Unfortunately, Verna’s suspicious habits had been very hard on Walter during the three years of their marriage. He taught history and civics at Darling Academy and lived in a world that was studded with indisputable facts, the way an oak door is studded with nails. As far as he was concerned, all you had to do to get along happily was to learn the facts and repeat them in the right order when you were called on, and everything would be honky-dory. Verna’s habit of asking questions that didn’t have any clear-cut answers had made him very uncomfortable, and if he hadn’t walked out in front of that Greyhound bus on Route 12 that rainy afternoon ten years ago, Verna suspected that they probably would have gotten a divorce before very long. Instead, Walter had ended up under a sycamore tree in the southwest corner of the Darling Cemetery, out on Schoolhouse Road, and Verna had ended up a widow.

The month before the accident, however, they had gone on a trip to New York together. It was their first vacation and their last, so you might call it Walter’s trip of a lifetime. His cousin Gerald had taken them on the new subway line from Manhattan all the way out to Coney Island to eat cotton candy and Nathan’s Famous frankfurters and ride the new 150-foot-tall Wonder Wheel, so high it seemed to scrape the sky. And then they took the ferry to Liberty Island, where they climbed all 354 steps inside the Statue of Liberty so they could look out from the windows of the crown and marvel at the magical city across the blue, blue water.

And on their last night Gerald had taken them to see the Naughty and Nice Sisters in Mr. Ziegfeld’s notorious Frolic, where Miss Lily Lake and Miss Lorelei LaMotte paraded onto the stage right over the heads of the gasping audience, on a runway made of see-through glass. In another act, scantily clad dancers strutted out into the audience, encouraging male customers to use the glowing tip-ends of their cigars to burst the balloons that covered essential parts of the girls’ anatomy. Walter had been bug-eyed, and even Verna couldn’t remember a more exciting evening.

So even though she swore she didn’t have a sentimental bone in her body, Verna certainly had a few sentimental memories and this was the best of them. Walter had been happy and she had been happy and that happiness had followed them like a rosy cloud all the way back to Darling, Alabama, where Walter had stepped out in front of the Greyhound bus and Verna had become a widow.

And there, just a half block ahead of her, teetering along on her ridiculous red high heels, was the reason for that happiness. Miss Lorelei LaMotte, who had put on a performance that had made Walter’s eyes bug and made Verna laugh out loud. Miss Lorelei LaMotte, who had given Verna and Walter something interesting and unusual to talk about on their long journey home. And Verna, who wouldn’t ordinarily have bothered to do any such thing, felt suddenly compelled to tell Miss LaMotte just how happy her performance had made them. She picked up her pace.