"Eddie, I'm afraid I got some bad news. There's, ah..." Con paused and cleared his throat. "There's been an accident."

Eddie tensed and looked southward, toward his house. His backside lifted off his heels. "Krystyna..."

" 'Fraid so," Con said.

"She okay, Con?"

Con cleared his throat again and dragged in a deep breath.

"I'm... I'm afraid not, Eddie."

"Well, what's..."

"A train hit her car at the crossing out by her folks' place."

"Jezus, Maria. " Eddie said in Polish-Yezhush, Maree-uh-and made the sign of the cross. It took a while before he could make himself ask, "How bad is it?"

When Con failed to reply Eddie shouted, "She's alive, isn't she, Con!" He gripped Con's arms, repeating, "Con, she's alive! She's just hurt, isn't she!"

Con's mouth worked and the rims of his eyelids got bright red. When he spoke his voice sounded wheezy and unnatural.

"This is the hardest thing I ever had to say to anybody."

"Oh God, Con, no."

"She's dead, Eddie. May her soul rest in peace."

Eddie's hands convulsed on Con's arms. "No..." His face contorted and he began rocking forward and

backward in tiny pulsing beats. "She can't be. She's... she's..." Eddie looked north toward his in-laws. "She's out at her ma's house canning pickles. She said she was... she and her ma were... oh, Con, no, Jesus, no... not Krystyna!"

Eddie started weeping and Con caught him when he crumpled. Over at Wenzel's the saw started up. It sang a while and stopped, leaving only the sound of Eddie's sobbing. "Not my Krystyna," he wailed. "Not my Krystyna..."

Con waited a while, then urged, "Come on, Eddie, let's go tell Father, and he'll say a prayer with you..." Eddie let himself be hauled to his feet, but turned as if to head toward the school building on the far side of the church. "The girls..."

"Not now, Eddie. Plenty of time to tell them later. Let's go see Father first, okay?" Father Kuzdek answered the door himself, a massive, balding Polish man with a neck and shoulders like a draft horse. He was in his early forties with glasses like President Truman's, their wire bows denting the sides of his round, pink face. He wore his black cassock most of the time and had it on today as he opened the door of his glassed-in porch and saw who was on his step. "Con, Eddie... what's wrong?" "There's been an accident, Father," Con told him. "Come in." While they moved inside Con explained, "It's Krystyna... she... her car... it was hit by the train." Father went as still as if riddled by two hundred ten volts. Eddie had worked for the parish for twelve years. Father's concern for him went far beyond that of a priest for a pa-rishioner. "Kyrie eleison," he whispered in Latin. Lord have mercy. "Is she dead?"

Con could do no more than nod. Father Kuzdek's breath left him like air escaping a ruptured tire. Rocking back on both heels he closedhis eyes and lifted his face, as if begging divine sustenance. "Erue, Domine, animam ejus." Deliver hersoul, O Lord, he prayed in an undertone, then caught Eddie around the shoulders with one beefy arm.

"Ah, Eddie, Eddie... what a tragedy. This is terrible. So young, your Krystyna, and such a good

woman."

They took some time for their emotions to swell, then Father made a cross in the air over Eddie's head and murmured in Latin. He laid both of his huge hands right on Eddie's head and went on praying, ending in English, "The Lord bless you in this time of trial. May He guide you and keep you in this hour of

travail." After making another cross in the air, Father dropped his hands to Eddie's shoulders and said, "I ask you to remember, my son, that it's not ours to question why and when the Lord chooses to take those we love. He has His reasons, Eddie."

Eddie, still weeping, bobbed his head, facing the floor.

Father dropped his hands and asked Con, "How long ago?"

"Less than an hour."

"Where?"

"The junction of County Road 89 and Highway 71 north of town."

"I'll get my things."

Father Kuzdek came back wearing his black biretta, carrying a small leather case containing his holy oils. They followed him to his garage, a small, separate building crowding close to the north side of his house and the rear of the church. He backed out his black Buick and Eddie got in the front, Con in the back.

The Reverend Anastasius T. Kuzdek commanded the driver's seat the way he commanded the respect of the town, for though Browerville had a mayor, its undisputed leader was this priest. In an area of the state where the vein of old world Catholicism ran deep, none ran deeper than in Father Kuzdek's parish. Legends were told about the man, about the time neither family members nor the local constable could break up a fight between two drunken brothers-in-law at a family reunion. But when Father Kuzdek was called in, he grabbed the pair in his beefy hands, conked their noggins together as if they were little more than two pool balls, and ended the fistfight on the spot. When he stood in the pulpit and announced, "The convent needs wood," firewood appeared like Our Lady appeared at Fatima, miraculously delivered into the nuns' yard already dried and split. When he ordered school closed on the feast day of St. Anastasius, his patron saint, there was no school and no complaint from the Archdiocese. Some bigwigs in St. Paul once decided that Highway 71 should be rerouted to bypass Browerville, taking along with it the frequent tourists who had stopped to see St. Joseph's, both the church and the grounds, and drop their money in the offerings box and spend more of it at the businesses in town. Kuzdek took on the Minnesota State Highway Department and won. Highway 71 still cut smack through downtown, creating its main street and flanking the front steps of St. Joseph's Church.

Father turned left onto the highway now. When he said, driving his Buick toward the scene of the accident, "Let us pray..." they did.

They spotted the red warning cloud from the fusee long before they saw the train itself. By now the cloud had stretched and drifted clear across the highway, stinging the air with its acrid sulphur fumes. The train, one of the little local freights, was only about twenty cars long, carrying hardware, grain, machinery, mail-hardly a deadly cargo, only the trappings of the ordinary lives lived in this peaceful rural area. They passed the caboose-even it had cleared the crossing-and paralleled the the train until they saw, up ahead, on the shoulder of the highway a gathering of vehicles: Constable Cecil Monnie's Chevrolet, a truck from Leo Reamer's D-X station, the sheriff's car, and Iten & Heid's hearse. Browerville was too small to have a hospital, so when the need arose, Ed Iten used his hearse as an ambulance.

As Father slowed down, Eddie stared. "It pushed her all this way?" he said, dazed. Then he saw his car, flattened and ripped and peeled off of the locomotive in sections. Beside the train a body was laid out on a stretcher.

He left the Buick and stumbled through hip-high grass down a swale in the ditch, up the other side, with Father and Con close on his heels. The train was still steaming, its pressure kept up by Merle who would periodically climb up to read the gauges and throw another shovelful of coal into the firebox. The engine gave a hiccup while across the tracks the herd of hoi steins continued to watch the goings-on from behind the barbed-wire fence. Nearer, the conductor, with his clipboard, stopped gathering accident data for the railroad company and stood in silent respect as he watched the party of three arrive.

Eddie Olczak would never again fear hell, for on that day, during those broken minutes while he knelt beside Krystyna's body, he experienced a hell so unfair, so unmerciful that nothing in this life or the next could pain him more.

"Oh, Krystyna, K-Krystyna, why..."

Falling to his knees beside her, he wept as the souls in purgatory surely wept: to be set free from the pain and the loss. With his face contorted, he looked up at those standing above him and asked, repeatedly, "Why? Why?" But they could only touch his shoulder and stand by mutely. "How am I g... going to tell my little girls? What will they d... do without her? What will any of us d... do without her?" They didn't know what to say, but stood there, feeling the shock of mortality come to stun them, too, as Eddie looked down at his dead wife. He took the collar of her dress between his fingers. "Sh... she made th... this dress." He looked up at them again, fixing on the pitiful fact. "D... did you know th... that? She in... made this dress hers... self." He touched it, bloody as it was, while Father Kuzdek kissed and donned his stole and dropped to one knee to pray.

"In nomine patris ..."

Eddie listened to the murmuring of Father's voice as he administered Extreme Unction with the same voice that had said their wedding mass and baptized their children. He watched Father's oversized thumb anoint his wife's forehead with oils and make the sign of the cross on her ravaged skin.

Krystyna's parents came, and her sister Irene. They clung to Eddie in a forlorn, weeping band, and fell to their knees on the cinders, keening and rocking while Eddie repeated the same thing over and over. "Sh... she was on her way out to your house to c... can pickles with you... that's all she was g... going to do, Mary. That's where sh... she should be right... now. She should b... be at your h... house." And they stared through their tears at the wreckage of the fruit jars strewn along the railroad tracks, reflecting the noon sun like waves on a lake, imagining her loading them in the car a couple hours ago thinking she'd be returning home that night with all of the jars filled.

When they'd had time for weeping, Father gave a blessing to Mary, Richard and Irene, and the stretcher was borne through the ditch to the hearse, trailed by the bereaved. When the doors of the hearse closed, Mary asked her son-in-law, "Have you told Anne and Lucy yet?"

"Not yet." The thought started Eddie crying again, dully, and Krystyna's father clamped an arm around his shoulders.

"Do you want us with you when you do?" Mary asked, since Richard found himself still unable to speak.

"I... I don't know."

"We'll come with you, Eddie," Irene put in. "You know we'll come with you if you want."

"I don't know," he repeated with an exhausted sigh, looking around as if the holsteins in the field could provide an answer. "I think..." His gaze went back to Krystyna's family. "I think it's's... something I got to do alone. But you'll come over to the school with me, won't you?, I mean, I don't know wh... what's going to happen after. What do we... ?" He stopped, unversed in the mechanics of death's aftermath, his mind refusing to function for the moment.

Father Kuzdek stepped in and said, "Come, Eddie. We'll tell the children together, you and I, and then you and Mary and Richard and Irene can all take them home."

"Yes," Eddie agreed, grateful to have someone tell him what to do next. "Yes, thank you, Father."

The little group dispersed to the various cars, a new dread spreading through them. For they all knew that as difficult as the last hour had been, the next one would be even worse: telling the children.

July 2, 1997.

Dear Reader, Greetings from Minnesota where I'm looking down from my second-floor office at our glorious new swimming pool and a totally relandscaped backyard. Much of last summer was devoted to planning and planting the terraced gardens and the serpentine perennial border around our new picket fence. It truly looks Victorian with the gazebo circled by blooming delphiniums and twin white swings hanging from our new pergola. Besides hundreds of perennials, I planted 1300 bulbs last autumn. This spring when they bloomed it looked like a little piece of heaven.

Most of the past year we had workmen in our faces everyday. We added a basement beneath the garage, an art gallery above it, and had our entire house re-sided. Whew! We didn't think our lives would ever get back to normal.

Last July I left the mess behind for five days and flew to Regina, Saskatchewan where Family Blessings was being filmed, starring Lynda Carter and Steven Eckholdt. Since it was directed by my dear friend, Deborah Raffin, it was a chance to spend time with her as well. Though the film has been completed for months, CBS-TV has not seen fit to air it. I've heard a rumor that it'll air sometime during the winter holidays of '97, but your guess is as good as mine.

Dan and I usually go somewhere in August each year. Last year we went to the Old Sheepherder's Inn in East Chatham, New York. We stayed in a lovely old converted barn with sheep grazing right beside our deck, and flowers at our door. Lots of my friends from the publishing world have country homes in that area, so we had a fabulous time meeting them for dinners and catching up. We also toured the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for the second time (We love it!) and drove up to Dorset, Vermont to overnight in a B&B.

Last summer was filled with other fun events-taking our red and white '57 Chev convertible to a couple of car shows, beginning a tradition of attending our little local county fair with our grandchildren; surprise birthday parties for nieces and nephews; having friends and rellies to our cabin. Sometimes I haul some pieces of my linen collection and champagne flutes to the cabin and set up a romantic table for four someplace out in the woods or meadow, and we have a champagne lunch accompanied by birdsong.

This year we did it in April and after lunch all four of us stretched out in the sun and napped beside a beaver pond. Talk about peaceful.

Oh, almost forgot to tell you that last August, on my birthday, I accidentally bought two Jet Skis: purple and yellow and fast! Sometimes peaceful picnics beside beaver ponds just won't do it. That's when we get out the Jet Skis.

In November I flew out to L.A. to read the condensed version of Small Town Girl on audio tape for Dove. I had written a theme song for the book which I also sang on the tape. That was lots of fun, though my pipes have definitely become rusty from lack of use.

Also in November, Dan and I flew to New York to attend the Literary Guild party, and while we were there we and my editors saw Victor/Victoria on Broadway.

December brought a new delight: taking our grandkids to the Holidazzle Parade in Minneapolis. There was also a nostalgic sleigh ride in Wisconsin, with real draft horses; seasonal dinners for four in our cozy library; the fanciest Christmas party we've ever given, with seventy guests. Then came Santa on Christmas Eve with the house full of relatives, and Christmas morning here with our own precious four: daughter, Amy; son-in-law, Shannon; and our grandsons, Spencer and Logan, who are now ages one and two. I tell you, Christmases just get better and better as the boys get older.

New Year's Eve found me cooking a crown roast of pork for the first time in my life (What a relief, it turned out great!), as we and our neighbors rang in the New Year with a progressive dinner party. They're a fun bunch and we do lots of things as a group. This is only one of our annual events.

In January, Dan and I took Amy and Shannon to Grand Cayman and left the boys behind. We snorkeled, relaxed, and ate verrrry well.

Shortly after that trip my very favorite (and last surviving) aunt died. With her went my link to childhood vacations with my cousins and learning to dance and eating her good Polish cooking and lots of very special memories of my hometown and the time of my life when my mother and father were still married. I'm the oldest generation now, and I don't think I'm ready to be.

On February tenth, Dan and I celebrated our thirty-fifth anniversary with a trip to Palm Springs, California-our first there. And did we love it! Rendezvoused with some cousins and friends who showed us the town. We think we'll go back often.

The winter ended with nearly a month in Hawaii. We had three different sets of guests at our condo on Maui, where we snorkeled, sailed, laughed, relaxed, and played tourist while our ugly Minnesota winter wore itself out.

Spring arrived bringing a cold Easter, but we had a gang here for dinner and an Easter egg hunt, followed by more weeks of cold weather before those bulbs finally bloomed in the backyard. But when they did-shazam! I wish every one of you could have seen it.

It was in the midst of tulip season that I completed Then Came Heaven, a book set, appropriately, in my hometown of Browerville, Minnesota in 1950, the year I started grade school. My career began with The Fulfillment, also set in Browerville. I wanted my last book set there, as well. You see, Then Came Heaven will be the final book of my career. The day I sent it in, April 22nd, was the official beginning of my retirement. I have written since 1974 and have known for three years when I would retire. Though I suppose many of you will be disappointed that there'll be no more books, for me this is the beginning of a splendid time of life. There are still years to enjoy my good health, my grandchildren, my travels, and indulge myself in the luxury of devoting time to many creative pastimes that I set aside for nearly a quarter of a century while I was an author. I'm going to go to parades, join a bowling league, tour gardens, have some residents of the old folks' home over to my gazebo for lunch, decorate fancy Christmas cookies the way I used to, sew long gowns for my Victorian luncheons, loaf at our cabin-need I go on? My life as an author has been full, but it will be equally as full during the years ahead.

Already, since my retirement began, we've had a spectacular trip to Washington, D.C., and the Virginia countryside where we were guests at the home of America's premiere sculptor, Frederick Hart, some of whose works we own. Mr. Hart sculpted the three soldiers at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, among many other famous works. Besides the D.C. trip, we've been to wine tastings, a Minnesota Twins game, a parade comprised solely of marching bands, had an endless stream of guests over for swimming and dinner, been to a Glen Campbell concert, and been guests at our friends' new farm.

It's going to continue, too! On the Fourth of July there'll be twenty-three here for picnicing, swimming, volleyball on our new court, basketball on our new half-court, sack races and other traditional games, and a trip down the hill to watch our town's fireworks over the St. Croix River. The week after the fourth, it's a fancy gazebo luncheon for my six sisters-in-law, then a five-day visit from my friend, Deborah Raffin, and a weekend of babysitting Spencer and Logan- And so it goes.

Sometimes I wonder why I don't run out of steam. But I live by the philosophy that life is not a dress rehearsal, so you have to pack as much fun into it as possible. Do it now!

As I say goodbye, I wish all of you the spirit and stamina to make as many memories as possible with your own lives. I wish you loved ones to do it with, a surprise now and then, and lots of laughter along the way.

Thank you for forking out all that money for so many of my books that you put me on those bestseller lists time after time after time. Thank you for the thousands of letters, and for all the hours you stood in line waiting for auto-graphs; for the gifts you've sent and the stories of your lives you've shared with me. You, my readers, have been the lifeblood of my career. Thanks again.

All my best wishes, Lavyrle Spencer.

Stillwater, Minnesota.