“What’s in the box, Carol?”

Carol Lewis nudged the container in question with the toe of her scuffed brown boot. An ominous buzz sounded from the cardboard box. Carol crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the two teenage girls standing in the doorway of her dorm room.

“What the hell!” The girls, Megan and Brittany, glanced at each other as though waiting for the other to decide whether to advance on Carol or turn and run.

When the box stopped vibrating, Carol spoke up. “Could be snakes or could be wasps.” She shrugged. …

“No one throws rice at weddings anymore.” The speaker, Hildy Lawson, sighed as she slipped a gold embossed invitation back into its envelope. Hildy, a spry and single woman in her fifties, was the youngest of five siblings. She’d been to more than her share of weddings.

“Isn’t rice bad for birds?” Janet Dell asked. She stretched across her kitchen table and reached for the last of the chocolate chip cookies she’d set out with their lunch. Where Hildy was nervous and slim as a greyhound, Janet had the contented outlook and relaxed figure of a basset hound. …

Sherry Corker stared at the tilting stack of cardboard boxes lining her mother’s closet. They’d already cleared out the kitchen, boxing dented pans and mismatched glassware to tote off to the Goodwill. Her mother fluttered in the living room, circling the floor and saying her own goodbyes to the home she’d lived in for over forty years. Sherry had finally convinced her mom to move into a retirement community near her home in Dallas.

“What do you think she’s stashed here?” Sherry’s patient husband, Dave, asked.

“No idea. Could be anything from half-filled books of Green Stamps to Dad’s old…

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.

…