Clara eyed the suitcase beside the dresser in her bedroom. Most days she tried to ignore it, forgetting the lovely dresses folded neatly inside. Choosing not to remember why she'd packed her best that day more than ten years before. Everything as it was when she was ready to elope at nineteen. A full decade had passed and still the townsfolk thought she had been affected by the events of that spring tent revival. She really didn't care what they thought; not back then, not now. Someday Percy Miller would come back to Healdton, Oklahoma. The little double-barreled derringer in her purse would remedy the problem when the time arrived. No one, not even a so-called man of God, messed with an Anderson and got away with it forever.Clara went downstairs and called through the dining room, toward the open kitchen door. "I'm going to town now, Dulcie." "It's about that time." Dulcie dried her hands on the tail of her starched apron. It had to be nigh on to 3:00. That's when Miss Clara always left the house with her hat set just so, her white gloves buttoned at the wrist.
