Sublime

smell it brewing. It smelled like blood and fire. “I’ll be gone soon enough,” the lady Rebecca assured them as they walked back to the cottage. Her silk petticoat rustled, and she was lovely to look at. She’d brought death with her, as the enchanted often do, yet she was so captivating that Maria found herself charmed by her all over again.

On these walks, Cherry could manage Opal. She could love her in the right way. Capably, correctly. Undamaged. They were simply a mother and daughter in this enormous city, enjoying the sights.

Madison, because it sounds enough like my own surname to make me turn around, and Lexie because when I was a kid that was the name of my imaginary sister.

Father planned to throw a big party for her ‘coming out’. Then – he hoped – she would catch the eye of some eligible young man, a lord-to-be, perhaps, and swap this prison for another one.

When Dong Hyun’s machine loaded the now empty high scores screen, Sadie could still faintly see S.A.M. The score had stood so long, it had burned into the monitor.

The daughters he and his partner adopted are Eritrean, so he is touchy about anything having to do with Africa, particularly since a Fascist branch of his family made a fortune from the cotton trade in Asmara. He continues: “And a spoiled signora having a fling with the skipper is no different from a husband fucking the nanny. Just plain common. I’

but then her little girl came along, and her little girl’s daddy left, and before you knew it . . . she was one of them. The needy.

that was the only court that had a hoop with a net. Then one day, this kid named Darren Walsh touched the Cheese with his finger, and that’s