The first time she saw him, the air smelled like rain and burnt coffee. Lila had been leaning against the diner’s cracked counter, her fingers tracing the chipped paint of the Formica, when the door swung open with a clatter.…
Clara’s boots scraped against the gravel as she climbed the path to the lighthouse, the wind tugging at her coat like a restless child. The sea roared below, its waves slamming the cliffs with a rhythm that felt almost deliberate,…
The air smelled of salt and diesel as Mara stepped off the boat, her boots crunching on gravel. The dock creaked beneath her, a sound she hadn’t heard in ten years but still recognized—like the groan of an old man…
The air reeked of burnt oak and iron. Clara knelt in the dirt, her fingers digging into the soil as the distant boom of cannon fire rattled the windows of the farmhouse. The sky above Richmond had turned the color…
The first time Clara saw the boy, he was crouched in the mud, his uniform soaked through, a crimson stain blooming across his chest like a bruise on the earth. She knelt beside him, fingers trembling as she pressed a…