Previously: Retired teacher Lucinda remembers her favorite student Vernon. Reality interrupts when another boarder Nancy scolds her for talking to her daughter Shirley. Lucinda remembers Vernon decided to marry Nancy but instead was drafted. Her last advice to him was less than kind. She has a vision of Vernon right after he was shot in Vietnam. Troubles of the day overwhelms her and she dreams of a a fire in the boardinghouse.
Bertha knocked at Lucinda’s door. “Lucy? Can I come in? I have to apologize. Lucy?” Coming through the door, she saw the teacher on her bed. The late afternoon sun spotlighted her limp body, her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. Bertha’s hand flew up to her mouth. “Emma! Cassie! Come here quick!”
Emma and Cassie rushed in. The mother goes over to the bed while the daughter comforted her aunt.
“What on earth is goin’ on here?” Emma peered at Lucinda’s face. “What a stupid look.”
“She’s dead, Emma.” Bertha had trouble forming the words. “I kinda got into a fit with her, just a few minutes ago. The last thing I ever said to her wasn’t very kind.”
“Don’t worry.” Cassie hugged her. “You didn’t know she was goin’ to die.”
“But you should always treat people like you was never goin’ to see them again, so that if the last thing they ever hear in life is from you, it’s somethin’ sweet,” Bertha replied, as though in a revelation.
“Don’t worry about it,” Emma told her sister. “At least she was paid up a month ahead.”
“We better call the hospital,” Cassie said.
“You call the police when you find somebody dead.” Emma spoke with a weary tone. Cassie should already know things like that.
“I never could figure that out,” Cassie muttered as she followed her mother and aunt down the staircase.
Nancy came in the front door but stopped short when she saw the three women coming down the steps. Bertha was wiping tears from her eyes, Cassie shook her head and Emma puffed deeply on her cigarette.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We jest found Miz Cambridge dead in her room,” Cassie replied.
“Oh no.” Nancy turned to look through the screen door at Shirley who was playing with a couple of neighborhood friends on the front lawn.
“I know you didn’t care for her much,” Emma said bluntly as she went toward the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry.” Nancy put a hand to the screen.
Bertha patted her on the back. “Don’t worry about it none. You didn’t know she was goin’ to drop dead.” She followed her sister down the hall.
“You goin’ to be all right, Nancy?” Cassie wrinkled her brow.
“I guess.”
“Well, if you need us we’ll be in the kitchen callin’ the cops.”
Nancy hurried up the stairs to Lucinda’s room. She didn’t want to go in, but something forced her, perhaps a sense of atonement. Walking over to the bed, Nancy was surprised to see a smile on the old woman’s face. She looked around the room until she found the college yearbook from the year she and Vernon were in school. She picked it up and turned to the page with Vernon’s picture. As she left the room, Vernon’s memory appeared again, as though evoked from dreams long abandoned. Going over to the bed, he tapped Lucinda’s shoulder.
“Mrs. Cambridge?” he whispered.
Lucinda’s eyes fluttered open. “Vernon?”
“Thanks for coming back to save me, Mrs. Cambridge. And thank you for Shirley.” He helped her to her feet.
She looked back on the bed to see her body, the serene smile still on her graying, cold face. “Then I’m dead?”
“Just like me.”
“Then if we’re still here, that means we must be someone else’s memory now.”
“As long as somebody thinks about you, you’re never really gone.”
Lucinda hugged Vernon. “Oh, whoever you are, remember us. Please remember!”
Nancy went out on the porch and called out, “Shirley! Come here!”
Shirley stopped talking with her friends to look at her mother. “What’s wrong?”
Nancy smiled at Shirley’s friends. “You girls need to go home now. Shirley can play later.”
The children walked away, looking back a couple of times. Shirley took each stair with apprehension. Nancy pulled her close, and they sat on the top step.
“Mrs. Cambridge, she’s dead,” Nancy whispered.
“What?”
“She was old, Shirley.” Gentleness entered her voice. “It was her time.” Nancy held up the yearbook and opened it to the right page. “You know that yearbook you wanted to look at? Well, here it is. Let me show you a picture.”
“Vernon Singleberry?” Shirley asked.
“Yes. A very sweet, wonderful man. He looked a whole lot like you.”