Sometimes things happen, and it seems like the end of the world is coming. Yet, when the trouble is over life is a whole lot better than it was. That happened to me. I remember it clearly. It was, what you might call, a turning point in my life. A lot of the decisions my eighteen-year-old brother, Harley, and I made were probably wrong. Still, when you are a thirteen-year-old girl and have Frank Mattlock for a stepfather it clouds your judgment. We lived on a farm outside Dunkin, Arkansas. Frank thought the land belonged to him because he had married our mother, but I, Lugene Anna Canfield, vowed that would never be so. I loved that farm. It was in the northwest corner of Briar County. The land there lay in rolling hills, cut and crosscut by sparkling creeks, like a beautiful rumpled blue and green patchwork quilt. After our mother died, Harley and I lived in an uneasy truce with Frank. At least we did until one Friday morning.