"I'll be right back. Okay?" A tall plump man informed his eldest daughter grabbing the keys to his car.

"Okay." She looked at her two-year-old sister whom was playing in her playpen.

"Lyd, I'm just going to get your mother's birthday cake. I'll be right back." He walked out the door and into the rain pulling his jacket closer to his body. His daughter sat there in the doorway as the wind blew the rain into the door and watched him pull out of the driveway. When he was out of sight Lydia closed the door and turned to her sister who was playing with a little rag doll with red yarn hair and blue button eyes. She sat in her grandmother's rocking chair rocking the two-year-old until the phone rang.

She bellowed to her mother whom was upstairs in the shower, "Mom, can you get the phone?"

"Why can't you?"

"Em." She shouted up from the couch as her mother walked out of the bathroom to the phone naked. "Mom, put something on!"

"Well I wouldn't be parading around the house with my boobs flopping around if you would have gotten the phone!" she paused and turned to the phone and practically broke it off the receiver. "Hello!" She paused for a large amount of time pulling on a robe that was on a knob on the wall and sitting down on one of the island chairs.

"Yes. Yes I'm sitting down." She started to stare off into the distance then every inch of color on her face vanished. She shut her mouth and put her forehead into her hands.

"Thank you." She said a little shaky and her cheeks and nose began to turn crimson like she was about to weep. She hung up the phone and turned to her daughters whom were looking eager to find out what happened.

"Your father. He-he got into a car crash and he's not coming back." She fell to the couch and began to tell us everything that the person on the other side of the phone once she was complete she wept into her hands, which were on her knees.

I tried extremely hard not to have Em see me cry. I was always helping mom with her after dad died and I tried to forget that it never happened.