The Widow of Pine Creek(2)

Three days later, with the evening orchestra of crickets and cicadas around her, Sandra May sat on the porch of their house. . . . No, her house. It was so strange to think of it that way. No longer their cars, their furniture, their china. Hers alone now. Her desk, her company. She rocked back and forth in the swing, which she'd installed a year ago, screwing the heavy hooks into the ceiling joists herself. She looked out over the acres of trim grass, boarded by loblolly and hemlock. Pine Creek, population sixteen hundred, had trailers and bungalows, shotgun apartment buildings and a couple of modest subdivisions but only a dozen or so houses like this—modern, glassy, huge. If the Georgia-Pacific had run through town, then the pristine development where Jim and Sandra May DuMont had settled would have defined which was the rig ………………………………