Sirens flooded my ears as my knees quivered at the sound of their screams.  The last words I had heard escape from my little sister’s lips earlier that day striking against my skull.  Through blurring tears, I gaped at the officer attempting to somehow alleviate to my parents that their little daughter’s dead body was sunken at the bottom of Devil’s Pond.

*

“I'll see you in a bit, Aud,” my father said in a slight monotone. Dark circles framed his aged eyes. 

“See you,” I mouthed inaudibly, slinging my backpack over my shoulder.  I willed myself to climb out of the passenger seat, slam the door, and scuff my feet along the pavement, strategically stepping over the cracks, a game I continually played with myself. 

Going through the monotonous motions, I heaved open the double glass doors and slunk into the same chair in the corner of the waiting room I had mentally claimed since day one.  My nose had grown accustomed to the aroma of air freshener and magazines.  Eyes fixated on the carpet tile, a pair of black heels protruded into my line of vision.  I panned my eyes up to the familiar, welcoming face. 

“How are you today, Audrey?” Dr. Nicole inquired, revealing her pearly teeth.

“Fine,” I replied with a shrug.  I rose to my feet and began to follow in step with her to the back rooms.  Her straw colored hair swayed back and forth down her back as she clutched her clipboard to her side.

Room 2A had become the prison cell of all the things I never envisioned I would say aloud.  I plopped down in one of the leather arm chairs.  We sat across from each other, face to face, as we always did.

“How’s your mom doing?”  She crossed her legs and leaned forward, chin resting in her hand.

“She’s stopped responding to treatments.  Officially.”

A sorrowful sigh crept from her lips.  “Oh, Audrey.  I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Not your fault,” I uttered, drawing circles in the carpet with my feet.  “You’re not the one giving up and letting her die.”

She slowly nodded her head and pressed her lips together.  “How’s your family dealing with this emotionally?”

“We’ve never been more torn apart quite honestly.”

“Can you tell me more?”

“We fight sometimes.  But we don’t even have to fight in order to sense that there’s a difference.  You walk in the house, and everything just feels unfamiliar.  The vibe is different; I hardly know my dad and brother anymore.”

“It sounds like you haven’t really talked about it together.  Is this correct?”

“We never talk about it.  At all.  We can’t.  It’s like we’re all?” I paused.  “Pretending.”  The heavy truth weighed down on my shoulders.

“How do you feel about all of this?”

“It’s different than after my sister.”  I choked down the familiar lump in my throat.  “My mom kept her alive.”  We sat in reflective silence until I managed to articulate, “I’m terrified that no one will do the same for her.”

*

“Hospice care is right this way, Audrey.”  The nurse navigated me through a sea of gurneys and limping hospital gowns before finally showing me to the last room at the end of the hallway.

“Hey, little moth,” my mom’s silken voice quivered out.  Her hand reached out to me and pulled me in.  Her delicate fingers ran along my collar bone and gravitated towards my birthmark she always thought resembled wings.  “Where’s your dad and Danny?”

“Parking the car,” I replied.  I kneeled down at her bedside and buried myself in her embrace, inhaling her sleepy scent of hospital linens.  “Do you feel anything?” I mustered out.  It had started in her pancreas and I couldn’t bear the thought of her feeling it ripping through the rest of her body.

She gently shook her head, a stringy auburn strand of hair falling across her forehead.  “The nurse gave me a refill on my pain meds.”

“Still hooked on those drugs, huh?” I squeaked out?the first joke I had cracked in what seemed like a prolonged amount of time.

   
A beaming grin crept across her palid face, and life rippled through her.  She squeezed my hand, and a surge of love flowed through our tight, IV-like grip.  “I miss our movie and popcorn nights.”

“I miss your burnt popcorn,” I replied through stifled giggles.

A chuckle burst from her smile as she playfully slapped my hand.  “Listen to me, sweetie,” she whispered, her gentle words planting kisses on my face. “You’re the strongest woman I know.  You’re a fighter; I’ve seen you fight.”  She toyed with the ends of my hair in her fingertips.  “I’ve always admired that about you.”

“I wish I could be half the fighter you are,” I uttered, biting my lip and blinking in every attempt to not break down.  I could not drag myself to the conclusion that her fight was coming to an end; I never thought she would be defeated.  No matter how tight I held her, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make her stay. 

“I just need you to know that I’ll never stop admiring you, cheering you on.  Nothing can change any of that,” she whispered and drew me in closer. “I can’t wait to watch you from the view in Heaven when I can get my own pair of wings too.”

*

Late summer faded into a crisp autumn.  Two stone crosses placed beside each other stuck out from the ground.  I squinted my eyes at how they pierced and ravaged the earth.  I brushed the back of my hand against my father’s fingers.  He yanked his hand from mine which sought his grasp.  His footsteps crunched through the leaves resembling dead moth wings, followed by my brother’s, until I was left alone with the sound of my pounding heart and every memory of my mother swarming through my aching head.

Daffodils, I thought. We’ll plant daffodils in the spring.  I blew a kiss with the palm of my hand, and my feet began the trail.  I wove through the other graves, stepping in the footprints my father and Danny left behind.  Our car was the last to sputter out of the lot with not a single exchanged word the whole ride home.

*

Each of us was our own bottle, corks tightly screwed into place.  As time trudged along, the pressure inside our bottles built up.  The unsaid words, the fear of the inevitable change were twisted into rage.  The doors of every entered room were slammed.  Sharp and jagged words that projected from our lashing tongues divided our home.  Suffocated the reminiscent smells of burnt popcorn and the sound of my mother’s chuckles that used to dwell in every room.  They were faint scents, distant echos.

I stood in the threshold of my father’s stuffy den.  He hunched over at his desk in an arc, fingers around his temples like a cage.  He flinched at the energy of my presence.

“Dad,” I enunciated, breaking the tangible silence.  “What’s happening to us?”

“What does that mean, Audrey?”  His words cut through me like a cold blade.

I twirled a stray thread at the bottom of my sweater with my finger.  “It’s like we’re not even a family anymore,” a small voice crept from my mouth. 

His fist struck against the desk; he bolted to his feet, sending his wheeled office chair darting across the floor.  “Audrey, I don’t know how the hell to live anymore!”  He interlocked his fingers behind his head and paced the floor with harsh strides.  Danny entered the heated room with wide eyes, his uneasy presence stirring with my father's.

“You don’t think we’re all feeling that?” Danny clamored.

“Your mother wasn’t supposed to go before me.”  My father’s choked up words hung in the air for a few silent moments. 

“I wish it were you,” Danny finally spit out.

The dead air thickened and strangled our throats from voicing a word.  My father’s glass-eyed stare met Danny’s sharpened, harsh eyes.  “Me too.” 

I stifled out a cry from the back of my throat and fled the heavy room, the divided house, the front yard where my fondest memories of my mother and my sister would forever live on.  I cut through the pouring rain, my feet striking against the soaked pavement, driving me in a direction against my will. 

I came to a sharp halt and discovered myself at the edge of the wooden dock of Devil’s Pond.  Lowering myself, I peered deep into the water that churned just a few feet below my face.  I hung my legs over the edge, my feet grazing the surface of the consuming water that killed my sister.

The heavy rain soaked through my skin as I wallowed in my heavy thoughts.  I whipped my head around at the sound of wet grass squishing behind me and found myself in the presence of my father’s silhouette against the harsh moonlight.  Streams of rain dripped from the frayed edges of his coat.  I couldn’t make out whether the rivers on his cheeks were from the rain or his own tears.  Our eyes were locked for several moments, neither one of us uttering a word.  His boots finally shuffled across the dock, approaching me, and he perched himself on the empty spot next to me.

“I haven’t been here since...”  He stopped.  The rain pelted harder. “But, I wasn’t even here when it happened.”

“None of us were,” I voiced, practically inaudibly.

“But I was supposed to be here. It’s my job.”  The words left his mouth as if being set free after years of being trapped.  His voice broke when he spoke.  “She asked me to take her here.  To watch her swim.”

I directed my gaze to his shattered face, his stare fixed on the gleaming water.  “I let her run to the pond.  ‘I’ll catch up with you,’ I told her.  She always loved to race me, to be the fastest.”  He smiled in remembrance and then abruptly clenched his eyes and rubbed his eyelids with his hand.  “By the time I had gotten there, she had already dove into the deep end, and she couldn’t?couldn’t get a breath.”

Every word he spoke was broken up by sobs.  I placed my hand on his tremoring shoulder.  “It all happened so fast, I couldn’t believe it.  I didn’t think she would jump in the water without me there.”  Cupping his hands over his face, he finally added, “Audrey, it was my fault.  No matter how hard I held onto her, I couldn’t keep her.  And?and I don’t want to fail again.”

We sunk into each other’s arms and felt the streams of rain wash over our embrace and the water of the pond lapping at our feet.  His hands pressed into my back like a patch sealing open wounds.  I had never clung to my dad tighter.

*

On one particular night after many aching months of healing, something fluttering in my peripheral along the side of the street captivated my attention.  My eyes drifted over to a little brown moth flapping its delicate wings and heading in the direction towards a streetlamp.  With one flap at a time, it escaped the swallowing darkness of the night and entered the beaming light the lamp casted.