My voice was a lot quieter when I said, “You know, it’s like a desperation, looking for good things. Anything you can hold on to. And I looked, Preacher. I did. I tried to tell myself it was good she wasn’t sick for very long. Or it was good that she wasn’t in pain for very long. But neither of those are good because she was sick and in pain at all. So, there isn’t anything.”

“’Course not,” he muttered.

“I wish she’d met you,” I mumbled.

“Me too, cher.”

I stared across his chest at that desk and whispered, “Her last words to me were, ‘be sure to follow your star, honey.’”

“Follow your star,” he whispered back.

And when he did, it hit me.

I was.

I was following my star.

That’s what took me to Chicago.

I was following my star.

So, I started bawling again.

Preacher tucked me closer and kept holding me.

When I quit that time, he pulled me out of bed, took me to the bathroom and helped me wash my face.

And we were in front of the TV, cuddled together in the loveseat, watching It’s A Wonderful Life when my grandparents got home.

[Interviewer’s Note]

No tour of the cabin was offered by Lyla upon arrival.

We sat where she’d indicated, in the room the back door led to, a den with a daybed, where she sat cross-legged, a rolling desk chair patterned in zebra print, where she indicated I sit, a wood burning stove, tables and lamps scattered about.

And against the wall beside the brick fireplace, a pulldown desk.

Lyla:

Tommy was ex-military and no-nonsense, so Gramps liked him from the start.

Preacher had talked him around.

So, once Tom got back from Chicago, those three spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, and shooting man shit.

[Smiles].

I have pictures of them with their glasses of bourbon and ashtrays they never dumped out, spinning their yarns.

[Shakes head, still smiling, takes big breath and lets it go]

I didn’t know it, but Preacher hadn’t won him.

Not until the night we played euchre.

[Off tape]

Euchre?

It’s a card game. People in the Midwest take it pretty seriously.

It wasn’t that.

It wasn’t the euchre or that Preacher knew how to play.

It was that it was the day after Christmas.

Julia hadn’t called on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve and we were all upset about it. Sonia and I called and both left messages, but even though we were Dad’s children too, he didn’t call us.

Sonia was older than me, graduating from Purdue that coming summer.

When he made his play to kick us when we were down after Mom died, the only one he could get his hands on was Julia.