One night, she wakes up for no good reason. She doesn’t remember dreaming, and she isn’t hungry. But she wakes up, and instead of going back to sleep, she gets up and puts a robe slippers on and goes downstairs.

She walks through the quiet house, like she’s looking for something and she’ll know it when she sees it. She starts in the kitchen, goes through the pantry into the dining room, the streetlight falling just so on the candlesticks, like in a painting.

In the living room, standing with her furniture, she sees something out of the corner of her eye, out in the street. A woman standing out in the street.

She doesn’t remember opening the front door, or going down the porch steps, or what she might have said. She doesn’t remember anything except how the two of them used to run down hills together so fast holding hands, and how the grass rushed along underneath them, waiting for them, for when they fell, and how her chest felt tight and cold, and she is holding on so tight and Stevie is so cold and she doesn’t remember how to let go.

She doesn’t remember letting go, and then Stevie is gone.

And then, one night, Stevie is gone.

My name is Emily Bricker Skelton. I died of a burst appendix June 28, 1956.

May 17, 2004

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