Let me tell you a story.
In the sweltering heat of summer in the shrub-steppe of eastern washington resided a girl, just a girl.
She worked at the Funeral Home taking calls and tapping files into computer systems, recording death certificates and printing folders, books and candles for services.
Eighteen had peaked and was beginning to wilt, a crisis in herself roused deep red and low to the earth, kept quiet and unaknowledged. Just a girl who had loved too much, the queen of heartbreak and master of her own lonliness.
She was to be married in late October to a man she hardley knew, but as impulsive as she may be also she maintained her