Caroline opens her eyes. A dull ache in her head has grown to a stabbing pain and she can feel a pulse there, behind her right eye, with every beat of her heart. Looking around, she wonders, Where am I? Then she realizes she is in Sunny Haven, not twenty-one as she was in the moment she was just remembering but eighty years old, frail and old and broken, put here to spend the rest of her days. There’s no going back. Her life will end in this place as surely as Nick’s ended in that overturned tractor.
She can still see herself standing at the Bilyks’ front door on that crisp October morning, the shock of learning about Nick like someone chopping her down at the knees. Eldon grunted his condolences then turned on his heel without saying a word about Anton’s dog and took his festering anger home. Caroline doesn’t recall if either she or Eldon said a word in the truck after they left. She only remembers a mind-numbing anguish circling her throat like a noose, yet she couldn’t let Eldon see it. She made herself think about the orderly suitcase stashed under her bed; the tight rows of rolled underwear and stockings, her black patent church shoes wrapped in brown paper. Sport was on the porch when they got home, waving his tail. Eldon reached for the gun and got out of the truck, and before Caroline could stop him he pulled the trigger and shot him. Her grief spewed forth in a tide of rage and she sprang on Eldon, hitting him dead-on with the full breadth of her body. His legs splayed out from under him and the rifle flew up in the air. And then she was on him, pounding and slamming, her fists raining down, connecting with hard bone and soft flesh, yet he didn’t fight back. When she was spent, Caroline rolled onto her back. The sky was as blue as she’d ever seen it and it had no business being that way. The tears came then and she opened her mouth and wailed, loud and long; she didn’t care if the whole world could hear. Eldon stood up and went to bury the dog.
She got by the next weeks and months speaking barely a word. She quit eating and grew thin. When Eldon would catch her crying in the middle of the day, she would turn her back to him, and he let her, without comment or concern. Elvina finally told her the histrionics had gone on long enough; she needed to get over the loss of a pet and couldn’t she just get another dog? No one knew she was mourning the loss of the man she loved. She emptied the suitcase and put it away. There was no escape now. She resigned herself to the situation she had created. Before Christmas she told Eldon about the baby.