Page 47

“You know,” I answered.

“No, I don’t!” stated Comfort emphatically. “Tell me why.”

“Because… I don’t have a bunch of friends from the old days,” I said evasively.

“You have Curtis.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

I hesitated. I had never confided in Comfort and Mother what I had written to Curtis. “Because I wrote and told him we can’t ever be together.”

Mother gasped. “Oh sweetheart! When did you do that?”

I looked down at the hem I was sewing. “After he wrote me a letter when we first moved here.”

“Don’t worry about that letter. You should go.” Comfort sounded so casual, so uncaring that I had written off Curtis, that I gaped at her.

“Don’t worry about it?”

“Nope.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because it never got sent.”

Comfort’s pronouncement stunned me. Mother and I stared at Comfort as she continued to baste a sleeve onto the gown.

“What do you mean it never got sent?” I demanded.

Comfort snorted. “Oh please. You thought I was going to send that letter you handed me when you were all dramatic and emotional? You are such a terrible liar. I saw through it right away.”

I sat, mouth open. “You didn’t send it?”

“I waited until you had left and I opened it and read it.”

“That was private!” I said, outraged.

“No kidding. That is why I opened it,” Comfort said with a laugh.

I was shocked. “So… So… it was never sent?”

Comfort laughed again. “You keep asking that. No, I never sent it. I burned it.”

“But he never wrote back! If he hadn’t gotten a response, he would have written again!”

“I wrote to him.”

Now I stood up, unable to sit any longer. My needle and thread tumbled to the ground. “Comfort! What did you say?”

Comfort looked at me appraisingly, as though sizing me up, to decide how much she should tell me. “I said that you needed a break, to give you time, and that you still loved him.”

Mother and I were staring, dumbfounded, at Comfort. “You had no right!” I said accusatorily, pointing at Comfort.

“I had every right to help my sister avoid the biggest mistake of her life,” Comfort said, unabashed. “Do you love him?”

“That doesn’t matter!”