Richard Cassone Lili leaned against the window and listened to the noise on the playground. The children below were organizing themselves into rows along neat lines painted on the blacktop, waiting to go to school. Since she’d entered the fifth grade, she always got to come in first and wait in the classroom. The older children had class on the top floor of the brick schoolhouse, and the teachers had enough on their hands in the...

Richard Cassone The rain fell. It fell in sheets. It fell in drops as penetrating as buckshot. It slowed and still fell: a light, widely woven blanket of needles, piercing, stinging. It was day, but dark like dusk. The old man watched. Explosions of water rattled his windshield. He saw from inside the bursts, through the glass. They wanted to touch him. Some crept in through the cracked rubber seams of the door. They pooled...