Yes, we called Claire.
We left messages, but she did not respond and she did not come home.
I know you want more than that—explanation, resolution. But some people, regardless of blood, choose to live in other ways. What more is there to say? I have tried to grant her this without anger, without contempt. I know no better way to love her. It is what my father did, and would have always done.
I tried to hate her, to cling to the wound, to protect myself with it, but it did me no good.
She was lost to us, like so many other people we’d known through the course of our lives.
What difference does it make that she is my sister, that she was his daughter?
What difference does blood make?
Although lately I have wondered whether I missed some signal, whether all those years ago, in looking so carefully at my mother, I ignored Claire.
Was she too possessed by the bird and the tar? Is she still?
If so, perhaps this is her way of fighting.
We all have different methods of waging war.
You want reason and resolution, I know. Clean systems. As do I. As did my father. As do we all.
But time goes along anyway.
There is nothing to be done.