Small Town Girl

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

They were married less than two months later in the church where she had sung in his choir. The wedding was scheduled for one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, because the church was booked for all the weekend days that month, and so was the bride. She had sung in Vancouver the previous weekend, and would be singing in Shreveport the next.

But on this day-a hot, late-summer, high-sky day with the temperatures in the nineties and the cicadas singing in the backyards-she would belong not to her fans, but only to her man.

One hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, Mary was in her kitchen, all dressed, when she heard Tess and Renee coming down the stairs. She'd been listening to the two of them talking and laughing and traipsing through the house most of the morning. Now here they came, ready at last.

"Well, Momma, here I am," Tess announced from the doorway.

The old woman turned and put a hand to her mouth.

"Oh, land… oh, me… I think this is the happiest day of my life. I believe I'm happier today than I was the day of my own wedding."

"Don't you go cryin' now, Momma, not after Renee and I got your makeup all pretty."

Mary got control of herself and made a stirring motion. "Turn around. Let me see."

Tess turned a full circle, showing off her bridal dress. It was very simple, made of white linen, with cap sleeves, a square neck, and a stovepipe skirt whose hem was created by points of open cutwork that overhung her ankles by three inches. On her feet she wore white linen pumps, on her head, instead of a veil, a circlet of baby's breath with her hair pulled up high inside it. Her only jewelry was a tiny pair of sapphire ear studs matching the ring Kenny had given her: an emerald-cut sapphire surrounded by diamonds.

"Isn't she gorgeous?" Renee said, leaning against the doorway.

"Lord o' mercy," Mary said.

The bride was definitely the prettiest thing in that kitchen, which hadn't changed a whit. The same ugly wall clock pointed to the hour. The same curled-up plastic doily sat on the same old-fashioned table. The same wounded Formica bled white up through a thousand scratch marks.

But the house was a cool seventy-two degrees, because Tess had said, "Momma, if you want me to get married at First Methodist you're going to have to let me put air-conditioning in that house, 'cause if you think I'm getting dressed in that attic in the middle of summer, you're wrong. I'll melt like an ice cream cone and you'll have to pour me into that church!"

So Mary had called Clarence Spillforth down at the plumbing and heating store, and said, "Clarence, I want you to come up here and put me some air-conditioning into my house because my girl Tess is gonna get married here. She's marrying Kenny Kronek, you know, and he's moving to Nashville to take care of her business for her, and his daughter, Casey? Well, she's been singing on Tess's records, don't you know. So, Clarence, when can you be here?"

Everybody in town knew what was happening over at First Methodist an hour from now. There would be lots of reporters at the church, and Tess had no desire to encounter her groom for the first time with shutters clicking from fifteen directions. So she and Kenny had made their secret plans.

She took Mary's hands, and said, "You understand, don't you, Momma? Kenny and I just want a few minutes alone together before we go to church."

"Well, of course. You got a right to do your wedding day the way you want. I'll get my purse, then I'm all ready to go."

While she went off to the bedroom, walking with scarcely a visible hitch these days, Tess and Renee exchanged a sentimental smile.

"Thanks so much for being with me this morning," Tess said, going to hug Renee, who rubbed her back.

"I wouldn't have missed it."

"You sure it's okay that I didn't ask you to be my bridesmaid?"

"Absolutely. You picked the perfect ones."

"Thanks for understanding."

"All ready," Mary announced, returning. "Let's go, Renee, and leave these two to do whatever it is they want to do."

At the back door, Renee paused, the last one out, and looked back at the bride. "It is the happiest day of her life, and it's no secret who's going to be her favorite son-in-law from now on. We're all happy about it, Tess."

"Thanks, sis."

They went out and the house grew quiet. In the alley the car doors slammed, an engine started, then disappeared. The only sound in the kitchen came from the humming of the clock. Tess went to the window above the sink and looked out. The back lawns were neatly mowed. Heavy red tomatoes hung on the vines in the garden. Up the side of Kenny's garage a huge purple clematis vine cascaded with brilliant blooms. The sun shone on his back porch where she and he had played together when they were children. His garage door was up, and inside she could see the tail end of a brand-new Mercedes she'd bought him for a wedding gift. It was a smart buy, he'd told her, for it could be legally written off on her taxes as a business expense, since he was now a vice president of Wintergreen Enterprises.

She smiled, realizing how perfectly his life was meshing with hers, and how much help he'd be to her in the future.

Then she checked the time again, and got her gardenia out of the refrigerator.

"Well, here goes," she whispered to herself, and headed from the room. But reaching the doorway, she turned to scan her mother's kitchen one last time as a single woman. She had no inkling what prompted her to pause and look back, but doing so, she experienced an unexpected bolt of nostalgia, and thought, Let it never change, let me always come home and find it just this way, plastic doily and all.

Outside on the stoop the sun was hot on her head as she paused and looked across the alley. It took less than five seconds before Kenny appeared on his back step, too, dressed in a gray tux with a cutaway jacket and a pleated white shirt. Even from this distance, his appearance made her heart race, this man she'd taken for conservative, who was constantly surprising her with his clothes.

They stood for a moment, studying each other across the depth of two backyards, recalling a dawn with the sun coming up through the trees behind him, and the sprinkler fanning the garden while Tess jumped the rows of wet vegetables, barefooted, and Kenny stood watching her with a cup of coffee in his hand and his bare toes curled over the back step.

No bare toes today. Instead, two enchanted people in their wedding finery, initiating a ceremony of their own design.

They walked slowly down their respective steps, across the backyards, between patches of summer grass. Instead of an organ, the cicadas piped a song from somewhere among the rhubarb leaves. Instead of bridesmaids, a pair of white cabbage moths fluttered along in front of Tess. Instead of an aisle, a coarse concrete sidewalk; and instead of an altar, an alley.

They met in it, dead center, halfway between his house and hers, where they had met so many times during the weeks when they were falling in love.

The sun lit his dark, neatly combed hair and put little flames into her red curls. It picked out the intensity in his eyes and threw it into hers.

He took her hands lightly, the single oversized gardenia falling back over her knuckles.

"Hello," he said softly.

"Hello."

"Happy wedding day."

"Happy wedding day to you, too."

"You look…" He searched for a word. "Radiant."

"I feel radiant. And you look exquisite."

"I feel like the luckiest man on earth."

They smiled some, then he asked, "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"So am I. Go ahead."

She dropped her gaze momentarily, composing her words, then looked up into his eyes.

"I, Tess McPhail…"

"I, Kenneth Kronek…"

"Take you, Kenneth Kronek…"

"Take you, Tess McPhail…"

"To be my beloved husband for the rest of my life."

"To be my beloved wife for the rest of my life."

"To love you as I love you today…"

"To love you as I love you today…"

"Renouncing all others…"

"Most definitely renouncing all others…"

"And we will share all that we have, and all that we will have… the joys and the sorrows, the work and the play, the worries and the wonders… and your daughter… and my mother… and all the love and commitment it will take to see them through the years ahead…"

"And we'll be kind to each other…"

"Yes. And respectful…"

"And I swear to love you, sustain you, be your strength when you need it and your ease when you need it."

"And I'll do the same for you."

They tried to think of anything they'd missed. He thought of something. "And I renounce all jealousy… of your fans and their demands on you."

She smiled, and said, "Why, Kenny, how sweet of you."

"That might be my hardest part," he admitted.

She rubbed his knuckles, and replied, "For me, too… being away from you."

They paused once again, adoring each other without smiles, because the moment seemed too sacred to diminish with smiles.

"I love you, Kenny."

"I love you, Tess."

"Forever."

"Forever."

He leaned down and kissed her lightly while bluebottle flies buzzed nearby and the white summer sun lifted the scent of her gardenia and mixed it with the dusty smell of the graveled alley.

When he straightened, they smiled fully, as they had not earlier.

"I feel as married as I'll ever feel," she said.

"So do I. Now let's go do it for everybody else."

It was, to the surprise of many, one of the most modest weddings ever held at First Methodist. Some expected luminaries from the recording industry to sing at the ceremony. Instead, only the First Methodist choir sang, directed by Mrs. Atherton, who was back as their leader. Some expected an entire chorus line of attendants, but there were only two. Some expected the attendants to be both male and female. But tradition was shot to the four winds when Casey Kronek and Mary McPhail, smiling fit to kill, each walked up the aisle solo. And when the bride appeared, everyone craned around, supposing she'd be decked out in several thousand dollars' worth of wedding finery shaped like a mushroom cloud. Instead she wore the simple white dress and the simpler ring of girlish flowers in her hair.

She smiled at Kenny all the way up the aisle. He was waiting at the chancel with Reverend Giddings, and when Giddings asked, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man," Mary answered first.

"I do."

Followed by Casey, "And I do."

Though smiles were exchanged behind them, and a soft ripple of amusement lifted from the congregation, everyone thought, how perfect that these two should give their public blessings to this match, because everyone in that church knew how Kenny doted on Mary, and took care of her, and how she'd practically been a grandma to the girl since Casey's own grandma had died. And who but the famous Tess McPhail would have had the temerity to have two women as attendants at her wedding and get by with it? She spurned tradition once again at the traditional giving of the roses. Normally the parents of the nuptials couple received them. But while Kenny gave one to Mary, Tess gave one to Casey, and as their cheeks touched, most eyes in the house got misty.

The wedding guests had one more surprise in store when, after the exchange of vows, the bride took a microphone and sang to her husband. They shouldn't have been surprised by the time Casey took another microphone and sang backup harmony. After all, what about this wedding ceremony matched preconceived notions? Furthermore, the word had spread that the song was co-written by the new "mother-daughter" duo, and that it would be released in the fall as the title song from Tess's new album.

There was, at the Kronek-McPhail wedding, one element of glamour. Among the guests were a bunch of Tess's friends who had flown in from Nashville. Their names were household words, and their faces were recognized in airports and restaurants wherever they went. They were the crème de la crème of the Nashville country music scene, the stars whom Tess numbered among her friends.

When the bride and groom swept jubilantly out of the church to form the receiving line, those stars took their turns just like all the other guests, being dismissed by the ushers and congratulating the newlyweds while the townsfolk from Wintergreen grew rattled, being elbow to elbow with them.

While their presence at the wedding was notable, the presence of another was even more notable. Faith had come. There had been a question about whether or not to invite her, but in the end Kenny and Tess had decided that, given how important she'd been in Kenny's life, she certainly should be asked.

She was every inch a lady, doing the proper thing as she came through the receiving line, taking Tess's hand and smiling. "Congratulations, Tess, you look lovely. Thank you for inviting me." She took Kenny's hand, too, and kept her smile intact, giving away nothing but pleasure in being here, no matter what heartbreak might be lingering. "Kenny, I hope you and Tess will be very, very happy together."

The bride and groom rode in a white limo out to Current River Cove where their reception was little different than hundreds of others that had been held there. The fried chicken dinner was geared for down-home tastes. The dance, however, turned out to be the talk of the year. Tess's own band played, and a slough of Nashville stars got up, one after another, and sang their hits for the dancers. In the middle of this spontaneous show, Judy got huffy and stalked off to the ladies' room to fluff her hair and fume.

"Showing off all her famous friends!" she hissed to two women who were in there freshening their lipstick. "It's sickening."

Judy would never accept the facts of Tess's life: many of her friends were famous, just as she was. Many of them were idolized on albums and magazine covers just as she was. Many were millionaires. But for Tess not to invite them today would have been a snub. And for them to adjust their schedules to be here was a measure of their affection for her.

Vince Gill and Reba McEntire were singing together on his old classic "Oklahoma Swing" when Judy came out of the washroom. From the dance floor, Tess saw her and said to her new husband, "There's Judy… in one of her jealous snits."

He smoothly turned her so her back was to Judy and said, "You know what, darlin'? You're never going to change Judy."

"I know that by now."

"And you're not going to let her ruin your wedding day, are you?"

She flashed him an honest smile without undertones. "Absolutely not." She had come to accept Judy's insecurities as the root of her jealousy, and to pity her instead of getting angry. For there, on the other side of the dance floor, was her sister Renee dancing with Jim, and Renee counterbalanced all of Judy's jealousy with a sure and constant love that looked beyond superficiality. And there, too, was Momma…

Flirting with Alan Jackson!

She was sitting at a table surrounded by her friends, who were all making a big fuss over him and gathering enough fodder for a year's worth of card-party table talk.

"Look at Momma," Tess said.

Kenny looked. And chuckled. "I think she's half-shnockered up on champagne again."

"Six months ago I'd probably have gone over and apologized to Alan, but now I don't see any need to apologize for anything on Momma's behalf. She is what she is, and I love her."

She told Mary as much soon after that when they went to wish her good-bye and sneak away without farewells to the crowd in general. Mary said, "Now, you kids come home soon as you can."

"We will."

"And I'll keep an eye on Casey while she's here." Casey was staying in Wintergreen for a week before driving Kenny's new Mercedes back home to Nashville.

"Thanks, Momma," Tess said as they exchanged a kiss.

"Thanks, Momma," Kenny said, and made Mary all emotional, calling her that for the first time.

She grabbed his face in two hands and planted a kiss on his cheek. "You dear thing," she said. "I'll bet your own Momma is smiling down from heaven at this very moment. Now go on, take your wife and go."

They found Casey and told her they were slipping away. Kenny handed her the car keys, and said, "Be careful with my new Mercedes."

She gave him a smooch on the cheek, and said, "Be careful with my new mother." Then she added, " 'Bye, Mother Mac, have a nice honeymoon."

On their way to the airport-lo and behold-the limo got caught behind Conn Hendrickson's lumbering fuel oil truck.

Tess threw her head back against the leather seat and laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Just like the day I came back home last April. I followed Conn's truck all the way around the town square. That was the day I met you."

"Mmm… not exactly," he added.

"Again," she amended.

"There ya got it."

Her private plane was waiting at Three Rivers Airport and flew them to Nashville, where her Z was waiting at another airport.

She gave her hubby a smirk, and asked, "How'd you like to drive?"

"Wow," he said drolly, accepting the keys, "this is really true love after all, then, isn't it?"

Some would have thought that a millionaire like Tess McPhail Kronek would choose to spend her wedding night in the fanciest bridal suite of the most exotic city in the world, but she'd spent enough time in hotels that home was her idea of luxury.

Besides, though Kenny's things had been moved in, he had never moved in. They'd decided for several reasons that he would not sleep there until their wedding night. One reason was Casey, whose respect he still valued, who lived down the hall and should not witness a bad example, no matter what he'd been wearing that morning in L.A. Another reason was the "rags" and their trade gossip, ever watchful of people of Tess's fame, just waiting to print a dirty headline. But most importantly there were Tess and Kenny themselves, who chose to have a wedding night complete with anticipation.

When they reached her house, Kenny said, "May I do the honors, Mrs. Kronek?"

And she answered, "I wouldn't have it any other way, Mr. Kronek."

When he carried her inside, the built-in sound system was playing softly-not country or rock, but Debussy's "Reverie." They paused to kiss just inside the entry before he set her down and they went exploring. Maria had left walnut chicken breasts in brandy sauce ready to warm in the oven along with a crisp French boule, and an artichoke-heart salad in the refrigerator. A table for two was set with candles and a single white rose floating in a glass compote. In the living room they found some wedding gifts piled up on the piano bench, and upstairs, the double doors to the master bedroom suite stood open, while inside, on a dresser, a bouquet of red roses filled the room with scent.

Kenny stopped in the doorway, holding Tess's hand.

He was filled with a sense of excess that seemed, momentarily, beyond accepting,

"I can't believe I'm going to live here with you."

"Sometimes I can't believe it either."

"That we're this lucky… that we have all this."

"And love, too. It does seem a bit much, doesn't it?"

But it was theirs to accept, and they stepped inside to begin their life together.

Later, when they'd consummated their unity in bed, and eaten Maria's delicious walnut chicken, and taken a swim in the pool, and opened the pile of wedding gifts, they were sitting on the floor among the wrappings with one small gift unopened.

"Momma said to open it last," Tess said.

"Well, go ahead," he said.

She began pulling at the Scotch tape. "What do you suppose it is?"

"I don't know." It was no bigger than a billfold. When the wrapping was off, she opened the end flap of a small cardboard box and tipped it till something slid out into her hand: a picture frame, and in it a photograph of Tess and Kenny at about ages two and three, eating watermelon on the back steps of Mary's house, their knees together, feet bare, toes hooked over the edge of the step, faces sunburned and dirty, as if they'd been hard at play just before the picture was taken.

Tess's reaction to it was as emotional as Mary's had been to the announcement of their wedding plans.

"Oh," she said, a hand going to her lips and tears stinging her eyes as she turned the picture his way. "Oh, look…"

He looked. And got a lump in his throat, too.

"Have you ever seen it before?" she asked.

"I don't think so."

She dusted the glass lovingly. "I wonder where it's been all these years."

"In your mother's bureau, I suppose, tucked away with the precious things that mothers keep."

"Do you suppose they planned this day back then, when they used to watch us play together?"

"Maybe they knew something we didn't."

They kissed, feeling special, and loved by more than each other, and magically fated to end up together.

"What time is it?" she said.

"Nearly eleven."

"Oh, I don't care. Let's go call Momma."

He beamed, and leapt to his feet and pulled her up after him. "Yeah, let's!"

They took the picture along, and went together to wake Mary and thank her, and to tell her how happy they were. And then they simply had to call Casey, too, just to say good night and that they loved her.

When they finally went upstairs, they took the picture along and set it on their bedside stand where it would be when they woke up in the morning.

And the morning after that, and the morning after that.

And often, when they would look at it, in the years ahead, one of them would say what Casey said that morning in the hotel, "It's like it was meant to be, isn't it?"

And the other one would smile.

For no other answer was necessary.

Celebrate the magic of

Lavyrle Spencer…

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Here is an excerpt from Lavyrle Spencer's captivating novel, Then Came Heaven. It is a very special story, with a very special heroine. A woman who has taken a nun's vows, only to find that God works in mysterious ways… and that love is His greatest gift.

Then Came Heaven

Available in paperback from Jove Books

Thursday, Sept. 7, 1950

Cyril Case was making the daily run from St. Cloud to Cass Lake, sitting up high on his box seat in engine number two-eighty-two. Beside him, his fireman, Merle Ficker, rode with one arm out the window, his striped denim cap pushed clean back so the bill pointed skyward. It was a beautiful morning, sunny, the heavens deep blue, farmers out in their fields taking in the last of their crops, most harvesting with tractors, though down around Sauk Center they'd seen one working with a team. They'd passed a country school a couple miles back where the kids, out for recess, waved from the playground, and their teacher-a slim young thing in a yellow dress-had stopped gathering wildflowers, shaded her eyes with an arm and fanned her handful of black-eyed Susans over her head as she watched them pass. It was days like this that made driving a train the best job in the world: green woods, gold fields and the smell of fresh cut alfalfa blowing straight through the cab. And beneath the men the shuug-a-shuug-a of the steam engine hauling smoothly down the tracks.

Cy and Merle were having another one of their friendly disagreements about politics.

"Well, sure," Merle was saying, "I voted for Truman, but I didn't think he'd send our boys to Korea."

"What else you gonna do?" Cy replied. "Those Communists go in and start bombing Seoul. Can't let 'em get by with that, can we?"

"Well, maybe not, but you ain't got a nineteen-year-old son and I do. Now Truman goes and extends the draft till next year. Hell, I don't want Rodney to get called up. I just don't like how things are going." Merle pointed. "Whis-tlepost up ahead."

"I see it. And don't worry, MacArthur'll probably clean 'em up before Rodney gets any draft notice."

Up ahead, on the right, the arm of the white marker shone clear against the pure blue sky. Cy reached up and pulled the rope above his left shoulder. The steam whistle battered their ears in a long wail: two longs, a short, and a long-the warning for a public crossing.

The whistlepost flashed past and the long wail ended, leaving them in comparative quiet.

"So," Cy continued, "I suppose your boy's gonna go to work for the railroad if he doesn't get…" He stiffened and stared up the track. "Seet Jesus, he ain't gonna make it."

A car had turned off of Highway 71 and came shooting from the left, trailing a dust cloud, trying to beat the train to the crossing.

For one heartbeat the men stared, then Cy shouted, "Car on the crossing! Plug it!"

Merle jumped and hit the air brakes.

Cy grabbed the Johnson bar and squeezed for dear life. With his other hand he hauled on the steam whistle. Machinery ground into reverse and the brakes grabbed. From the engine through the entire train life, everything locked in a deafening screech. Steam hissed as if the door of hell had opened. The smell of hot, oily metal wafted forth like Satan's own perfume. The couplers, in progression, drummed like heavy artillery from the engine clear back to the caboose while the two old rails, with fifty-three years' experience between them, felt it in the seat of their pants: forward propulsion combined with a hundred tons of drag, something a railroad man hopes he'll never feel.

"Hold on, Merle, we're gonna hit 'em!" Cy bellowed above the din.

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph," Merle chanted under his breath as the train skated and shrieked, and the puny car raced toward its destiny.

At thirty yards they knew for sure.

At twenty they braced.

At ten they saw the driver.

Dear God, it's a woman, Cy said. Or thought. Or prayed.

Then they collided.

Sound exploded and glass flew. Metal crunched as the gray '49 Ford wrapped around the cowcatcher. Together they cannonballed down the tracks, the ruptured car folded over the metal grid, chunks of it dragging along half-severed, tearing up earth, bruising railroad ties, strewing wreckage for hundreds of yards. Pieces of the car eventually broke free and bounced along the flinty ballast of the rail bed with a sound like a brass band before tumbling to rest in the weeds. Throughout it all some compressed piece of the automobile played the tracks in an unending shriek-metal on metal-like a hundred violins out of tune. Dust! They'd never seen so much dust. It billowed up on impact, a brown, stinky cloud of dirt, momentarily blinding Cy and Merle as they rode along haplessly above the discordant serenade. The smell of petroleum oozed up, and sparks sizzled off the steel tracks, setting small fires in gasoline drips that flared briefly, then blew out as the train passed over them.

Slower… slower… slower… two terrified railroad men rode it out, one maintaining a death grip on the Johnson bar that had long since thrown the gears into reverse, the other still hauling on the air brakes that had locked up the wheels more than a quarter mile back.

Slower… slower… all those tons of steel took forever to decelerate while the two big-eyed men listened to the fading squeal that dissolved into a whine…

Then a whimper…

Then silence…

Cy and Merle sat rigid as a pair of connecting rods, exchanging a shocked, silent stare. Their faces were as white and round and readable as the pressure gauges on the boil-erhead. Number two-eighty-two had carried the Ford a good half a mile down the railroad tracks and now sat calmly chuffing, like a big old contented whale coming up for air.

Outside, something small fell-glass maybe, with a soft tinkle.

Merle finally found his voice. It came out as tight and hushed as the air brakes. "No way that woman's gonna be alive."

"Let's go!" Cy barked.

They scrambled from the cab, bellies to the ladder, free-sliding down the grab rails. From trie caboose, twenty cars back, the conductor and a brakeman came running-two bouncing dots in the distance-shouting, "What happened?" A second brakeman stayed behind, already igniting a fusee that started spewing red smoke into the gentle September morning, mixing the stink of sulphur with the sweetness of the fresh-cut alfalfa.

Running along beside the locomotive, Cy yelled, "Look there, the engine's hardly damaged." The lifting lever on the drawbar was a little scraped up, and a couple of grab bars were marred. The two men rounded the snout of the engine and halted dead in their tracks.

It was a sickening sight, that car riding thin on the pilot as if it had been flattened for a junkyard. The coupler at the front of the cowcatcher had actually pierced the metal of the automobile and protruded like a shining silver eye. Some broken glass remained in the driver's side window, jagged as lightning.

Cy moved close and peered in.

She was brown-haired. Young. Pretty. Or had been. Wearing a nice little blue flowered housedress. Surrounded by broken fruit jars. He closed his mind to the rest and reached in to see if she was still alive.

After nearly a minute he withdrew his hand and stood on a crosstie facing Merle.

"I think she's dead."

"You sure?"

"No pulse that I can feel."

Merle remained as colorless as whey. His lips moved silently, but not a sound came out. Cy could see he'd have to take charge here.

"We're gonna need a jack to get her out of there," he told Merle. "You better run to the highway and flag down a car. Tell 'em to run to Browerville and get help…" Merle was already hustling off at an ungainly trot. "And have 'em call the sheriff in Long Prairie!"

At that moment the conductor and brakeman reached Cy, panting.

"He dead?" one of them asked.

"She. It's a woman."

"Oh my God." The conductor had a huge florid face that hung in soft folds from his cheekbones. He glanced at the wreck, then back at Cy. "She dead?"

"I think so. Couldn't feel any pulse."

They stood motionless, absorbing the shock while Cy-the engineer, and the person whose job it was to take command in emergency situations-took control of the situation.

"Better get that other fusee out," he told the brakeman.

"Yeah, sure thing." The brakeman headed up the track to the north, waving a red flag as he went, to set out the warning for any southbound trains. He would go a mile before igniting the flare, while the other brakeman walked a mile off from the rear of the train and did the same thing.

Left alone with Cy, the conductor said, "There's fruit jars all along the tracks. What do you suppose she was doing with all those fruit jars?"

The two men gazed back along the tracks at the shimmers of sunlight glancing off the pieces of broken glass.

"Probably some farmer's wife with a big garden," Cy replied.

Reaction to the tragedy only now began setting in, de-layed like the sting that follows a slap. Cy felt it deep in his vitals, a terrible trembling that traveled to his extremities and brought a faint nausea as he stood at the head of the train with a dead woman caught in the twisted wreckage of her gray automobile.

"Her license plate is gone. The back one anyway. I'll see if the front one is there." The conductor walked further around the train, but came back long-faced. "Gone too. Want me to walk back along the tracks and see if I can find it?"

"She's got a purse," Cy said, dully. "I saw it under one of her…" He quit talking and swallowed hard.

"Want me to get it, Cy?"

"No, that's… that's all right. I will."

Cy steeled himself and returned to the wreckage while a herd of lethargic holsteins, chewing their cud, watched from inside a nearby fence. The soft morning wind, not yet tainted by the red sulfur from the faraway fusee, carried the faint scent of manure, not wholly unpleasant when mixed with the continuing aroma of cut alfalfa. In the distance, a silo pointed toward heaven, where the woman had probably gone. Nearer, over a copse of shiny green oaks a flock of chattering starlings lifted and milled. One of the cows mooed, and the engine-its steam kept up according to railroad regulations-gave out an intermittent quiet chuff. All around, the bucolic countryside presented a picture of life as it should be, while Cy retrieved the purse of the dead woman and wiped it off on the leg of his blue and white striped overalls.

Merle returned from the highway, short of breath, and reported, "Fellow from Eagle Bend, going that way, said he'd get word to the constable and sheriff soon as he hits Browerville. That her purse?"

They all looked down at it in Cy's oversized hands. It was a little wedge-shaped, white plastic affair with hard sides. Its handle had been broken in the accident, and its jaws skewed so the metal clasp no longer worked.

Cy opened it and looked inside. He picked things out very gingerly, then set them back in with the greatest care: a clean white handkerchief, a rosary with blue-glass beads, a pack of Sen-Sen. And a small, black prayer book which he examined more slowly. Stuck in its pages was a recipe for "Washday Pickles," written on the back of an envelope, with the word Mother up in the upper righthand corner. A name was written on the front of the envelope with its cancelled three-cents stamp and its simple address of Browerville, Minn. The same name was written on the inside cover of the prayer book, and on a social security card they found in a small change purse that also held some school pictures of two little girls, and a dollar bill plus eighteen cents in change.

Her name was Krystyna Olczak.

Everybody in Browerville knew Eddie Olczak. Everybody in Browerville liked him. He was about the eighth or ninth kid of Hedwig and Casimir Olczak, Polish immigrants from out east of town. Eighth or ninth they said because Hedy and Cass had fourteen, and when there are that many in one family the order can get a little jumbled. Eddie lived half a block off Main Street, on the east side of the alley behind the Lee State Bank and the Quality Inn Cafe, in the oldest house in town. He had fixed it up real nice when he married that cute little Krystyna Pribil whose folks farmed just off the Clarissa Highway out north of town. Richard and Mary Pribil had seven kids of their own, but everybody remembered Krystyna best because she had been the Todd County Dairy Princess the summer before she married Eddie…

The children around town knew Eddie because he was the janitor at St. Joseph Catholic Church and had been for twelve years. He took care of the parochial school as well, so his tall, thin figure was a familiar sight moving around the parish property: pushing dust mops, hauling milk bottles, ringing the church bells at all hours of the day and night. He had nieces and nephews all over the place, and occasionally on a Saturday or Sunday he'd prevail upon one of them to ring the Angelus for him at noon or six p.m.

In truth, weekends meant little to Eddie; he had no such thing as a day off. He worked seven days a week, for there was never a morning without Mass; and when there was Mass, Eddie was there to ring the bells, most often attending the service himself. He lived a scant block and half from church, so when the Angelus needed ringing, he ran to church and rang it.

The bells of St. Joseph's pretty much regulated the activities of the entire town, for nearly everybody in Brow-erville was Catholic. Folks who passed through town often said how amazing it was that a little burg like that, with only eight hundred people, boasted not just one Catholic church, but two! There was St. Peter's, of course, at the south end of town, but St. Joe's had been there first and was Polish, whereas St. Pete's was an offshoot started by a bunch of disgruntled Germans who'd argued about parish debts and objected to the use of the Polish language in liturgy, then marched off to the other end of town with an attitude of: To hell with all you Polacks, we'll build our own!

And they did.

But St. Peter's lacked the commanding presence of St. Joseph's with its grandiose neo-baroque structure, onion-shaped minarets, Corinthian columns and five splendid altars. Neither had it the surrounding grounds with the impressive statuary and grotto that tourists came to see. Nor the real pipe organ whose full diapason trembled the rafters on Christmas Eve. Nor the clock tower, visible up and down the length of Main Street. Nor the cupola with three bells that regimented everyone's days.

And nobody was more regimented than Eddie.

At 7:30 each weekday morning he rang what was simply referred to as the first bell: six monotone clangs to give everyone a half-hour warning that church would soon start. At 8:00 a.m. he rang all three bells in unison to start Mass. At precisely noon he was there to toll the Angelus-twelve peals on a single bell that stopped all of downtown for lunch and reminded the very pious to pause and recite the Angelus prayer. During summer vacation every kid in town knew that when he heard the noon Angelus ring he had five minutes to get home to dinner or he'd be in big trouble! And at the end of each workday, though Eddie himself was usually home by five-thirty, he ran back to church at six p.m. to ring the evening Angelus that sat the entire town down to supper. On Sunday mornings when both high and low Mass were celebrated, he rang one additional time; two if there were evening vespers. And on Saturday evenings, for the rosary and benediction, he was there, too, before the service.

Bells were required at special times of the year as well: During Lent whenever the Stations of the Cross were prayed, plus at all requiem Masses and funerals. It was also Polish-Catholic tradition that whenever somebody died, the death toll announced it to the entire town, ringing once for each year the person had lived.

Given all this ringing, and the requirement that sometimes a minute of silence had to pass between each pull on the rope, Eddie had grown not only regimented, but patient as well.

Working around the children had taught him an even deeper form of patience. They spilled milk in the lunchroom, dropped chalky erasers on the floor, licked the frost off the windowpanes in the winter, clomped in with mud on their shoes in the spring, and stuck their forbidden bubble gum beneath their desks. Worst of all, right after summer vacation when all the floors were gleaming with a fresh coat of varnish, they worked their feet like windshield wipers underneath their desks and scratched it all up again.

But Eddie didn't care. He loved the children. And this year he had both of his own children in Sister Regina's room-Anne in the fourth grade and Lucy in the third. He had seen them outside at morning recess a little while ago, playing drop-the-hanky on the rolling green playground that climbed to the west behind the convent. Sister Regina had been out there with them, playing too, her black veils luffing in the autumn breeze.

They were back inside now, the drift of their childish voices no longer floating across the pleasant morning as Eddie did autumn clean-up around the grounds. He listened to the whirr of the feed mill from across town. It ran all day long at this time of year, grinding the grain the farmers hauled in as they harvested. Eddie liked the smell of it, dusty and oaty; reminded him of the granary on the farm when he was a boy.

The town was busy. There were other sounds as well: From Wenzel's lumberyard, a half block away, came the intermittent bzzzz of an electric saw slicing through a piece of lumber; and occasionally the rumble of the big, silver milk trucks returning to the milk plant with full loads, their horns bleating for admittance. Now and then the southwest wind would carry the metalic pang-pang of hammers from the two blacksmiths' shops-Sam Berczyk's on Main Street, and Frank Plotniks's right across the street from Eddie's own house.

Some might disdain his town because it was small and backward, clinging to a lot of old country customs, but Eddie knew every person in it, every sound lifting from it, and who made that sound. He was a contented man as he loaded a wheelbarrow with tools and pushed it over to the fishpond in Father Kuzdek's front yard to clean out the concrete basin that had grown green with algae over the summer. It was an immense yard, situated on the south of the church, with the rectory set well back from the street and fronted by a veritable parkland covering an entire half block. The statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary stood in a stone grotto near the street, a rose bed at her feet and a screen of lush green pines behind her. The long sidewalk to Father's house was flanked by great shade trees, intermittent flower beds and rock gardens, all of this surrounded by a fence substantial enough to stand till Judgment Day. The fence, of stone piers and black iron rails, set off the grounds beautifully, but it went clear around three sides of the church property and made for a lot of hand-clipping work when Eddie mowed the lawns. Sometimes though, the Knights of Columbus helped him mow and trim. They had done so last Saturday, the same loyal workhorses showing up as they always did.

Eddie was on his knees at the fishpond when he was surprised to see one of those workhorses, Conrad Kaluza, coming up Father's sidewalk. Con had hair as black as ink and whiskers to match, his cheeks dark even after a fresh shave. He owned a little music store on Main Street and always wore nice trousers and a white shirt open at the throat.

Eddie sat back on his heels, pulled off his dirty gloves and waited.

"Well, Con, what the heck are you doing up here at this time of day? Come to help me clean out this slimy fishpond?"

Con stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the grass. He looked pale and shaken.

"Hey, Con, you don't look so good. What's…"

Con squatted down on one heel in the shade beside the pond. Eddie noticed the muscles around his mouth quivering and his whiskers blacker than ever against his white face.

"What's the matter, Con?"

"Eddie, I'm afraid I got some bad news. There's, ah…" Con paused and cleared his throat. "There's been an accident."

Eddie tensed and looked southward, toward his house. His backside lifted off his heels. "Krystyna…"

" 'Fraid so," Con said.

"She okay, Con?"

Con cleared his throat again and dragged in a deep breath.

"I'm… I'm afraid not, Eddie."

"Well, what's…"

"A train hit her car at the crossing out by her folks' place."

"Jezus, Maria. " Eddie said in Polish-Yezhush, Maree-uh-and made the sign of the cross. It took a while before he could make himself ask, "How bad is it?"

When Con failed to reply Eddie shouted, "She's alive, isn't she, Con!" He gripped Con's arms, repeating, "Con, she's alive! She's just hurt, isn't she!"

Con's mouth worked and the rims of his eyelids got bright red. When he spoke his voice sounded wheezy and unnatural.

"This is the hardest thing I ever had to say to anybody."

"Oh God, Con, no."

"She's dead, Eddie. May her soul rest in peace."

Eddie's hands convulsed on Con's arms. "No…" His face contorted and he began rocking forward and backward in tiny pulsing beats. "She can't be. She's… she's…" Eddie looked north toward his in-laws. "She's out at her ma's house canning pickles. She said she was… she and her ma were… oh, Con, no, Jesus, no… not Krystyna!"

Eddie started weeping and Con caught him when he crumpled. Over at Wenzel's the saw started up. It sang a while and stopped, leaving only the sound of Eddie's sobbing.

"Not my Krystyna," he wailed. "Not my Krystyna…"

Con waited a while, then urged, "Come on, Eddie, let's go tell Father, and he'll say a prayer with you…"

Eddie let himself be hauled to his feet, but turned as if to head toward the school building on the far side of the church. "The girls…"

"Not now, Eddie. Plenty of time to tell them later. Let's go see Father first, okay?"

Father Kuzdek answered the door himself, a massive, balding Polish man with a neck and shoulders like a draft horse. He was in his early forties with glasses like President Truman's, their wire bows denting the sides of his round, pink face. He wore his black cassock most of the time and had it on today as he opened the door of his glassed-in porch and saw who was on his step.

"Con, Eddie… what's wrong?"

"There's been an accident, Father," Con told him.

"Come in."

While they moved inside Con explained, "It's Krystyna… she… her car… it was hit by the train."

Father went as still as if riddled by two hundred ten volts. Eddie had worked for the parish for twelve years. Father's concern for him went far beyond that of a priest for a pa-rishioner. "Kyrie eleison," he whispered in Latin. Lord have mercy. "Is she dead?"

Con could do no more than nod.

Father Kuzdek's breath left him like air escaping a ruptured tire. Rocking back on both heels he closed his eyes and lifted his face, as if begging divine sustenance. "Erue, Domine, animam ejus." Deliver her soul, O Lord, he prayed in an undertone, then caught Eddie around the shoulders with one beefy arm.

"Ah, Eddie, Eddie… what a tragedy. This is terrible. So young, your Krystyna, and such a good woman."

They took some time for their emotions to swell, then Father made a cross in the air over Eddie's head and murmured in Latin. He laid both of his huge hands right on Eddie's head and went on praying, ending in English, "The Lord bless you in this time of trial. May He guide you and keep you in this hour of travail." After making another cross in the air, Father dropped his hands to Eddie's shoulders and said, "I ask you to remember, my son, that it's not ours to question why and when the Lord chooses to take those we love. He has His reasons, Eddie."

Eddie, still weeping, bobbed his head, facing the floor.

Father dropped his hands and asked Con, "How long ago?"

"Less than an hour."

"Where?"

"The junction of County Road 89 and Highway 71 north of town."

"I'll get my things."

Father Kuzdek came back wearing his black biretta, carrying a small leather case containing his holy oils. They followed him to his garage, a small, separate building crowding close to the north side of his house and the rear of the church. He backed out his black Buick and Eddie got in the front, Con in the back.

The Reverend Anastasius T. Kuzdek commanded the driver's seat the way he commanded the respect of the town, for though Browerville had a mayor, its undisputed leader was this priest. In an area of the state where the vein of old world Catholicism ran deep, none ran deeper than in Father Kuzdek's parish. Legends were told about the man, about the time neither family members nor the local constable could break up a fight between two drunken brothers-in-law at a family reunion. But when Father Kuzdek was called in, he grabbed the pair in his beefy hands, conked their noggins together as if they were little more than two pool balls, and ended the fistfight on the spot. When he stood in the pulpit and announced, "The convent needs wood," firewood appeared like Our Lady appeared at Fatima, miraculously delivered into the nuns' yard already dried and split. When he ordered school closed on the feast day of St. Anastasius, his patron saint, there was no school and no complaint from the Archdiocese. Some bigwigs in St. Paul once decided that Highway 71 should be rerouted to bypass Browerville, taking along with it the frequent tourists who had stopped to see St. Joseph's, both the church and the grounds, and drop their money in the offerings box and spend more of it at the businesses in town. Kuzdek took on the Minnesota State Highway Department and won. Highway 71 still cut smack through downtown, creating its main street and flanking the front steps of St. Joseph's Church.

Father turned left onto the highway now. When he said, driving his Buick toward the scene of the accident, "Let us pray…" they did.

They spotted the red warning cloud from the fusee long before they saw the train itself. By now the cloud had stretched and drifted clear across the highway, stinging the air with its acrid sulphur fumes. The train, one of the little local freights, was only about twenty cars long, carrying hardware, grain, machinery, mail-hardly a deadly cargo, only the trappings of the ordinary lives lived in this peaceful rural area. They passed the caboose-even it had cleared the crossing-and paralleled the the train until they saw, up ahead, on the shoulder of the highway a gathering of vehicles: Constable Cecil Monnie's Chevrolet, a truck from Leo Reamer's D-X station, the sheriff's car, and Iten & Heid's hearse. Browerville was too small to have a hospital, so when the need arose, Ed Iten used his hearse as an ambulance.

As Father slowed down, Eddie stared. "It pushed her all this way?" he said, dazed. Then he saw his car, flattened and ripped and peeled off of the locomotive in sections. Beside the train a body was laid out on a stretcher.

He left the Buick and stumbled through hip-high grass down a swale in the ditch, up the other side, with Father and Con close on his heels. The train was still steaming, its pressure kept up by Merle who would periodically climb up to read the gauges and throw another shovelful of coal into the firebox. The engine gave a hiccup while across the tracks the herd of hoi steins continued to watch the goings-on from behind the barbed-wire fence. Nearer, the conductor, with his clipboard, stopped gathering accident data for the railroad company and stood in silent respect as he watched the party of three arrive.

Eddie Olczak would never again fear hell, for on that day, during those broken minutes while he knelt beside Krystyna's body, he experienced a hell so unfair, so unmerciful that nothing in this life or the next could pain him more.

"Oh, Krystyna, K-Krystyna, why…"

Falling to his knees beside her, he wept as the souls in purgatory surely wept: to be set free from the pain and the loss. With his face contorted, he looked up at those standing above him and asked, repeatedly, "Why? Why?" But they could only touch his shoulder and stand by mutely. "How am I g… going to tell my little girls? What will they d… do without her? What will any of us d… do without her?" They didn't know what to say, but stood there, feeling the shock of mortality come to stun them, too, as Eddie looked down at his dead wife. He took the collar of her dress between his fingers. "Sh… she made th… this dress." He looked up at them again, fixing on the pitiful fact. "D… did you know th… that? She in… made this dress hers… self." He touched it, bloody as it was, while Father Kuzdek kissed and donned his stole and dropped to one knee to pray.

"In nomine patris…"

Eddie listened to the murmuring of Father's voice as he administered Extreme Unction with the same voice that had said their wedding mass and baptized their children. He watched Father's oversized thumb anoint his wife's forehead with oils and make the sign of the cross on her ravaged skin.

Krystyna's parents came, and her sister Irene. They clung to Eddie in a forlorn, weeping band, and fell to their knees on the cinders, keening and rocking while Eddie repeated the same thing over and over. "Sh… she was on her way out to your house to c… can pickles with you… that's all she was g… going to do, Mary. That's where sh… she should be right… now. She should b… be at your h… house." And they stared through their tears at the wreckage of the fruit jars strewn along the railroad tracks, reflecting the noon sun like waves on a lake, imagining her loading them in the car a couple hours ago thinking she'd be returning home that night with all of the jars filled.

When they'd had time for weeping, Father gave a blessing to Mary, Richard and Irene, and the stretcher was borne through the ditch to the hearse, trailed by the bereaved. When the doors of the hearse closed, Mary asked her son-in-law, "Have you told Anne and Lucy yet?"

"Not yet." The thought started Eddie crying again, dully, and Krystyna's father clamped an arm around his shoulders.

"Do you want us with you when you do?" Mary asked, since Richard found himself still unable to speak.

"I… I don't know."

"We'll come with you, Eddie," Irene put in. "You know we'll come with you if you want."

"I don't know," he repeated with an exhausted sigh, looking around as if the holsteins in the field could provide an answer. "I think…" His gaze went back to Krystyna's family. "I think it's's… something I got to do alone. But you'll come over to the school with me, won't you?, I mean, I don't know wh… what's going to happen after. What do we…?" He stopped, unversed in the mechanics of death's aftermath, his mind refusing to function for the moment.

Father Kuzdek stepped in and said, "Come, Eddie. We'll tell the children together, you and I, and then you and Mary and Richard and Irene can all take them home."

"Yes," Eddie agreed, grateful to have someone tell him what to do next. "Yes, thank you, Father."

The little group dispersed to the various cars, a new dread spreading through them. For they all knew that as difficult as the last hour had been, the next one would be even worse: telling the children.

July 2, 1997

Dear Reader,

Greetings from Minnesota where I'm looking down from my second-floor office at our glorious new swimming pool and a totally relandscaped backyard. Much of last summer was devoted to planning and planting the terraced gardens and the serpentine perennial border around our new picket fence. It truly looks Victorian with the gazebo circled by blooming delphiniums and twin white swings hanging from our new pergola. Besides hundreds of perennials, I planted 1300 bulbs last autumn. This spring when they bloomed it looked like a little piece of heaven.

Most of the past year we had workmen in our faces everyday. We added a basement beneath the garage, an art gallery above it, and had our entire house re-sided. Whew! We didn't think our lives would ever get back to normal.

Last July I left the mess behind for five days and flew to Regina, Saskatchewan where Family Blessings was being filmed, starring Lynda Carter and Steven Eckholdt. Since it was directed by my dear friend, Deborah Raffin, it was a chance to spend time with her as well. Though the film has been completed for months, CBS-TV has not seen fit to air it. I've heard a rumor that it'll air sometime during the winter holidays of '97, but your guess is as good as mine.

Dan and I usually go somewhere in August each year. Last year we went to the Old Sheepherder's Inn in East Chatham, New York. We stayed in a lovely old converted barn with sheep grazing right beside our deck, and flowers at our door. Lots of my friends from the publishing world have country homes in that area, so we had a fabulous time meeting them for dinners and catching up. We also toured the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for the second time (We love it!) and drove up to Dorset, Vermont to overnight in a B &B.

Last summer was filled with other fun events-taking our red and white '57 Chev convertible to a couple of car shows, beginning a tradition of attending our little local county fair with our grandchildren; surprise birthday parties for nieces and nephews; having friends and rellies to our cabin. Sometimes I haul some pieces of my linen collection and champagne flutes to the cabin and set up a romantic table for four someplace out in the woods or meadow, and we have a champagne lunch accompanied by birdsong. This year we did it in April and after lunch all four of us stretched out in the sun and napped beside a beaver pond. Talk about peaceful.

Oh, almost forgot to tell you that last August, on my birthday, I accidentally bought two Jet Skis: purple and yellow and fast! Sometimes peaceful picnics beside beaver ponds just won't do it. That's when we get out the Jet Skis.

In November I flew out to L.A. to read the condensed version of Small Town Girl on audio tape for Dove. I had written a theme song for the book which I also sang on the tape. That was lots of fun, though my pipes have definitely become rusty from lack of use.

Also in November, Dan and I flew to New York to attend the Literary Guild party, and while we were there we and my editors saw Victor/Victoria on Broadway.

December brought a new delight: taking our grandkids to the Holidazzle Parade in Minneapolis. There was also a nostalgic sleigh ride in Wisconsin, with real draft horses; seasonal dinners for four in our cozy library; the fanciest Christmas party we've ever given, with seventy guests. Then came Santa on Christmas Eve with the house full of relatives, and Christmas morning here with our own precious four: daughter, Amy; son-in-law, Shannon; and our grandsons, Spencer and Logan, who are now ages one and two. I tell you, Christmases just get better and better as the boys get older.

New Year's Eve found me cooking a crown roast of pork for the first time in my life (What a relief, it turned out great!), as we and our neighbors rang in the New Year with a progressive dinner party. They're a fun bunch and we do lots of things as a group. This is only one of our annual events.

In January, Dan and I took Amy and Shannon to Grand Cayman and left the boys behind. We snorkeled, relaxed, and ate verrrry well.

Shortly after that trip my very favorite (and last surviving) aunt died. With her went my link to childhood vacations with my cousins and learning to dance and eating her good Polish cooking and lots of very special memories of my hometown and the time of my life when my mother and father were still married. I'm the oldest generation now, and I don't think I'm ready to be.

On February tenth, Dan and I celebrated our thirty-fifth anniversary with a trip to Palm Springs, California-our first there. And did we love it! Rendezvoused with some cousins and friends who showed us the town. We think we'll go back often.

The winter ended with nearly a month in Hawaii. We had three different sets of guests at our condo on Maui, where we snorkeled, sailed, laughed, relaxed, and played tourist while our ugly Minnesota winter wore itself out.

Spring arrived bringing a cold Easter, but we had a gang here for dinner and an Easter egg hunt, followed by more weeks of cold weather before those bulbs finally bloomed in the backyard. But when they did-shazam! I wish every one of you could have seen it.

It was in the midst of tulip season that I completed Then Came Heaven, a book set, appropriately, in my hometown of Browerville, Minnesota in 1950, the year I started grade school. My career began with The Fulfillment, also set in Browerville. I wanted my last book set there, as well. You see, Then Came Heaven will be the final book of my career. The day I sent it in, April 22nd, was the official beginning of my retirement. I have written since 1974 and have known for three years when I would retire. Though I suppose many of you will be disappointed that there'll be no more books, for me this is the beginning of a splendid time of life. There are still years to enjoy my good health, my grandchildren, my travels, and indulge myself in the luxury of devoting time to many creative pastimes that I set aside for nearly a quarter of a century while I was an author. I'm going to go to parades, join a bowling league, tour gardens, have some residents of the old folks' home over to my gazebo for lunch, decorate fancy Christmas cookies the way I used to, sew long gowns for my Victorian luncheons, loaf at our cabin-need I go on? My life as an author has been full, but it will be equally as full during the years ahead.

Already, since my retirement began, we've had a spectacular trip to Washington, D.C., and the Virginia countryside where we were guests at the home of America's premiere sculptor, Frederick Hart, some of whose works we own. Mr. Hart sculpted the three soldiers at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, among many other famous works. Besides the D.C. trip, we've been to wine tastings, a Minnesota Twins game, a parade comprised solely of marching bands, had an endless stream of guests over for swimming and dinner, been to a Glen Campbell concert, and been guests at our friends' new farm.

It's going to continue, too! On the Fourth of July there'll be twenty-three here for picnicing, swimming, volleyball on our new court, basketball on our new half-court, sack races and other traditional games, and a trip down the hill to watch our town's fireworks over the St. Croix River. The week after the fourth, it's a fancy gazebo luncheon for my six sisters-in-law, then a five-day visit from my friend, Deborah Raffin, and a weekend of babysitting Spencer and Logan-

And so it goes.

Sometimes I wonder why I don't run out of steam. But I live by the philosophy that life is not a dress rehearsal, so you have to pack as much fun into it as possible. Do it now!

As I say goodbye, I wish all of you the spirit and stamina to make as many memories as possible with your own lives. I wish you loved ones to do it with, a surprise now and then, and lots of laughter along the way.

Thank you for forking out all that money for so many of my books that you put me on those bestseller lists time after time after time. Thank you for the thousands of letters, and for all the hours you stood in line waiting for auto-graphs; for the gifts you've sent and the stories of your lives you've shared with me. You, my readers, have been the lifeblood of my career. Thanks again.

All my best wishes,

Lavyrle Spencer

Stillwater, Minnesota