~This is a continuation of my story The Day She Stopped Waiting~

_Dear Adessa,_

_ __I know this must be very sudden for you, and I apologize that most of my more recent letters have brought nothing but bad news to the family. I’m afraid that this letter brings more of that. First I got sick, Warrick disappeared, and now I’m dying. I didn’t want to write to you until I was sure of it, but I’ve never been more certain of something. It all happened so suddenly A, you wouldn’t believe how quickly I went from worrying about burning pies to wondering who was going to take care of my girls when I was gone. I’m writing this letter because I can’t imagine any other family more fit for raising my girls. I’m sorry for the inconvenience that this will cause you, but we always were close, weren’t we A? And though we never said it out loud, I could always feel a sisterly understanding between us, one that I can feel in my bones now, despite how weak they may be as I write this letter. _

_ __When you decide to take them in, please come in person. I know the trip is long but the girls will need a familiar face in these unknowing times. And do check on my brother-in-law, he’s been so finicky lately with the situation that I fear he may lose his already slackened grip on the world. _

_ __In these long times spent in bed, I think of you and Mom how you both laughed when I announced I was going to be a farm girl. But I did do it, didn’t I? I wish you could see the things I learned to do, A, you and Mom both would be proud. _

_ __Tell my girls I love them, and know that there is nothing I hold against you, or my family. I love you all dearly. _

_Your little sister,_

_Cloe_

Adessa dropped the letter and clasped her hands tightly over her mouth, fighting to subdue the sobs that ached to escape her lungs. Warm tears rolled down her cheeks, painfully, as she leaned against the small wooden table for support and gripped it with her small hands until her knuckles went white. She wanted her sister. Her baby sister, who had died, or would die, alone, surrounded only by her two scared little girls and a loon who wasn’t even her own blood. It was all so unfair. Why did life work out this way? Why had Cloe been gifted with a colorful, bright childhood, one with loving parents, one with a steady income, just to die this way? Why did she have those beautiful, bouncing curls, that loving smile, that heart of gold, that young, dashing sailor who had fallen in love with her, a man who emanated salt and freedom and a happy life? Why had she been allowed to bear two beautiful girls in a snug seaside cottage in the perfect little village? What was the point of it all if the husband went missing and if she found herself dying of grief? Why had they been born at all?

Adessa’s husband heard her struggling, the heavy breathing and sharp sniffles she sounded when she was trying not to cry. He floated in, saying nothing, offering his presence as he had learned to do to comfort whatever dilemma had shaken her this time. She accepted him in a full embrace, burying her teary face into his chest as he wrapped his big grizzly bear arms tightly around her. He saw the letter on the floor, and his heart sank a little as he wondered, _who_? 

As if she had heard his question, Adessa uttered weakly, “It’s Cloe. She’s dying.” 

The word _dying _had choked her up, and she let herself sob into his many layers. _Cloeanne? Dying? _His heart fell to his stomach. _But she had barely started living_.

He recalled the few times he had seen her, first when he was courting Adessa. He had been invited to dinner, and that’s where he met Cloeanne. She was nothing but legs then, long thin legs, so that it appeared she was walking on stilts. She had grey wooly socks pulled up one-quarter up her shins, one farther than the other, and she introduced  herself with a firm shake of the hand. Once at the dinner table, she squeezed into her chair, not even bothering to move it back from the table, brushed her sunkissed curls out of her face, and smiled at him with that warm, dimply smile, the trademark Hartfeld smile that he had first fallen in love with when Adessa and he  had locked eyes for the first time. Cloeanne was what, 14? 15? And already beautiful. Not in Adessa’s way, but in a tender, maternal beauty, one that gave him the ability to see into the future, thirty years from now, when he knew that she was one of those rare girls who would get more beautiful with age. 

He pictured curly-headed, dimpled, long-limbed Cloeanne with the wooly socks, now 30, wasting away in a bed breathing her last. Life wasn’t supposed to work that way. It wasn’t supposed to take the kind, devoted women, ones who loved their children with all their hearts, ones who had barely gotten to love them, from the world. 

“Oh,” he choked out, and before he knew it, he was crying along with his wife, the only sounds of their home being the crackle of heat from their fireplace and their lamentation.