Owen Redd liked to watch the football games from the sidelines instead of the stands. He liked chatting with people more than yelling silly epithets at the field. One time, Sienna had begged me to bring her a different pair of shoes, and I had bumped into Owen at the fence.
Instead of football scores and finals, we talked about Halo and Assassin's Creed. He didn't laugh when I asked questions about strategy. Instead, he explained in detail the successful maneuvers he had done.
Sienna laughed when she found us. "Aren't you two the perfect pair? Too bad Redd looks better on me."
She knew. Sienna knew that night at the football game that I had the most helpless crush on Owen. I could still feel the thrill of his hand accidentally brushing mine as he described good sequences.
I never understood why they were together. Sienna was more annoyed than enamored by most things that Owen loved. He mocked her cheerleading. And I remembered when she got him voted prom king, he was so irritated that he brought her home and left without saying goodbye.
At the thought of goodbye, I slammed the photograph album shut. How could I say goodbye to my sister?
#
It was easy to pretend I was still in high school. The house was quiet when I emerged from Sienna's room. It could have been any one of hundreds of nights when our mother had retreated to her room, my father had shut himself in his office, and Sienna was out. She was always busy, always doing something.
The only one that was ever around was our cook. I found her in the kitchen looking the same as she had for decades: a white shirt, black pants, and a red apron. Her riotous black curly hair was secured in a prim bun, and her blue eyes sparkled as she sang.
"No one told you," I said, the weight pushing me back onto a stool.
"I sing when I'm sad, too," the cook told me. "It helps. Wanna try?"
"You know I can't carry a tune. Sienna is – was the singer."
The cook put down her red spatula and propped her fists on her hips. "You know you never have to refer to her in the past tense, don't you? Sienna’s memory is just as alive as anyone else outside this room if we talk about her."
"I don't feel like talking, Charlotte," I said.
"And you don't feel like singing. How about baking?" Charlotte asked.
I smiled. I loved to bake. It did not hurt that it was the one thing I did better than Sienna.
Sienna had come home from a cheerleading meeting one year and announced an impressive list of things she was going to personally bake for their fundraiser. After two minutes of baking, in which flour got in her hair, she crushed a raw egg in her hands, and the top fell off the ground cinnamon, she declared that baking was a waste of time.
That night, Charlotte taught me to bake the easiest, silkiest, and best buttery sugar cookies. We decorated them with a light lemon frosting and glittery sprinkles. Of course, Sienna took all the credit and they sold out in minutes.
"We're going to need a good dessert table for the, ah, for the guests," Charlotte said.
I nodded, my voice gone again. She meant we needed desserts for the reception that would invariably follow the funeral. Still, Charlotte's practicality was comforting as I settled into the regular routine of the sugar cookie recipe.
"It doesn't feel real. She should come in the door at any moment," I said as the first batch of cookies went in the oven.
"You'll look for her for a long time. Nothing wrong with that."
Her calm acceptance of my feelings made it possible for me to think outside of the warm and comforting kitchen. It registered that I had seen the door to my father's office standing open and I wondered where he went. I had 10 minutes before the first batch was done.
"Have you seen my father?" I asked.
Charlotte shook her head. "He asked for chicken dumpling soup when I came in and then he disappeared."
I went to peer in the door of his office. The lights were off, but I could see his outline propped in a chair. He stared out the window, a glass of whiskey suspended in the air halfway to his mouth.
"Daddy?" I asked.
He jumped as if a gunshot had reported in the wood-paneled confines of his office. "Quinn, Jesus Christ, you scared me. What are you doing creeping around?"
"You're the one sitting in the dark."
He grumbled and turned on the lamp next to him. His eyes were red and puffy but dry as he scowled at me. "How's your mother?"