“No punishment?” Grandma said “unfortunately not Audrey. I haven’t been able to discipline your father for about a year, what with my arthrit...s.” Audrey looked at her mother sympathetically knowing she had spanked Grandpa all their married life. “Of course that has meant your father has been unbearable and uncontrollable at times. Really, I don’t know what would have happened if he had been caught drink driving.” Grandpa was embarrassed. Audrey though was not prepared to let the matter. That gave me three hours.I started typing and finished my short story in about fifteen minutes. My safety clause, as I thought of it, gave me until midnight when according to my story my eyes would turn blue. All I had to do was burn the paper before midnight and cancel everything out. With the story complete I pulled it from the machine and set it on my desk and then as I had written in the story I went to my mother's room and got one of her bras out of her dresser and then returned to my. Sherrill, why would you tell me about your own husband?”“I hate him! My mother sold me to him and he’s a ... a beast! Sick in the head, the things he makes me do.”Her face was flushed, her mouth in a grim line. I glanced at Cayuse; he was thinking of Rosie, same as me. A young girl in a man’s world.With permission from Rosie, I had sent her quilt back to Indianapolis, to the Gilmore Girls. It looked to me like a fine piece of work, but then so did Rebecca’s. Quilting just wasn’t my field.I did. Even my most buoyant of moods is subject to the quick stab of memory, like a slap across the face. Nights and mornings-the worst times for distant lovers. I lie in bed in the evening, unable to sleep. The evening drifts into the early hours of morning, which bear witness to my fits and starts. These are the times for melancholy, when the expense of a day’s energy has worn me down, and left me only able to reflect, and lapse into nostalgia. When sunlight wakes me some hours later, I stretch out,.