Pieces of My Sister's Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

Daddy’s death.
    “It was in his desk,” Eve said. “He couldn’t find her. He died because of her.”
    Something shivered in my chest. I dropped the letter.
    “Open it.”
    I shook my head.
    “Open it!” She snatched the envelope from the step, pulled out a card and threw it at me, its corner smarting against my cheek.
    I caught the card against my neck, examined it. It was sketched with a cake and poetry: a birthday card. Inside, it was lettered in Daddy’s flat script.

    Diana,
    Well I guess I don’t have much new to say to you this year. Except the girls are fine and growing up to be women so fast you wouldn’t hardly believe it. They’ll go off in a couple years, I’m sure of it, and it’ll be just me again. Hasn’t been just me for so long, I can’t hardly imagine what it’ll be like. You know how it feels, how they’re part of you under separate skin and then where does it all go? Out in the world with them maybe, even if that’s not something I can see. I know they’ve turned out good, and that’s what matters. But it doesn’t mean we still don’t wish you were here all this time.
    As always,
Thomas

    I reread the card without wanting to, and then again until the words blurred in my head.
    “‘This year,’” Eve said. “Nothing new to say to her ‘this year.’”
    “He was writing to her the whole time. The whole time?”
    “Fucking liar.” Eve’s voice was dark, hollow, coming from somewhere deep inside her. “She’s sailing around the world, he says. She’d be here if she could, he says. And yeah, we knew that was bullshit.”
    “But she knew where we were.”
    “The whole time we were waiting she knew. We’re like these imbecilic pet dogs or something, thinking any day now she’ll come home and walk us.”
    “We could find her, Eve. I’m sure we could get a forwarding address.”
    “Are you kidding? How pathetic would that be, having to chase after our own mother?”
    “Maybe if she knew about Daddy…”
    “She’d what, decide she really does give a damn? To tell you the truth I’d rather stay with Bert and Georgia. At least they’re pretending to be grandparents. At least they came.”
    I watched Eve for a minute, then sat on the step beside her. I looked out over the gravel drive, spinning inside like a child who’s stared too long at the sun, hurting, burning from it but still not willing to let go. I took Eve’s hand and made the hope flicker out again. “You’re right,” I said without turning to face her. “Okay.”
             
    I knelt in LoraLee’s front yard, helping her pull the pansies that had been bitten by last night’s frost. LoraLee had been my confidante since a time before I’d needed a confidante. She lived near the junkyard in a two-room cabin with no plumbing, decorated with odd findings from the trash heap. The islanders said she was a witch.
    I remember watching before we’d ever met as she sat in her garden, brown skin and thick black braid beneath her wide straw hat, hands resting over unopened flower buds. I’d stood there listening to the clink of wind chimes made out of soup can lids, bent forks and green sea glass that hung from the roof and tree branches. LoraLee’s eyes were closed, lips moving in a silent chant, and I thought I could see the buds brighten and swell. I was six at the time and in love with fairy tales, and standing there I’d remembered how Seth Morgan said he saw her sitting on a broomstick one night looking up at the full moon. Janie Cross told me that LoraLee gave her dog the evil eye for peeing on the lawn, and the next week her dog came down with liver disease and died. I remembered, and I watched her flowers grow, and I knew for sure I was witnessing true magic.
    One day I hid behind LoraLee’s stone fence, watching her spray cabbage with an antique perfume bottle. Straightening, she’d looked my way as if she could see (witchlike!) through brambles and stone. She didn’t seem at all