Most of you know by now how the timeline played out:
June 26, 2011 My sister, our daughters and I go for a girls' day out. We had lunch and got manicures and pedicures, and just had a general good time.
Here is the result on my feet. (The little ones are my daughters')
They are green with white polka-dots. My sister got bright pink, though her feet aren't in this photo.
Two days later, June 28, 2011 at 6:47am my sister called 911 saying her husband refused to let her leave the house.
Could it be because she spent a day with her dangerously independent, strong-minded sister who was going through a divorce? Not to mention her grown daughter from a previous marriage, who he claimed he hated since the day he met her, when she was all of four years old.
Strength of will is contagious, you know! Best be on the safe side, there, Matthew, and not let her out of the house in case she comes to her senses and realizes that by leaving you she might have a chance at being happy. All us "Lay" women - we're crazy. We want joy and love in our lives instead of anger, abuse and control. (Never mind that your brother is the one that's spent time in a loony bin, or that you wired up your house like Gene Hackman in "Enemy of the State" to keep your wife's "brat" of a daughter from taking your sodas. Yeah. We're the crazy ones!)
July 9 - Matthew calls his personal trainer and a friend from the gym to say he won't be in on Monday because his wife is missing.
July 16 - Her body is found less than a mile from her home. We are able to identify her decomposing remains from the pink polish on her toenails.
Fast forward to today. It's getting warm outside, and becoming sandal weather, but I cannot bring myself to take off what's left of the last time I saw my sister alive:
That tiny little stripe of green with a couple of polka dots is all that remains. It is a symbol of the last glimmer of hope that I gave to her. It wasn't much, but it represents the fact that she died free. She has pink toenails up in heaven that I took her to get so that she could spend some time alone with her daughter, without him. My little stripe of green is all that remains as a connection to that day. I think I'll just leave it be.
