Father's Study

After they all died Buddy and Baby and I went through Father's study. It was only the second time I'd ever set foot there in my life,since he started locking it after Buddy and I snuck in there when we were supposedly sick with chicken pox and pasted every one of his papers to the desk. We got a licking for that one. It was hard to believe that they were gone, that Father would never care what we did, and we hardly had the heart to look at anything. What I do remember is finding a printer's cartridge box filled with all of Helen's old awards and essays and such and the first thing I did, can you believe it, was snoop around to see where my box was. There wasn't one, of course. Nor for Baby nor Buddy. We were the regular kids, and all of our things got lumped together in Mother's upper drawer.

Now I knew as well then as I do now that there wasn't any good in being envious of a sister who'd just died of massive internal injury and hemorrhage, but there it was. That was the first time I'd cried since we got word from the hospital and I just went up to the attic and cried for about three hours straight. Then I went downstairs and starting cooking up food for the funeral.

It wasn't like he didn't love us. It's just that we weren't Helen. I think he had high hopes for her, that she'd be something more than a school principal and printer in a small town. Just goes to show you can't predict anything.

Now, I won't give out my sticky bun recipe through the mails. But next time you're in town we can lock ourselves in the kitchen and I'll show you a thing or two about buns.

Much love,

Aunt Jessie

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