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Cousin Emma and Cousin Elec, brother and sister -- unmarried, devoted, aging -- had lived next door to the Stubblefields in Tuxapoka from time immemorial until the Stubblefields had moved to Montgomery fifteen years ago.

Two days before he was taken sick, Cousin Elec was out worrying about what too much rain might do to his sweetpeas, and Cousin Elec had always preserved in the top drawer of his secretary a mother-of-pearl paper knife which Theresa had coveted as a child and which he had promised she could have when he died.

I'm supposed to care as much now as then, as much here as there, she realized, with a sigh.

This letter would have got to me if she hadn't even put Rome, Italy, on it.