Trilogy

"Miriam": Miss Miller has spent her life as a governess for children in some of the most fashionable homes in New York. She is shocked one day to learn that one of her "babies" is expecting a baby of her own and rejects Miss Miller's offer to be the nurse for the forthcoming child. That night, Miss Miller meets Miriam, a strange young girl who resembles Miss Miller when she was a child. Miriam, critical of everything Miss Miller has or does, constantly taunts her about a loveless existence, leading to a violent confrontation and chilling denouement. "Among The Paths To Eden": Mary O'Meaghan, a spinster, strikes up a conversation in a Queens, New York cemetery with a widower who is putting flowers on his deceased wife's grave. After establishing a modest rapport, Mary reveals to the bemused man that she had come to the graveyard specifically looking for a lonely widower, inasmuch as a friend of hers had found two husbands in a cemetery. "A Christmas Memory": As Christmastime approaches in rural Alabama, a young boy and his best friend, an elderly woman distantly related to him, prepare for the holiday by gathering ingredients for their annual batch of fruitcakes for 'people who've struck our fancy'. On Christmas Eve, they talk with great anticipation of the next day, but underneath is the sad, almost unspoken knowledge that the boy is growing up and his cousin is getting older and more frail.