The ghosts of their former owners haunt the clothes in thrift shops. The dead linger, like the fading lilac scent of fabric softener or the sharp stink of cigarette smoke. My mother washed our purchases in vinegar and saltwater, then rinsed with lavender to purge the spirits from the clothes she bought for me. I never found a ghost — not hidden in the pockets of the old jeans or draped across the back of the thin, worn t-shirts.

From the second-hand clothes she chose for herself, my mother wove silk scarves into skirts and wore men’s suit jackets over…

Don’t wake them. Dark-haired Lucy belonged to Granny Newsome. Fair Charlotte belonged to Granny’s sister. Her name was Charlotte too. Both dolls have real human hair. Granny calls them her girls. Me and Momma live with Granny. For now.

Momma says, “Stay away from dusty places, Dina.” But I feel safest in the closet filled with moth-eaten wool, the pantry stocked with rusty jars. Under Granny’s bed is best. I peer between the fringe on the bedspread and watch for them. Granny’s girls.

If you pick them up their eyes will open and they will see where I am hiding.

…

She hadn’t used this particular palette in years. The colors in their metal trays had dried and cracked, the hues muddied to tones of grey and brown. The watercolors had belonged to her grandmother, who’d taught her how to use them.

“Art lives a life outside the artist,” the old woman said. Her knobby fingers clutched a paint-daubed brush and stroked the canvas. “Be careful with what you create.”

How powerful she’d felt, as a child, when she fetched the paints from the cupboard and hid from her grandmother’s view. She painted a fantasy — a rough brown beast meant…

One cool spring morning, Delores Jackson spotted a dragon at her birdfeeder. She’d always thought dragons were huge, hulking beasts that fed on valiant knights and virtuous maidens, but this one had landed on her suet.

“What do you think of that?” Delores asked Bumper, her black cat. They stood looking out the glass storm door. Delores sipped her morning cup of coffee while Bumper eyed the birds.

The dragon was barely bigger than a hummingbird, around the same size as the finches who flitted about the feeder like children on a playground. The strange beast’s scales flashed like blue…