He looked at me.
Then at the screen.
Then, slowly, past me, at the old photograph by the door.
At the young woman in the white dress with the little blue flowers. Holding a shovel. Smiling so big.
His face went the color of skim milk.
He picked up the phone on his desk.
His hand was shaking so badly he had to dial twice.
I’m going to tell you what was on that screen. But first I have to tell you how it got there.
Because it took fifty-eight years. And a lot of pie.
I was born Dorothy Mae Lund in 1947, on a dairy farm three miles south of Millbrook. The youngest of six. My father milked forty Holsteins twice a day for thirty years and never took a vacation. My mother kept chickens and a garden and canned enough tomatoes every August to feed a small army.
