the foster parents' teenage son Ricky approaches Jinny in the car. Jinny allows him to drive her away into the fields, where they kiss on a floating bridge. This small act of retaliation against Neal rejuvenates Jinny, who now feels able to face the possibility of her survival. "Family Furnishings": The narrator reminisces about Alfrida, her father's nonconformist cousin who worked as an advice columnist in the city. Alfrida seems urbane and sophisticated to the young narrator, who views her with admiration. Once the narrator attends college, however, she distances herself from Alfrida and avoids her frequent dinner invitations. The narrator's only visit to Alfrida is marked by the narrator's condescension toward Alfrida's poverty and lack of cultivation. The dinner, however, does make one lasting impression. Alfrida recalls how her mother died of severe burns caused by an exploding lamp. She had wanted to see her mother but was denied by relatives; Alfrida responded by saying that her mother would have wanted to see her if their places were reversed. Later in life, the narrator transforms this incident into a short story that offends the elderly Alfrida. She receives no more information about Alfrida until Alfrida's illegitimate daughter appears at the funeral of the narrator's father. The daughter tells the narrator that Alfrida grudgingly admired the narrator's writing, although Alfrida thought that the narrator wasn't as smart as she thought she was. This revelation causes the narrator to return to the evening of her last dinner with her father's cousin. Afterward she had gone to a coffee shop where, drinking the coffee and watching the middle-class men and women around her, the narrator had thought that this was what she truly wanted out of life. "Comfort": Nina returns home to discover that her husband Lewis, a retired science teacher, has committed suicide. He had developed a neurological disorder, and he and Nina had planned the suicide to avoid unnecessary suffering. Nina, however, did not expect him to die while she was away, and unsuccessfully searches the room for a suicide note. She notifies medical authorities, but eliminates any evidence of suicide. Lewis, an aggressive atheist, had been forced to resign for refusing to teach creationism, and he did not want his enemies to think he killed himself as a result. Nina entrusts the funeral arrangements to Ed, a local undertaker whom she once kissed at a party. While embalming the