The Motif

Chapter 2

When her phone rang at 7:00 on Sunday morning, Jennifer was sorely tempted to throw the stupid thing out the window. Reason prevailed, however, and Jennifer realized that if someone was calling her at seven on a Sunday, it was probably important. Or, at least, it had better be fucking important.

She rolled over, picked up the phone and groggily said, "'ello?"

"Jennifer, it's Mom."

The tone of her mother's voice immediately snapped her awake.

"Mom? I thought you were in Boston this weekend? For the wedding. What's wrong?"

"It's...it's Kimmi, sweetie, there's been...there's been an accident."

"Oh, my God, is she okay? Was it a car crash?"

"No...not a car crash. And no, she's not okay. Oh, God, Jennifer, she's been killed."

Jennifer's world came crashing down around her. Kimmi, her baby sister, dead. The girl who had stubbornly insisted ever since kindergarten on spelling her name with two I's. The girl Jennifer had grown up with, laughed with, fought with, cried with, was gone.

The rest of the conversation with her mother was something of a blur. All Jennifer really retained from the phone call was that there was a lot of crying, on both ends of the phone line, and something about a boy from school killing Kimmi and her boyfriend.

As soon as the worst phone call was over, Jennifer numbly pulled herself out of bed, weak from grief, shock, and tears, and crossed to her computer to buy plane tickets from D.C. to Connecticut. The next available flight left at six that evening. The next ten hours were going to be the longest of her life, but she didn't see any other options.

Under any other circumstance, she would have saved the money and just driven from D.C. to Connecticut, but she did not trust herself behind the wheel of a car. Not now. She booked the flight and forwarded the confirmation to her father – knowing her mother would be going nowhere near her e-mail anytime soon, and not wanting to have to call again just yet. She would call later, before she left for the airport, to make sure they had gotten the flight info and would be able to pick her up.

She called the newspaper, where she worked as a reporter, and left a voicemail for her boss, saying she would have to leave town for a family emergency, and she wasn't sure when she'd be back. She was glad it was Sunday, since that meant he wouldn't be in the office and wouldn't be able to give her a hard time about it. He could be a real dick like that sometimes, even – or especially – in the case of family emergencies. She knew she'd have to deal with him eventually, but at least it wouldn't be today.

She wasn't sure exactly why she didn't say she was leaving because her sister had been murdered. She supposed it was fear that saying it out loud, to someone other than her mother, would make it even more real, and she just wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

For a second – a brief second – she considered calling Tim and letting him know, but she decided against it. They were 'just friends' – by his terms, certainly not hers – after all, so he could wait to be told until she'd had more time to process what had happened.

She spent the next several hours alternating between packing, crying, and trying to comprehend the tragedy of the fact that the person she felt closest to in the whole world, her sister and best friend, was no longer a part of that world. It didn't make sense.

When she finally finished packing, she curled into a ball on the couch and stared at the TV but didn't turn it on. She still had a couple hours until she had to be at the airport, and while there was a part of her that wanted to just go and get there early, the part of her that did not want to be around anyone won out.