"Cassie, honey, are you there? Pick up, pick up if you can hear me." On the answering machine it was her aunt Edith, who'd never held a place of honor at the party of life.

"Pick up, I mean it." Edith's voice was full of worry and resentment.

Cassie reached for the phone without opening her eyes. "Hello, Aunt Edith," she mumbled miserably.

"Cassie, Cassie. How are you doing? I heard about poor Mitch. Why didn't you call me? Oh, my dear, my poor darling. Marsha told me he's very bad." Her voice sounded peevish that this could be happening without her knowledge.

"Yes, he's very bad," Cassie told her.

"Honey, I've been so upset what with the accident and all. I'm furious that you didn't call me. I'm your aunt. I should have been there for you. I could have driven you."

Edith's driver's license had been revoked years ago for moving violations that were so creative, no one else in the entire world had ever thought of them before, even in emerging third world countries. But that little detail never stopped her from taking the car out.

"There was no accident. Mitch had a stroke," Cassie told her.

"Your accident, honey. I'm talking about your accident. You had a head-on collision with a Mack truck. It's lucky you're alive. Oh Cassie, I'm so glad to hear your voice. Marsha told me you've been out of it for weeks."

Fighting the dream of her mother, the mummy, Cassie sat up and saw the light of the digital clock. Even without her glasses she could tell that it was eightA.M. How could she have slept a single minute when this was the day she was going to kill her cheating husband? Her heart started hammering away in her chest at the thought of turning off that respirator, watching him struggle for breath. Then canceling the credit of his mistress who drove the Jaguar that should have been hers. That bitch! Wherever she was. The billing address on the credit cards was Mitch's at the warehouse. She wondered how she was going to find out where that woman lived and shoot her in the face.

"What, honey? Speak up. I can't hear you."

"Nothing, I'm just all broken up," Cassie murmured. "This is so hard. I had a dream about Mother. I still miss her so much."

"I do, too, honey. Marsha told me you're lucky to be alive. I'm coming right over. I want to make sure you're all right."

"I had a face-lift," Cassie said quickly.

"What? I think we have a bad connection."

"We have a fine connection, Edith. Marsha lied. I had a face-lift."

There was a moment of silence. "You didn't have an accident?"

"Well, I had an accident, but it was planned. I know I never should have done it. I'm sorry now," Cassie admitted to the aunt who drove her crazy.

"How do you look, dear?" Edith asked at last.

"Terrible. I look just terrible." And my husband has a mistress, she didn't say.

Silence again as Edith tried to digest the news. "What about Mitch, honey, did he have a face-lift, too?"

"No, Mitch had a stroke."

"What bad timing. I'm so sorry. Is he… a-a… vegetable?" Edith asked bluntly.

"He's a piece of shit," Cassie told her.

"Oh honey, don't talk like that. I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose."

"Oh yes, he did it on purpose." Truth was truth. Cassie wasn't hiding from it now. She was up. The breathtaking spring sunlight had drawn her out of bed to the window, where she surveyed the mess of her yard after its first glorious spring bloom.

The tulips and daffodils and hyacinths were finished. The drying husks, listing to the ground, looked forlorn in the beds. Growing up between them, however, the peonies were blooming and the poppies were getting ready to burst open. A few days, maybe a week and those poppies would pop. Cassie had no time to clean up the beds. This upset her, too. She was a tidy person.

There she was yearning for the simple pleasure of cleaning out the old to make way for the new in her flower beds when she caught a movement by the edge of the garage. She was startled when a man walked boldly through the pretty white gate into her yard. Without her glasses she couldn't see him that well, but he had a black thing in his hand. He pointed it around, at the patio, at the pool. He pointed it at the garage. She was puzzled, but unafraid until he disappeared into the garage that she locked only from time to time. Then she became frightened. What was going on? What was the man doing in there? He didn't look like a thief. He was wearing a suit and some kind of hat. She couldn't see his face, but his movements didn't fit the furtive profile of a burglar.

Suddenly he emerged from the garage again and moved slowly toward the house, pointing the black thing up at the windows. Cassie stepped back behind the curtains. "I've got to go, Edith. I'll call you back," she whispered into the phone.

"What do you mean, you've got to go? You and Marsha have been avoiding me for two weeks. I'm not hanging up now," Edith retorted angrily. "Family has to stick together in troubled times. If you hang up this time, I'm coming over."

"Edith, there's a man with a gun in my backyard. I'll have to call you later. And don't come over. You don't have a driver's license."

Cassie hung up and peered into the yard from behind the curtain. The man was definitely pointing the gun her way. She gasped and ducked below the windowsill, half crawling to the chair where she'd left the sweater and khaki pants she'd worn the night before. Shaking all over like a teenager caught in a sex act, she fumbled with her clothes.

She knew right away that the man with the gun was a hit man Mitch had hired to kill her so his girlfriend could step in and be his wife without benefit of divorce. It was perfectly clear. He'd bought another house. His girlfriend was furnishing it. The house had to be someplace where no one knew what the real Cassie looked like. Now he was going to have her assassinated. He'd probably planned to move into his new house right after she was dead. Lucky for her he'd had a stroke instead. Life threw its little curves. She was trembling all over.

The phone started ringing again. "Shhh." She didn't have time to answer it. She got to the door of her room and looked down the hall. No one. She crawled below the window line to the stairs. There she froze. It occurred to her that one of the kids might have left a door unlocked, the door to the kitchen from the garage. Or maybe the basement or patio door. She almost never used the burglar alarm. The hit man could come in without a sound and shoot her with that gun. The phone kept ringing, but she was afraid to answer it. It rang and rang.

Cassie thought she was having a heart attack. What should she do? What could she do? The phone finally stopped ringing, and she breathed a sigh of relief at the sudden quiet. She had to think. Mitch had his stroke on Friday. Now it was Monday. What if the hit man had taken the weekend off and didn't know Mitch was in the hospital, didn't know there would be no one to pay him if he shot her and left her dead on the floor? She had to tell him that. But how could she talk to a hit man? They didn't give a shit. She was so scared, she could hardly breathe. All these years she'd believed Mitch was a dull and faithful husband, and now she had to face the fact that he was a crook and a killer, too. The phone started ringing again.

For the second time it rang and rang as she tried to figure out what to do. Finally it stopped ringing. Talking was useless. She knew she had to conquer her terror and get downstairs to lock all the doors and activate the alarm so the hit man couldn't get in and shoot her. She inched down the first stair. The phone didn't ring again. Cassie knew if it had been Edith, she wouldn't have given up. She wondered if it had been Mark or the hospital calling to say that Mitch had died. She wished she'd told Edith to call the police. Why hadn't she done that? Stupid.