking lot. Someone was watching her.

Sometimes ...

How well can you really know anyone? Your pastor gets arrested for child pornography, your dentist for assault. These things happen and people say, “We never saw it coming. He seemed like a good guy. He was in church every Sunday.”

Brandon stepped over the caution tape, walked up the steps to the old house and swung the tattered screen door aside. The house was old, but in Alabama with the humidi...

Two cups of sugar. One stick of butter. 10 pineapple slices. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. I watched as my mother prepared a magnificent pineapple upside down cake with no real recipe to guide her. She learned the measurements by the way the ingredients felt in her hands. I learned a lot of things by watching her in the kitchen. One of which was that trust is the only ingredient nece...