Cassie slowed the car as she dipped under the railroad trestle and approached a stop sign at the intersection of Brower and Sterling.  As she came to a halt, she noticed movement on the far side of the road.  A man in chinos and blue sweater was walking on the shoulder, headed west toward Arlington at a leisurely pace. 

The roads skirted the industrial area, out of Cassie’s normal route to church, school, and shopping mart, although she faintly remembered traveling Brower to a high school football game between the Gophers and the Colts.  It was the year the Grand Prairie boys broke into the stall of their white Shetland and painted Little Arlie a startling blue.

 Cassie sat still for a moment, watching the man’s progress.  A handsome man by any measure; strong limbs and a solid jaw beneath a tousle of sorrel hair that moved slightly in the autumn breeze.  As he passed the car he gazed directly at Cassie, and a slight smile creased the corners of his mouth. Cassie returned the gaze with interest.

Slowly Cassie began to feel the heaviness that had settled in her chest, and she labored to breathe through the rash of emotions that flooded in.  It had been a very long time since she had felt that mysterious electrical charge between a man and a woman, that unseen, unspoken invitation of body to body, and she was surprised at the intensity. 

She wanted that man.  Cassie Evans, married mother of three, wanted a perfect stranger.  All she would have to do is turn the car around.  She did not fear rejection; she knew she was an attractive woman — not from her husband but from the advances of other strangers, of friends, of husbands of friends.  “All I have to do is hang a U-turn.”

At first she thought the stinging in her eyes was from the Texas sun glinting on her car windshield, but then the tears puddled and spilled above her cheek.  Cassie hungered for a lover to touch her, to fill that tiny hidden cavern that only he could find, and she felt her own desolation and those of women before her and of those yet to come.

Cassie was aware of the risk, the exacting price demanded to balance the universal scales, at best regrets.  She glanced into her rearview mirror and could see the blue-clad figure moving under the trestle, then out of sight.  Just once.  Just this once she wanted to put aside responsibilities and vows.

Shame tainted Cassie’s body long before she had sinned,  The temptation was sin enough, and now she pounded the rim of her steering wheel and rocked back and forth in a slow mournful ritual.  Whatever had happened to her princess dreams or were there never any promises and was she a fool for wishing.

Momentarily her eyes spied the pasture beyond a slatted fence on the corner, and a faded billboard for the defunct Grand Prairie Feed.  A few Indian paintbrush peeked out among the ragweed and sere patches of earth.  Hardy tendrils of ivy desperately clung to the sign’s footing.  Slowly Cassie shifted the Chevrolet into gear and continued east, reciting in her troubled mind the errands to complete before dismissal at Parson Elementary.