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“Angels don’t come to Missouri, and sure not to talk to regular folks like us.”
    Later on that day, we were told that Grandma Benton had passed away down in Little Rock. Mama was spooked, and she shook her finger in my face. “You’re not to go tellin’ anyone about that dream,” she told me. “Especially not Brother Bartles down at the church. He wouldn’t take kindly to such sinful nonsense.”
    “Yes, Mama,” I said. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
    “Don’t be sorry.” She touched the side of my face and started to cry. “Just stay away from old Ignacio. He’s talkin’ out of his fool old head. Angels don’t come to Missouri on a regular day and talk to ordinary folk.”
    After that, I never dreamed about angels again.
    Not until I was seventy-eight years old, lying on the root cellar floor, and the tornado was howlin’ overhead. My sister, Ivy, come to me as an angel, her face all filled with love and her body awash in light. She reached out a hand, and all I wanted to do was take it. She was trying to say something to me, but I couldn’t make out the words.
    Then Jenilee Lane’s voice come through the darkness. Ivy darted off into the shadows and was gone.
    All I wanted was to make Ivy come back. I wanted to lay there real quiet, so she would come out of the shadows again. There was so much I needed to say to her.
    But it didn’t happen that way. Jenilee Lane took my arm, hoisted me up like a sack of potatoes, and dragged me back to the world.
    I’m not sure I was grateful to Jenilee at the time. The first thing I saw when I come out of the cellar was my house torn to bits, my things thrown everywhere, the stained-glass window that Olney brung all the way from New Orleans in 1944 smashed in the dirt.
    “Oh, Olney, it looks like heaven.” I still remembered saying that to him when he hung that window high in the eaves of the house we built with our own hands. The sun glittered through the colored glass dove and sent rainbows into the kitchen as the children ran and played, catching slivers of light like the shadows of butterflies. When I had hard times or bad days, I looked up at that window and it reminded me to be strong.
    All of a sudden, it lay shattered in the dirt beside the root cellar. I wondered how God could let such a beautiful thing be destroyed.
    Then Lacy touched my face, and suddenly that window didn’t matter much. I closed my eyes and prayed that the rest of my babies were all right, and thanked God for my poor little Lacy.
    When we brung her and the rest of the children home to Weldon’s place, and their house was fine, I told myself I’d not dwell on the misery of what happened to my house. When Weldon left to go help folks in town, and the rest of us sat at the dinner table, I told myself again and again that I wouldn’t let myself fall apart over losing my home.
    But I couldn’t look at the children. I couldn’t bear the sadness in the eyes of Cheyenne, Christi, Toby, and Anna. I knew they were thinking of all the good times we had at the old farm, and how there would never be any more now. I knew they felt like something had been stole away from us. I felt that way too.
    It don’t pay to dwell on misery anyway, Eudora.
    Janet popped up like she’d been shot from a gun as soon as the children finished eating. I reckon she couldn’t take the quiet anymore. “Come on, kids, grab your things and we’ll go to the spring to wash up. The power’s out, so we need to conserve what little water is in the storage tank here in the house.” She put on a brave little smile. “It’ll be . . . an adventure.”
    The other children headed for their bedrooms, but Lacy didn’t move, just sat staring at her plate. She didn’t seem to notice when Janet touched her shoulder. “You too, Lacy. We’ll go down and get all this soot washed off of you, and you’ll feel so much better, all right?”
    Lacy stood up without saying anything, walked to the door, and stood there staring out the