Category: STORY

The winter wind rattled the glass panes of our Puget Sound rental cottage as soon as the deadbolt clicked into place.

The waiting room went so quiet that the electronic intake bell sounded like a hammer hitting glass.

The iron gate of the carriage house rattled against the November wind from Lake Michigan.

The red whistle struck the indoor pool tile before Maya Cruz hit the water.

The gravel road down to the Hood River county extension office smelled like diesel exhaust and damp pine needles.

I stood in the drafty concrete wash rack long after Karen’s red pickup rumbled out of the fairgrounds gravel lot.

The gravel crunched under my sneakers as I backed toward the county road ditch.

Mateo wheeled his bicycle down the cracked asphalt of El Camino Real, keeping one hand clamped over the cold iron shank of the soil probe in his jacket pocket.

The red lane tag struck my cheek before it skittered across the indoor pool deck.