April 22 Ron’s June 22 The bell above the door had rung eleven times before noon. Kim had counted without meaning to. Four customers. Seven volunteers. She wasn’t sure anymore where one ended and the other began. Good Yarn had never been this loud. Kim watched her bookstore turn into a place she didn’t recognize. […]
April 21 Ron’s June 21 Annie brought the crossword books on a Tuesday. Three of them, large print, from the stack Kim kept behind the register at Good Yarn. Ron went through them faster than anyone expected. Two puzzles a day, sometimes three, filled in with a pencil he kept sharpened to a dangerous point. […]
People ask me about Ashlee Harmon Corrigan Boyson more than almost anyone I’ve ever written about. I first told her story more than a decade ago. A 28-year-old widow, five kids, a newborn, a murder trial, and a choice to forgive that most of us couldn’t fathom. Then I wrote about her again. And again. […]
April 18 Ron’s June 18 Kim didn’t recognize the woman who strode in just after she unlocked the door for business. The customer browsed the fiction wall without picking up a single book. That was the tell. People who wanted books picked up books. People who wanted something else browsed. So Kim let her. “You’re […]
April 16 Ron’s June 16 Frank Crapo sat at the composing desk at the Pax River Daily Patriot just before midnight and tried to write a weather forecast. June 16. High of seventy-eight. Partly cloudy. Chance of afternoon thunderstorms. He’d pulled the numbers from a ten-year average on a weather website Annie’s friend showed him […]