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Sleep would not come to Margo that night. She tried walking upstairs to the living, her terry cloth robe wrapped about her. When she reached for the poker to stoke the dying embers in the fireplace, she got a jolt of static electricity. Damn Santa Fe and damn New Mexico, she thought. Always so dry in February. Margo nestled herself among the pillows on her sofa and soaked in the fire’s dying warmth.

At least she’d be going to Florida tomorrow morning, but she needed to have sleep. It would be difficult to deal with her cousins and Aunt Marcia’s friends in Stuart. All those plastic surgery victims her aunt had surrounded herself with. Why hadn’t she moved Aunt Marcia out to Santa Fe after the stroke? But she’d insisted, she’d be happier in her own home.

Margo looked out the bay window. The full moon bounced off the Sangre de Cristo mountains off in the distance. She felt lonely all of a sudden – she always did in those wee hours after midnight when sleep wouldn’t come to her, and Norman’s snoring drove her to this living room of isolation. She stood up and walked over to the window for an up close look at the mountains. Perhaps they couldn’t sleep, either, and perhaps they were lonely, too.

Margo sighed. Better to get it over with now than wait another two hours. She had to be up at seven to make the airport on time. So she went into the bathroom and drank from the Listerine bottle. She stared at herself in the mirror and saw wrinkles she’d never noticed before. Next in line, after Aunt Marcia, she’d be the next one to go. Within minutes, she could feel the alcohol coarse through her veins. She lay in the bed and tuned out Norman’s snoring.