Walking down the sidewalk, people rushing every which way, Dean grabbed Martha’s hand. She looked over at him and smiled.
“So, are going to tell me where we’re going now?’ He asked.
“Nope!” She said as she danced around him in a twirl.
Just then her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Martha? Hello? It’s your mother.” A woman’s voice said
“Yes mom. I have caller ID. I can see who it is. Now what is it?” She said a little annoyed. The only two people who still called her by her first name were Dean and her mom.
“Baby? I need to tell you something.”
“Mom. What? I’m kind of in a rush here.”
“Your sister…she’s…she’s…” By now she was crying too hard to finish her sentence.
“What mom? Did she run away? She’s pregnant? What?”
“She’s dead.”
-Silence.-
She stopped, startling Dean with the sudden abruptness, and felt her skin go cold.
“Wha…what? She’s…but…when…how??”
“Just an hour ago.” She said sobbing. “She was in a motorcycle crash. A…a…semi came out of nowhere…they said she didn’t even feel a thing…. That it was so sudden….and that the semi didn’t see her when she pulled out.”
She then dropped her phone on the cement.
“Babe? Is everything ok?” Dean asked.
But she couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear anything, she couldn’t feel him gently shaking her or when he caught her as her knees gave out.
When she came to, she was in her own bed. She looked over at Dean who was staring right back at her. He brushed the hair out of her eyes.
“Are you ok Martha?”
“Yeah I think so.”
“You wanna talk about it babe?”
“No, not really.”
She spent the next few days in her pajamas. She didn’t pick up the phone nor would she eat. She hated her. “How dare she leave me here,” Martha would mumble from time to time, and her dreams! Oh her dreams! So real! She could smell the fresh cut grass, the heat of the sun, and the coldness of the water when it sprayed them as they giggled running away. It was when they were little. Susan was only 6 and being older by only a couple years she was 9. They had been playing in the sprinklers out front, too scared to go in because they had been hearing shouts and crashes coming from their house all day. They decided to go to their tree house out back in hopes of escaping their father’s harsh drunken scrutiny while he was charging out of the house towards the police cars that had just pulled up. They climbed up their tree house and opened the secret compartment they had made to hide their Halloween candy. Every year the pile got bigger and bigger and only for special occasions, or when the pile got too big, would they open it and grab a piece but today they needed one.
“Do you think momma and daddy will ever be nice to each other Martha?”
“No. They never have been. Why start now?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I see mommy crying and it makes me sad. Ill hug her and say everything’s ok and she just starts to cry even harder.”
“Well, we’ve got each other right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then that’s all that really matters. And I promise I won’t ever leave you, ok?”
“Ok.” She replied. In the distance they heard their dad calling them in the house. That was the day the police took them away. They told us at the time that mommy and daddy had to go away for a little while and that we had to live somewhere else. They split us up that day too. Didn’t see each other until 10 years later, which was 2 years ago. She missed her dearly. Finally after a week of nothing, Dean asked her if she wanted to go to Susan’s funeral tomorrow. At first she said no, but after thinking about it she changed her mind.
It was warm outside when everyone was seated in the fold out lawn chairs. She was surprised by how many people were here. Their own mother and father, Susan’s adopted parents, her own adopted parents, and just about all of Gretchen Ace High school. She was so glad and almost relieved that all of her sister’s friends were here. She hugged her mother and found a place to sit by Dean near the front. When the priest came up and asked for Susan’s adopted parents to read her eulogy, she and about 12 other people started to cry when the first line cut through the mid-morning air. After the service she felt sad but not as sad as before. Susan would be proud of her for coming. Before she left she walked over to her casket to say one last goodbye. She tucked the piece of Halloween candy she had kept from 12 years prier in beside her sister and walked away.