Halloween here had always been pretty typical before the Water House. It’s been the Packer House before, up on top of our street. Out front, the Packers grew basil beside wild blueberries, kept hummingbird feeders full and dangling from their cedar-shingle porch, right above crayola-colored old buoys everyone flanked their exterior railings with. You could…

Dad, I remembered something I thought I’d share with you. I forgot plenty, these past ten years or so, however long it’s been. I forget all that I let myself forget. Like… I forgot what it used to be like when you’d take us to those reenactments, those fairs in the middle of nowhere. Pile…

https://scarfpipes.tiiny.site James, on another sleepless night, sat up in bed beside his relatively healthy wife of forty years, and noticed, to his disappointment, that she was still breathing. There he was, ruminating again, knowing exactly what he’d do once she was gone. Sometimes, if he placed his head back on his pillow and focused on…