One Last Glimpse

Daddy was gone so suddenly, I didn't feel as if I had even said goodbye

- By CAROLYN BRILES, Leesburg, Virginia

You're sure?” CJ asked. “You can’t come to the lake?”

“Positive,” I said. A gritty breeze brushed my face.

The spring winds in Wichita always seemed to carry the topsoil of western Kansas along with them.

“Let’s see,” she pressed, “finals are over, so you can’t be studying. You were doing your laundry two days ago when you couldn’t go to the movies.” CJ softened her voice. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. There was nothing you could have done.”

I avoided her eyes. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I have other plans.”

“There’s room in my car if you change your mind,” she called as I hurried away across the college parking lot.

CJ was a good friend, but even she didn’t understand. Winfield Lake was the last place I wanted to be. By mid-May, it was already too hot, too buggy, too crowded. I felt uncomfortable around people these days. Since Daddy died, conversation had become awkward. Friends wanted to console me, but they weren’t sure what to say. They stumbled over words until finally silence saved us all. Besides, with everything that had happened, did I deserve to have a good time?

Moving to Wichita had been a surprise. I was a junior in high school when I found out Daddy’s job would take us from Cleburne, Texas, to Wichita, Kansas. He would leave right away, and my mom, younger sister and I would follow after the school year ended. That meant I’d spend my senior year in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar faces. If there was going to be a change, why not make it a beginning instead of an end? So I graduated early from high school with the plan to start college in Wichita. It wasn’t easy. I had to add two correspondence classes to my course load midyear, but somehow I pulled it off. Daddy had been so proud of me. “Never doubted,” he’d said with a wink.