Wait what time is it again? Confusing plot structure of "A Rose for Emily"

"So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart- the one we believed would marry her- had deserted her." Speaker Unknown Pg. 283
The plot structure of this story was extremely confusing to me. At first Miss Emily is dead. Then we jump to after her father dies when the mayor exempts her from paying taxes. Then all of the sudden the next generation has taken over and demands she now pays her taxes. Then her father has been dead for two years and now her lover is dead as well? Then there's this whole business about a smell, which we now know is coming from a decomposing body. With all the pieces of the story so out of order, it was difficult to concentrate on what was actually happening in the story instead of trying to put all the parts correctly on a timeline. It seems to me that the story was supposed to be suspenseful leading up to discovering the decomposed body of her old gay lover. However, the flow of this suspense was sort of ruined for me because I was so lost. I believe the story would have built up the same amount of suspense if the events had gone in order. The only reason I can think of for presenting the events in this scatterbrained manner is to give the idea that the speaker is recalling all this from memory. It could be that the speaker is telling another person about everything that has happened with this woman. Also it could be that this whole story is the compilation of the gossip that all the townspeople have been saying about Miss Emily. Either way I believe it would have been much more suspenseful if the events had gone in order.