Fur

03 | The Music of Loud Noises

I didn't think I would ever muster up the strength it took to turn Lattie and myself away. But I did, and once I did I couldn't stop. I drug us back down the road, Lattie clinging to my side the entire way.

I didn't take us back into the house; Nanni would never let me hear the end of it if she knew what we saw, and I wasn't about to let Lattie get scolded, either. Nanni would blow a gasket, and then a breaker, and then she would undoubtedly find something to hurl at our heads in substitution of her (thankfully) missing disciplinary wooden spoon.

"I'm sorry, Lattie," I tell her as I smooth her hair where it had been rubbing against my shoulder. "I didn't think... I thought they would have had it all cleaned up by now."

I know nothing about police homicidal protocol or procedure. I should have learned before going: just a simple internet search. Above all, I shouldn't have led Lattie there, my ignorance as our guide.

But it's done now, and now I have to scramble to re-piece the damage of my mistake.

After leaving the crime scene, Lattie and I took refuge on the back porch's white spiral bench, the ivy covered lattice shading us from the slowly sinking sun. My arm is around her and her head is laying on my shoulder. Her face is shimmery with tear stains, puffy, like a child's.

She's seventeen: born only two years after I was. Two years, yet she seems so young.

Maybe her soul is a new one, still fresh and vibrant and scared. Maybe the loss of her parents in toddlerhood resulted in her never learning how to grow up. Maybe it's the warm, loving, sheltered life Nanni has given her that keeps her a child, or my role as a big sister who she's become accustomed to hiding behind.

Whatever the cause responsible for molding Lattie, I can't be mad at it. I can't think any less of her or tell her she's being childish and to grow up. I love her how she is, and I hate myself for doing this to her.

And so the only thing I can do now is pat her head and squeeze her shoulders and tell her that I'm sorry I led us there; that I'll make it up to her by buying her next ten coffees and covering her next ten shifts at the café.

She just laughs and shakes her head. "It's okay," she says, though she sounds no less sad. "I guess it just seems real now."

Lattie and Sophie went to school together. Every Friday when Sophie would come to the café, Lattie would spend her break sitting at her table listening to all the juicy stories about Sophie's past and present boyfriends. If there were ever a school project to be done, the two worked on it together. Whenever one found out about a sale at their favorite stores, they would invite the other.

I guess in a way, Sophie had been close to being Lattie's best friend. And would have been, if Lattie hadn't vowed herself to the café first.

"We were going to go birthday shopping for her mom," Lattie says, her voice breaking on mom. "Now she's... she's in a trash bag."

The flood of her tears breaks again, the warm liquid darkening my jacket. I hug her and run my hand up and down her bicep in soothing strokes, because what else is there to do? Her friend is already dead and I've already traumatized her by showing her her body. A tight ball has formed in my stomach, rolling and pushing on my organs. I quickly name it Regret.

There's nothing I can say to Lattie. The emotional management of others is... an area I would deftly omit from my resumé. So I offer her all I can: my presence. A firm body to lean against and arms to wrap around her.

Just as I begin to rock her, hoping the motion might calm her, the back door clicks open and Nanni steps out onto the porch. I cringe before turning to face the inevitable wrath of Esmerelda McNamara, but Lattie doesn't raise her head from my collarbone.