Twisted by Amity Hope

kitchen is full of the scent of the first batch of baking cookies. The doorbell rings and Mom sets her fork down. “Finish up, honey, I’ll go get that.”
    I hear voices in the foyer and I hear Mom shriek. The fork falls from my hand and I almost topple my mug of hot cocoa.
    I rush up behind Mom.
    A man and a woman, both dressed in uniforms, have moved inside. The door has closed behind them.
    “A fatal accident?” Mom shrieks again. “Oh God, is it Remy?” she moans.
    My heart squeezes painfully in my chest. Remy is away at college. She left two months ago and won’t be home until Thanksgiving. I already miss her so much.
    “No ma ' am,” the woman says her eyes sad and sorry, her voice a forced calm. “A boat capsized, another fisherman witnessed it...”
    I hear a few more words but they all run together. Mom doesn’t know I’m standing behind her. The officers don’t seem to notice me either as they say words I don’t want to hear. “Two bodies…pulled from the water…lifejackets weren’t buckled…carrying identification…Anthony and Trey Anderson.”
    Mom screams again and collapses on the hard tile.
    I edge away, back toward the kitchen. Remy’s new number is posted on the corkboard next to the phone. Mom lets me call her every Sunday night. I hear myself whimpering as I back away…into the kitchen…heading for the phone and the corkboard with Remy’s number.
     
    Other than the burial, I don’t recall ever going to the cemetery. It was only a few months after Dad and Trey were gone that Mom lost it. She couldn’t live in the same house, be in the same town, see the same people. She needed to pack up and get away, as far away as she could. And that’s what we did. Physically, anyway. Emotionally, she was still bound right where she’d been the day we left.
    Why hadn’t they fastened their lifejackets? Especially on a day when the wind was so fierce and the waves were so huge? They had packed up for the day. They were on their way to the shore when they had been hit by a wave strong enough to make the boat capsize. They had both been thrown overboard, their lifejackets popping off the moment they hit the water. That’s what the man in the other boat, the only witness, had reported. He had been a ways off in the distance. By the time he pulled his anchor, started his boat and motored over to where they’d gone in, the giant waves had dragged them under for good.
    Why hadn’t they fastened their life jackets ? The question was asked over and over again. That was the question everyone asked…but it was also the one nobody had an answer to. It was one of those things that you would give anything to go back in time to change but you couldn’t. So instead, you just had to try to live with an unanswerable question.
    I realized Mom must have taken care of the arrangements for headstones. Or maybe that was Remy as well. They were simple and elegant. Not gaudy and ostentatious like so many of the others. I stood there for a moment, wondering what I was supposed to be feeling. But I didn’t really feel anything. Dad and Trey weren’t here. My memories of them weren’t here. I whispered a few words anyway and turned, feeling incomplete, like something that I had hoped to find hadn’t appeared.
    I wondered if Remy felt the same way I did. We’d never really talked about it. She was older but only a freshman in college when Trey and Dad were torn from our lives. And though she wasn’t living at home, I wasn’t the only one that lost a mother.
    At least Remy and I had each other.
    I walked with my head down, staring at the perfectly green grass. I knew I was walking under a flawlessly clear, cloudless blue sky. Trees with beautifully changing leaves swayed gently on the cemeteries edge. Life is so full of little ironies.
     
    ***
     
    “What do you think of Blake?” Hailey asked as she carefully coated her nail with the last layer of top coat. She didn’t look up. I could tell by her rigid