I didn’t get any work done that day, nor did I sleep well that night. The following day was better, but by Saturday evening, I realized that I’d had no visitors, and I began to worry. I’d expected someone to come and try to talk me out of exposing Ella’s secret and, in turn, the community’s role in keeping it. That didn’t happen. No one came to talk to me about this or anything else. I thought about reaching out to someon...

“What?” I could barely believe my ears. Bob's revelation stunned me; he was not only complicit in hiding Ella's secrets, but he had convinced our neighbors, too? Bob nodded. “Not all of them. Some of them had already decided to… well, to do nothing, I suppose. Some of them just wanted to mind their own business. Others, like Mary Taylor, had their own reasons, and if their spouses weren’t already of the same mind, they mo...

I stood in front of the office building for almost an hour before he came out. Once, I had wronged him and ruined his life. Now, another had done likewise to me, in the same manner, and almost exactly twelve years apart. I don’t believe in karma, but a primitive part of my brain, the same one that made my ancestors ascribe noises in the dark to monsters and lightning among the clouds to gods, couldn’t help but link his fa...

I smiled to myself as I looked out the window of the spare bedroom on the second floor of our house. Through it, I could clearly see into Ellen and Brian's kitchen and dining area. The open design of the room put the kitchen table in the middle of the large window and in full view from my perch above. Ellen had texted me an hour after our last encounter at the fence as I had requested. "I was reluctant to text you... but...

I pressed the doorbell and waited. The sound of the chime echoed through the door followed by the tapping of footsteps approaching. The door opened and I was greeted with a sharp gasp. "Hi, Ellen," I said with a smile. "Uh... hi," she replied quietly as she looked over her shoulder towards the back of the house and then at me. "What are you doing here?" she asked nervously in a hushed voice. "Is Brian around?" I asked lou...

  Chapter 1 The ride home from the party had been reasonably quiet. Charlie assumed his wife, Lexi, was tired and didn’t attempt to start any conversation. Instead, as he drove, his mind kept bringing images of Wanda, a woman he had met at the party. She was loud and dressed provocatively, but the woman was as sexy as hell. She was not overly discreet when talking about sex and made Charlie understand all sex was good. Sh...

The flaming affair between Nancy and Noah had been going full throttle for a little more than eight months when Nancy received a telephone call from an old friend. Tiffany Hanson was a woman she had met at her first job out of college. They had remained close through the years. Tiffany had gone through a divorce two years back and Nancy had spent many nights helping her friend adjust to being single. When the woman would...

The phone call from Janice came about a half-hour after Rich left. Evan answered with his name, as was his habit. “I heard my husband fucked your wife,” Janice stated. “That’s true,” he admitted. “So, it worked,” she said. “Just like you said it would,” he agreed, smiling. “I told you they would do it if they knew it was okay with us,” she reminded him. “Well, Rich didn’t know I’d consented. Did you tell Emily it was okay...