Wistful evenings sometimes begin with sunny afternoons and there is a certain part of me that likes being wistful. Miss Glenly understood that feeling more than anyone did when I was fourteen years old, walking home from school, stopping at her sunny house for a glass of iced tea and conversation during the prelude to sunset. She was cool for a sixty-seven year old woman, I thought. In the small town where we lived, Miss Glenly had knowledge of a wider world. Some of that knowledge turned out to be terrifying.She lived alone in a modest but nice, well-kept wooden house with a screened-in sun porch amid plants and books, some comfortable wicker chairs and a porch swing. Miss Glenly was a retired English teacher. Her husband had been Head of the Psychology Department at a nearby college before he died under vague circumstances.

“He was very ill, for quite some time,” is all Miss Glenly would say.

We sat in the wicker chairs and she brought out two glasses of delicious iced tea with orange slices instead of lemon wedges.

“What are you reading now?” she always asked. “Still into Double-O-Seven?”

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