Sublime

Jane set the cake down on the table in front of Ruby just as the birthday song reached its warbling crescendo. It was a cheap cake from Baskin-Robbins, Frozen-themed. She worried it was a tell that this house, even this shirt, didn’t belong to her. But maybe it was the opposite—maybe it made them seem more ensconced in this life, better, cooler—the

Anne

1916: She’s eighteen. There’s a new catchphrase in the household, used constantly: too expensive. Her mother, her father, her sister, her sister-in-law escape from their troubles into the smaller-scale misery of the bills, from morning until night they reckon up their poor daily life aloud. Meat, too expensive, butter, too expensive, a pair of

She had a single mother with a drinking problem and no money.