For the first time since I’d known her, Lucy awoke before dawn, before the rest of us began to stir. For the first time, I wished my sister had slept in a little longer, not gotten that head start on her chores. She rose silently the morning after her eleventh Christmas, swathed in rough wool and flannel that cast a glowing red warmth against the faded green wallpaper. She crept across those aging floorboards, deftly avoiding each screaming spot. She fed the furnace, fearing the fire less and less each day, all before sneaking outside as the sun rose red over the sugar-cube pastures.

She didn’t scream as she saw it, redder than the sun, redder than her sweater, redder than her cheeks in the cold. She barely even took in the dripping, flowing, so fresh it could’ve happened as she’d turned around to close the door. But she saw the rope, pulling the strained old willow, she saw it looped haphazardly around poor old Poppy’s horns, and she saw those deep brown eyes without a hint of sadness--without a hint of anything. 

It wasn’t Lucy’s scream that awoke the rest of us, but instead the groaning and the snap of that poor old tree giving way to our beloved heifer, and the silence of a winter without milk, a spring without calves. 

I was halfway through braiding my hair when I heard it, rushing down the creaking stairs with only half of my head woven into a plait, my old house slippers still on by the time my feet hit the snow. I froze in my tracks as it set in, followed by Christian and Aunt Constance and then Uncle Peter. 

We stood round Lucy in an arc, silent behind her on that winter morning. I suppose she didn’t see us, we were so quiet. Only then, as the family surrounded her, did my little sister scream. And good God did she shriek. So loud those nasty barn sparrows flew away, darting out toward the hills and dissolving into the woods.