MY DAD’S FIANCÉE PRAISED ME FOR STARVING MYSELF—THEN SHE CLAIMED SHE WAS CARRYING HIS BABY, BUT THE NIGHT MY PHONE WAS ERASED, I REALIZED SHE WAS HIDING SOMETHING WORSE

“Let’s see how long it takes him to realize we’re not coming back.” That was the sentence my older brother shouted through the phone before…

The first thing Madison Cole did when she saw my sister lying in a hospital bed was laugh. Not nervously. Not because she misunderstood what…

The gun on the table looked dangerous, but the ledger on Norah’s screen was the thing that could get them both killed. For forty-eight hours,…

“You’re lying.” My sister Madison said it so loudly that the couple at the next table stopped eating. My father’s fork had already fallen from…

The first gunshot came from somewhere beyond the kitchen windows. I knew it was a gunshot because birds rose from the pine trees behind the…

The phone call lasted less than a minute, but it took away two years of work, forty years of dreaming, and every excuse I had…