It began as a reward for violence. A token of my duty, and nothing more. My captain picked up that wicked trinket between London and St. Augustine's Bay. An ordinary ring. A ring of common tin. My captain had been swindled into believing it silver. After he repaid the merchant in blood, he tossed the trinket to me. I had aided him in that unpleasant but necessary affair of honor. I wore it. It was a prize for duty. It was...

Detective Erica Vargas wore her gender like a uniform. She looked at the younger woman across the table. The faint gulp told as much as the perky yellow sweater with bright greek letters. Vargas's favorite tell was the makeup marred from a night in a cell. Detective Vargas judged the younger woman exhausted, in over her head, desperate, and tired. "Sarah?" Detective Vargas said. "You've had quite a night haven't you?" The...

My uncle, a doctor, hoped I would be a minister. A strange thought. You see, he spent much of his life in the developing world on a religious mission to eradicate polio. He saved lives and brought happiness to the world. He also prayed for those who suffered. I’m different. I had given myself fully to the practical and not the spiritual. Ethics, after all, aren’t really all that metaphysical. You reduce pain. You increase...

The hot California sun hung in the sky so much brighter than the overcast northeast. It's perfect though. I can finally purchase a home and be free of the frustration of New York rent. Driving around from potential home to potential home with my long lost friend Alina made it even more familiar. She opened the white door of a large home after undoing the keypad. Gesturing me inside, she indicated to the curved stair case,...

Exposed to the hard spattering of raindrops, I had never been smaller than at my grandmother's graveside. Grandma Carolina Haverton MacKinley herself was small next to my great grandmother, Helen Haverton, who took "Haverton-Gibson" as her married name. Grandma Helen worked her husband, an architect, to found a construction and real estate empire. She began in Portland. Our properties now dominated areas as far south as C...