Marie and I have always known there was a distance between us, and one day, no different than another, we learn it’s our dead middle sister.
Mom is late to our monthly mother-daughter get-together. After a bit, as Marie and I sit there, she gliding her fingers across the outside of her wine glass and I picking apart the edge of a paper napkin, we know to be worried.
Dammit, Marie says, something has to be wrong.
Even in our concern, we don’t make eye contact.
We find our mother bent across the kitchen counter, clutching her stomach. She tells us through jagged breaths that thirty years ago today she lost a newborn girl. She says she doesn’t know why this day is harder than any other. We don’t know either, but we stand on either side of her, trapping her in our embrace.
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