Three steps across the room . . . Cora twisted the ring at her finger, round and round, thumbing the little coffin-shaped box.

A door into the gloom . . . It took everything in her to mask the terror within, to force the determination above the fear, to feign the transfixture under which it believed she'd been placed.

A hole into her tomb . . . This was the only way to get it out of her head, out of her heart--because as much as she lived in it, it lived in her, and running from it would eat her from within.

Once buried, now exhumed . . . A crossing over and into, and then she was gone, her crimson chiffon disappearing in a silent billow behind her.