After nearly thirty years, the sister reappeared dragging behind her a large cloth sack. The sack was so heavy and full of stones that you could see exactly where she was coming from, everything in the path behind her lay flattened and dead. At first she stood in the road before the woman’s house and asked to be let in. By this time the woman had lived seven years in her house alone and she knew that what she didn’t want need not be invited in. When she didn’t answer, the sister came closer, up near the climbing rose that grew over the side of the porch by the front window. I have something for you, she said, pointing to the sack of stones, for each stone was a story she told about how she hadn’t really done anything she had done. Those aren’t my stones, said the woman to herself and still she didn’t answer. The sister became very angry because more than anything she wanted someone else to carry those stones, she didn’t like people to be able to see exactly where it was she was coming from. She pulled a large stone out of the bag and hurled it at the window, but it bounced back to her because the window was perfectly clear about who had done what. She threw more stones, thinking that surely one would break through but none, large or small, could get inside. Finally there was nothing for her to do but pick them up and go back the way she came, still dragging the large cloth sack and adding to it new stones for this part of the story. Inside, the woman walked slowly through her rooms, looking at everything each one held, moving small things around here and there and deciding what to do with the rest of her days.