Wendy Tardieu

   The girls had escaped, fled the slumping Northern two-story with the parched yard and drafty rooms where they spent two nights of restless sleep. In the three years since their parents had moved, the house was already steeped with the stench of cigarettes. Their father had called it a ‘steal’, built in 1948 with keyholes that could be peeked through and a rusting bathtub with legs. “Smells like old books,” Riley had said of the guestroom.

   The familiar 1970’s furniture seemed foreign in a place other than their childhood home. The coffee table with Riley’s crayon drawings underneath seemed out of place on the russet carpet. The pastel confetti design of the couch upholstery was a hideous contrast to the wood paneling and dingy floral wallpaper.

   At the funeral reception, the relatives gathered on the slanted porch and in the driveway to smoke, dressed in outdated suits and slurping coffee. Inside, they perched along the walls, picking from the buffet of finger food and scooping up three-bean salad. The remnants of Florida life haunted with shell-shaped trivets and potholders with palm patterns.

   The girls’ mother, from whom Theresa took her stout strong figure and walnut-colored hair, drifted about the tables with one palm on her cheek, echoing her infamous mantra.

   “What’s missing?” the woman said, seemingly more rapt by the dwindling cheese cubes than her husband’s first few hours under fresh soil.

   “Nothing, mom,” Theresa said. “There’s plenty.”

Her mother looked over at Riley, who was eating only the olives from a divided tray. “It’s good she’s finally putting on some weight,” she said. “You’ve looked after her.”

Theresa cleared her throat. “Yeah.”

   “Your father was so protective. You remember what he was like after what happened,” her mother said, reaching down to shift the trays and pull at the table cloth.

   She usually brought up the only instance of advocacy their father had ever shown when the girls were feeling least fond of him. The time he almost killed the man who violated his daughter seemed an appropriate memory to evoke their sympathy.

   “I think that’s why he was never affectionate with her,” she said. “I think he was afraid to be, you know?”

   “Mmm,” Theresa answered dryly.

   The relatives gawked at Riley, remarking how ‘well she turned out’. They had all waited, aunts, uncles and cousins, for the child to go bad, to withdraw. After something like that, a girl was spoiled, no use as a grown woman. Molestation ruined lives, made therapists richer. The sisters kept their secret - just how much of a woman Riley had become neatly tucked away under the black fabric and carefully planned attire. There was a boyfriend, a mistake, and now a remedy they had agreed upon. Riley wandered over, sliding along the folding tables and catching Theresa’s ‘let’s get the hell out of here’ glance.

   “You’re sure you won’t take anything?” their mother said, gesturing at the hoards of meat casseroles, baked macaroni and iced pastries.

   “I’ll take the chocolate cake,” Riley said.

The exit was quick, a swooping motion; a hug for the widow and fast down the ice-slick porch steps. The creak of the Cutlass doors startled the smokers into a long curious stare at the two young women, still in their funeral dress, backing the brown beast down the duel strips of gravel.