I pulled the cord, but all the dark did was bring on acute insomnia. I tossed and turned and finally groped around for the cord and turned the lights back on. All the animals were exactly where they'd been, and Drew was still coming home. I went to the kitchen and had a cookie. That led to another cookie and a glass of milk. While I was pouring the milk, I dropped the jug and drenched the front of my nightgown. I cleaned up the mess, then went back upstairs to find another nightgown in Aunt Gert's dresser. I pushed aside the flannel gowns searching for a cotton summer one, and found a manila envelope addressed to Gert.

The jewelry box had taught me not to throw anything away unexamined, so I carried the envelope to my bedroom. I removed my wet gown, put on the fresh one, and crawled into the middle of the bed. The envelope was dated the previous March, and the postmark said it had come from Hollis, Oklahoma. The return address label had Harriet Stemmons on it, but the handwriting was big and masculine.

I turned the envelope upside down, and letters tumbled out in front of me. Aunt Gert's precise, small writing on the outside of the letters addressed them to either Harriet O'Brien or Harriet Stemmons. A single sheet of paper among them explained that Harriet had prized their friendship and had kept a few of the letters she had received through the years. But Harriet had passed on the month before, and the sender was now returning those letters to Gertrude. He hoped she'd enjoy remembering all the good times they'd had when they were the two new teachers in the Milburn school system and the letters they'd shared since then. The letter was signed Thomas O'Brien, Harriet's son.

I shuffled them into order by date and opened the one dated December 10, 1944. In it, Aunt Gert wrote about riding a horse nine miles each day so she wouldn't have to use her gas ration stamps. She mentioned her sister, who would have been my grandmother, and then told Harriet how much she missed her beau, Miles, who was fighting in the war.

It was hard to think that Aunt Gert had ever been that young or happy, but there it was on the page. One letter turned into two, three, and four until I'd read all of them.

Gert didn't go into much detail, but there was a splotch that looked like a teardrop on the letter she wrote saying that Miles had died in the war and that she'd never marry.

Letter number twelve was dated May of 1957, and she was almost giddy. She was in love, and she was going to be married. He worked at the local Chevrolet dealership and was ten years younger than she. She hoped that in the near future she and Lonnie Martin would make a road trip to western Oklahoma to visit Harriet and Rick.

Number thirteen, written in December of 1957, was a very different letter. Gert's tone had changed drastically. She apologized to Harriet for not writing since the wedding but confessed that the marriage had been a very big mistake.

The fourteenth letter was the one that caused my eyes to pop wide open. It was dated June of 1958, a year after she'd married Lonnie. It started out:

Dear Harriet,

I made a mistake. If I could figure out a way to kill my husband, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but I'm stuck with him until he dies. He married me because he thought I had money, and he's cheating on me, and the crazy thing is, most of the women he goes after are my friends. Daisy Black and I were friends from the time we were just little girls, and now she's sleeping with my husband. He even gave her a fancy piece of jewelry just like one he gave me. I saw her wearing it at church and knew immediately what was going on. When I confronted him, he laughed in my face and said that when I gave him access to all my money instead of a monthly allowance, he'd stop giving his mistress the same jewelry he gave me. Until then I could expect to see lots of jewelry just like mine in Tishomingo. If I divorce him, he'll get at least half my property. What am I to do? If I toss him out, everyone will think I was just a silly old woman who played into the hands of a con artist. If I don't, I'll be miserable.

I wish I'd never married him.

I took a deep breath. It's a wonder the man lived another thirty years. No wonder she'd grown bitter. I yawned twice and turned off the light. A full moon filtered in through the lace curtains, and I thought about Lonnie's spirit being locked up in the room across the hall. If I heard chains rattling in Uncle Lonnie's old room, I was hightailing it out of that house and buying dynamite the next morning.

I had just shut my eyes when I heard a sound like a freight train headed right toward my pillow.

How on earth the train had jumped the tracks in Ravia and made it five miles to Tishomingo was a mystery, but clearly it was on Broadway Street and coming on strong.

I sat up so fast, it made me dizzy, and I tried to jump out of bed, but my legs were tangled up in the sheets. My life flashed before my eyes as I got ready for the impact.

If I died, Drew would automatically get everything Aunt Gert had left me. I'd rather suffer the wrath of Lucifer than Aunt Gert in those circumstances. I hit the floor in a run and made it to the door when I realized it wasn't a train but Gert's alarm clock, which I'd set the night before so I wouldn't be late to church.

The cursed thing had two bells on the top and no volume button. It took me several minutes to find the off button on the back, and the silence did nothing to stop the ringing in my ears. I grabbed the clock and slung it against the far wall, but it kept ticking. I kicked it like a soccer ball against another wall, and it still kept ticking.

I picked it up and marched downstairs, out the back door, and to the garage. The cursed thing was not going to live to ring another day. The noise it made when it hit the concrete floor was pitiful but still not enough to kill it. Until that moment, I hadn't known that inanimate objects could be immortal.

I searched for something to use to destroy it. I uncovered ant poison in a bag with the top rolled down and secured with two clothespins. Would alarm clocks be susceptible to ant poison? Probably not. I pushed around a dozen cans of paint with labels dating them back at least fifty years. It would take an act of God to get any of the lids off, so lead poisoning was out too. There had to be a hammer somewhere. Finally I spied a rusty metal toolbox pushed up under an old chrome kitchen table. I bloodied a knuckle trying to open it, but finally a good, solid cussing popped the lid, and there was a hammer, right on top. I picked up the clock, set it on Uncle Lonnie's worktable, and smashed it with the first swing.

It felt so good that I hauled off and hit it again, then once more as I envisioned Drew's face between the bells. He was still smiling, so I gave him a couple more licks for good measure.

"That clock do something to make you mad?" Billy Lee asked from the doorway.

I was wearing one of Aunt Gert's cotton summer nightgowns in Pepto-Bismol pink. My hair kinked all over my head. My bare feet were dirty from trekking out across the dusty yard, and rising blood pressure was no doubt turning my face red and blotchy. But I did not care. For the first time in my entire life I was liberated.

I pointed at him. "Yes. Scared the devil out of me. It won't do that again."

"You don't give second chances?" He grinned.

"Not anymore."

He stepped aside and, I guess, returned to the peace of his own home when I marched past him and into the house. I wasn't living one more second doing what society expected. That had gotten Aunt Gert a life of misery until Lonnie died, and by then she was so set in her ways, she couldn't change. I had just destroyed the first thing to upset my brand-new life. I was brave enough now to take Drew on.