It was the golden hour when Madam Thérèse de Dillon, still in the elaborate gown she wore for her husband’s meeting with his Viennese investors, finally collapsed on her overstuffed chaise longue and received her favorite guest. Sophie, hardly twenty and in a very...

To meet the husband of your lover is a strange thing. To realize he was flirting with you was quite another. Henry poked at his eggs and smiled nervously as Adam and Kay whispered to each other, both pairs of their pretty eyes sparkling at him as they conspired. Henry...

Winifred stood proudly in the gray light of dawn. A hair over five feet tall, seven stone, and barely nineteen years old, she was stark naked save a pair of Jack’s childhood hunting boots and a bright red fox hat, its tail flapping in the wind. She blushed down to her...

As Freud once said, “When work is a pleasure, life is a joy.” I often thought of that quote in the morning as I walked up the massive stairs to the vast Beaux-Arts style museum I called my office. Life at the museum was very different from the years I spent in various...

There is a particular brand of depression you experience when you have to move back in with your parents.  At the tail end of college, Kate got lots of promises from professors and advisors, thay her years of studying esoteric and philosophical subjects would...

It was another day in a long chain of hot summer days spent inside helping her mother cook. Alice was a perfect daughter, or so she continually told herself. Although she didn't particularly help with the preparation of meals, per se, she did keep her mother company...

Vibrations are odd things. Alone in her room at fifteen, Charlotte played for herself. She played because no one was home and she could take the towel from over the strings and just play. No inhibitions, no holding back. The cello swelled with sound, and the walls of...