The sentence showed the part of the story where Marilyn is making letters for her family. She wants her brother to remember only the positive side of her. This is a paraphrase of the sentence. "She paused from time to time to think carefully on what words to say for her family, then she continued to write her letters."
A simile is a figure of speech or a rhetorical device which refers to a comparison between two or more items using comparing words such as <em>like </em>or <em>as. </em>So, having this in mind, the correct answer "She's gone from sounding <u>like<em /></u><em /> the smoke detector." In this example, her sound is compared to that of a smoke detector.
