Daddy

Chloe sits in the kitchen. Midterms are in four days, and the sadistic bastard who decided that chemistry and algebra 2 were going to be on the same day should be shot. The streetlights are out again, so it's pitch black. Thanks, Daylight Savings. She longs to sleep.

Oh my God's. Two of them. It's the second one staggers her heart, the tiny wail that Mom uses only when she cries. And Chloe knows, even before she walks into the room and sees the body. She's prepared ever since her grandfather's funeral some ridiculous amount of time ago. One day, Mommy and Daddy were going to die. She was probably going to have to see them dead. And Daddy was a smoker and didn't like to wear his seatbelt, so he was probably going to go first.

Dad's hands are cold. God. 911. Even though they were too late--his legs are stiff. She sits in the driveway waiting for the ambulance (she screams into her hands a little) before she thinks to go pull her mother off him. Carries her out.

The ambulance comes.

Shit. How is she going to tell her sister?

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Chloe's dressed neck-to-toe in black, clothes her cousin had bought her hurriedly the morning of the funeral because Chloe embarrassingly doesn't have anything in black that fits her. Nothing to wear to her father's funeral. Pathetic.

And here is the funeral procession--damn the South, thinking it's autumn when it's actually winter (leaves everywhere), and it's time to move. Figures in black. Leaves of red. Black against red. Life against death.

They made her sing at the funeral, then waited to see if she would cry. Everyone's watching for her to cry. So she won't.

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Chloe cries later, in January, when the blue jay joins the cardinal in the sprinkler in her backyard. No one sees. There are a lot of things she doesn't know, and she doesn't know if this is their secret or her secret, but it's a secret. She keeps it.