Bring on the dancing horses

I heart The STIG

Morgan's Passing

"She had once collected unicorns; she'd loved them. What had happened to her unicorn collection? Her roommate must have got it, or Goodwill had come, or it had simply been discarded. And think what else was gone: her favorite books she'd brought with her to college, her diary, her locket with her only picture of her father in it - a young man, laughing. She ached for all of them. She felt they had just this minute been ripped away from her. She thought of Aunt Mercer with her long-chinned, sharp, witty face, her pale, etched mouth always fighting back a smile. It was such a loss; she was so lost without Aunt Mercer.

"When she and I were girls, " Aunt Junie said, dragging herself to her feet, plunking her purse in Emily's lap, "we used to walk to school together. We were the only two girls from the Meeting and we kept to ourselves. Little did I guess I would be marrying her brother, in those days! I thought he was just a pest. We had these plans for leaving here, getting clean away. We were going to join the gypsies. In those days there were gypsies everywhere. Mercer sent off for a book on how to read the cards, but we couldn't make head nor tail of it. Oh, but I still have the cards someplace, and the string puppets from when we planned to put on shows in a painted wagon, and the elocution book from when we wanted to take up acting...and of course we had thoughts of becoming reporters. Lady news reporter. But it never came to anything. What if we'd known then how it would turn out? What if someone had told us what we'd really do - grow old in Taney, Virginia and die?"

She sat down then, and retrieved her purse from Emily, and closed her eyes and went back to waiting.

- Morgan's Passing
Anne Tyler
1980

Where is the line?