Professor

My biggest regret? Trusting my husband with my mother's life.

The day the mudslide hit, I was on my knees. Begging him to send a helicopter.

He told me to wait. Twenty minutes. But when the helicopter came, it went for his adoptive sister Vivian instead.

I held my mother in the ruins. Her body was shutting down. I waited. Waited until she went cold in my arms.

When he finally showed up at the ...

A man's luxurious watch slipped out of my wife's purse. Without batting an eye, she lied, "It's a gift for your dad." Looking at the youthful, trendy style and thinking of the remote-controlled toy that had mysteriously appeared in the nightstand, I felt nothing but utter disgust.
In the surveillance footage, the domineering homewrecker not only wore my clothes but also arrogantly taunted me.
And ...

Ten years loving Liam Rockefeller cost me everything.

He said the football team jumped him—so I charged in and took the punches. He sobbed that his stepbrother would destroy him at Yale—so I ripped up my acceptance letter. He held me at midnight whispering "I'm so lucky to have you"—and I thought that meant forever.

Three months later, I heard him laughing in the locker room—laughing about me.

...

I nearly died in the freezing ocean at my adopted sister Jane's birthday party.

When the yacht started tilting and alarms shrieked through the corridors, Dad grabbed Jane and bolted for the deck without looking back. Mom clutched Jane's ragdoll cat in her arms, following close behind under the bodyguards' protection.

They saved the cat.

But left their biological daughter to drown.

Three days l...

On a rainy night, I lay in a pool of my own blood, barely alive.
My wife, Juliana, was kneeling beside a man named Sebastian. "Take my husband's blood! I will take full responsibility if anything happens!"
Drop by drop, my lifeblood was drained from me, flowing into the body of her first love.
After three days and nights of struggling in the ICU, I finally regained consciousness, only to hear her ...

I've got a reputation on campus as a doormat with zero dignity. I bring Wyatt Langley food, do his homework, act as his emotional dumping ground. Been at it for a year.

His rich friends mock my cheap clothes and say I'm reaching way out of my league. He never stops them. Sometimes he even laughs along.

Finally, he announces in front of everyone that he's breaking up with me. His first love is co...

I loved Lia Rockefeller for ten years, and it cost me everything.
When she said the cheerleaders were ganging up on her, I charged in and took the punches for her.
When she cried that her stepsister would ruin her at Yale, I tore up my acceptance letter right then and there.
When she held me tight in the middle of the night and whispered, "I'm so lucky to have you"—I thought it meant forever.
Thre...

I'm a folklorist. Folk traditions are my field.
At first, I thought it was just an ordinary rhyme, a scrap of oral history set to a tune.
"A rag doll in the mire, swinging high up to the sky..."
We all thought it was just a prank.
Until the first person drowned in the bog. Then the second fell from a tower crane. Then the third somehow drowned in a bathtub.
I stared at the black symbol surfacing o...