Have you ever had someone in your life who just assumed your time belonged to them? Someone who looked at your circumstances and decided that because you didn’t fit their mold of “busy,” you were automatically available? That’s my sister Daphna in a nutshell. I’m Amy. I work from home, and, yeah, I’m single.…

My name’s Lily, and I’m 16 now. When I was ten, cancer took my mother piece by piece, stealing her from me one treatment at a time. Those years still feel like scars stitched across my childhood. Mom’s name was Nora. She was the kind of gentle woman who made you automatically lower your…

I’m 16 years old, and I’ve known for as long as I can remember that I was adopted. My adoptive parents, the ones I’ve always just called Mom and Dad, never kept it from me. But then, on the day of my prom, my biological mother tried to lure me away from them. From…

My grandma, Margaret, was the sweetest woman you could ever meet. The kind who left bowls of food out for stray cats, spent her evenings crocheting blankets for the children’s hospital, and never forgot to send handwritten birthday cards to everyone she’d ever known. She had a smile for the mailman, cookies for the…

Kieran had never been a man of many regrets, but lately, the silence was starting to echo louder than it used to. Back in his younger days, he was the kind of guy who could fix anything with a hammer, a handful of nails, and a smile. He built the little blue house he…

Lily had learned to live on very little. At 20 years old, she had mastered the art of stretching every dollar. She could make a single bag of rice last an entire week and knew how to soften old bread to make it work in soup. Most days, she kept her complaints to herself,…