Alma sleeping beside him, he stared at the ceiling. These days the house was too quiet. Sorrow sat on his chest. Tears flowed from his eyes, soundless as the empty room across the hall. Like going away, to stay, you know, for good… Always daring, all his life he’d taken chances, faced down bullies and […]

I’m not the tell-me-your-troubles kind of bartender. I keep to myself. Stand-offish was how one drunk guy put it once — the bar held him up as he slurred through some sob-story about his wife or girlfriend or money — but I don’t know about all that. I just do my job, act as gatekeeper […]

We called her Tin, and she had been old all our lives. She was already in her late sixties when my mother and her brothers were kids and christened her “Tin,” abbreviating her name––as young children are wont to do––from “Tante Lillian” to “Ta-lin” to “Tin.” The nickname stuck. Now, at age ninety-eight, Tin was […]