I believe the best rule in telling a story is to follow events chronologically. So let me mention that just about the time last summer when Phillip and I were trying to settle into the constraints of wedded bliss (After two years, I was still miserable with the poor choice I had made in a husband) I had an unexpected visitor.

There I was, busy in my garden, with the birds twittering about me, and the yellow leaves falling; and my thick gauntlets on my slender hands. How fresh and pretty I looked, in that sad solitude, with the background of the dull crimson brick and the climbing roses. Bars of sunshine fell through the branches above, across the thick tapestry of blue, yellow, and crimson, which glows so richly upon their deep green ground.

There was not much to be done just then, I fancy, in the gardening way; but work is found or invented?for sometimes the hour is dull, and that bright, spirited, and at heart, it may be, bitter exile, will make out life somehow. There is music, and drawing. There are flowers, as we see, and two or three correspondents, and walks to the market; and my dark and brooding husband, Phillip. He drives to town sometimes and is not always silent and in good cheer upon his return, but drunk on cheap gin and brutish; and indeed, we are a good deal together. We are together more than I care to admit or enjoy.

My little Eden though overshadowed and encompassed with the solemn cloister of nature?s building, and vocal with sounds of innocence?the songs of birds, and sometimes those of its young mistress?was no more proof than the haunt of our first parents against the intrusion of darker spirits. So, as I worked, I lifted up my eyes, and beheld a rather handsome man standing at the little wicket of my garden, with his gloved hand on the latch. A man of fashion?a town man?his dress bespoke him: smooth cheeks, dark smooth hair, and eyes very peculiar both in shape and color, and something of elegance of finish in his other features. That he appeared of general grace in the world around him, struck me at once with a simple glance. He was smiling silently and slyly on me, who, with a little cry of surprise, said??Oh, you gave me a fright.?

?Yes, Keely, you see I?ve found you out;? and his eye wandered, still smiling oddly, over the front of my quaint habitation. ?It?s a confounded deal more like the ?Valley of the Shadow of Death?, your little garden here in the mess of a world. Wouldn?t you agree?? the stranger continued, apparently not being blessed with a remarkably sweet temper or patience.

I looked straight at him with large eyes and compressed lips, and nodded my head two or three times, just murmuring, For you see, I was dumbstruck into silence. First, for the fascinating fact that the man seemed to know me, but I did not know him, and twice a startled jolt for the odd manner of his words.

?Aren?t you afraid of being robbed and murdered, Keely?? he said, leaning forward to smell at the pretty blanket of flowers I was ruthlessly tending to. ?There are lots of those burglar fellows going about, you know.? said the young man gently, just lifting his eyes for a second with another unpleasant glare.

The pleasure that one can receive from taking a walk on a late summer day has oft been underestimated. It makes you glad to be alive. You see colors like you haven?t seen them in a very long time. The sky seems bluer, the reds of leaves seem more red, and the smell of the soil begins to take on that earthy smell of rot. So I took this time to pay Keely my first little visit since the train incident, which by now is likely a faded memory, my face long since forgotten. She looked so pretty as she busied herself in her garden that it made me quite happy that she actually failed to fall beneath the steel wheels of the train.

It made me smile.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x174/Flyguyii/DalMikulas8a.jpg
?I lifted up my eyes, and beheld a rather handsome man
standing at the little wicket of my garden, with his gloved hand on the latch.
A man of fashion?a town man?his dress bespoke him: smooth cheeks,
dark smooth hair, and eyes very peculiar both in shape and color, and
something of elegance of finish in his other features.?


I made some light conversation about such mundane things as burglars and murderers, but that didn?t seem to faze her in the least. I can only assume that when one eradicates your significant other, you begin to have much more in common with those whom you might have previously avoided at all costs, finding them not so offensive after all.

To be perfectly honest, it bothered me that she was not more concerned about protecting herself against people who were like me, for that could only result in making my job much too easy and far less enjoyable. She was beginning to irritate me, and that was just what I needed.

I quickly turned and departed her company, and her garden. I headed back down the path with thoughts of her demise and the success of my plans.

Yes, late summer walks can be most enjoyable.

It made me smile.

At the risk of sounding stodgy, I like my neighborhood. It is the sort of place where mothers are home all day chatting over fences and across yards while they hang out the laundry. They see their older children off to school and then clean the house and make the beds or do the laundry while their younger ones play around the house or in the yard.

Their husbands walk to work. Many women still iron sheets and pillowcases and darn their husbands' socks. They take hot dishes to school potlucks and organize church socials. Evenings are spent talking and playing games. It is a good, decent neighborhood. Dull, boring, not a bit of excitement. But it was descent.

So you can imagine my dismay when I awoke to a shriek that pierced the calm morning air and had me so startled I fell right out of bed. Banging my funny bone on the nightstand as I crawled toward the window, I carefully peeked over the ledge to see if it was that devilish-won?t-stay-put Phillip stumbling around the yard, caked in mud and maggots, looking for the morning post.

But, right there toward the end of my invisible property line (For we are all very much stickler?s to what is mine and what is decidedly not yours. We guard those invisible lines with every ounce of our being, lest someone trespass against us), were Miss Criswell and Mrs. Wallace, standing firm with their beefy hands upon their hips, chatting like two old hens with their collective pair of disapproving eyes directed squarely toward the smallest Wallace child, who even at this early hour, was blaring and caterwauling about her kitten being stuck in the tree. With her arms stretched upward to the heavens, she was throwing herself a perfectly exquisite little tantrum! Oh, how I do want children some day.

Rising to my feet, I checked my elbow for damage, as funny bone injuries had a way of coming back to haunt you at the most ridiculous moments, and started to turn from the window. Except for?that?sign.

Movement was arrested from me in an instant. Breath held fast in my lungs, I told myself twice and then again, I was just imagining it. Like the dead Phillip visit before. It isn?t really there!

With an exaggeratedly slow turn of my head, I stared out that picture-perfect frame of a window down into my garden.

But it was. In a pet cemetery it would have been charming in it?s simplicity and rudimentary fashion.

My husband had been marked and granted a cross for his final resting place.

You never really know what panic feels like until you experience it first hand. It hits you like a Mack-truck, steals away any rational thought you were sure you possessed just a fraction of a moment before, and plummets your heart straight to your feet.

But my feet were working, even if my brain wasn?t. Without thinking about it, I was turning for the bedroom door and running. Racing down the stairs, I shot out the front door and sprinted to the garden across slick, dew-stained grass. My arrival into the garden was no less spectacular than my departure out of the house.