My sister

Blood seeped out of the car's cabin onto the wet road and mixed with water. A pool of blood and rain formed at Harriet's feet. She stood, soaked to the bone and tears streaming out of her eyes, looking at the tangled mess of steel, rubber, and plastic. The collision had wedged her sister's ten-year old Celica between a school bus and a Mack truck. Harriet could see Mabel's auburn temple poking out of the broken windshield, her head at a 135 degree angle to her neck. But she also knew the truth she could not see but the blood told her. Mabel's head had been severed at the neck.

If only it had been her. She was the older one. She wouldn't have minded going just before reaching 40. Not her Mabel, not her baby sister, ten years her junior. She'd lived her life. She'd been to her son's college graduation and she'd attended his wedding and her first grandbaby's christening. It was okay for grandmothers to die, but not for mothers -- not this mother, who'd just adopted a little girl from Romania four years ago. Mabel had long ago decided she didn't want to get married (too much compromise) but she'd finally decided to give her life to someone else: a child in need. And now Margaret was orphaned a second time -- at least until Harriet could adopt her. How, Harriet thought, would she ever tell Margaret that her mother had died?