They were sisters. Tall and thin in a deep bosomed way. Their faces long and pale, their noses long and pale. They dressed the same in plain felt hats and long cloth coats and they both wore boat like shoes rather like the shoes worn by the very young, but somehow sturdier and yet more elegant.
Diseases of the old were encroaching on their time. Medical appointments filled their days. Letty at the rheumatologist at ten on Tuesday, Lucy at the urologist at one. They sat long hours in the Medical Center lobby watching and waiting. Letty was seventy-eight, Lucy eighty. People who walked past smiled at them because they looked so unusual. So harmless.
The past was trying to engulf Lucy. The past jumped out at her at every corner of the day.
``I shouldn't have killed him,'' she would say and Letty would answer ``I killed him too and it was right.''
But Lucy knew that it was never right to kill. Life is always sacred, they were taught, and Lucy knew it was true - except - could there be exceptions? Surely.
And could an exception be an abusive father trapped with two daughters on a lonely North Dakota farm?
``I shouldn't have killed him,'' she would say.
``Baloney,'' Letty would answer, ``Stop dwelling on it.''
Lucy had been married once, but not for long. Letty never had an offer.
Lucy had been a primary school teacher, Letty a librarian. Their heaven came each humid summer when their vegetable garden fed the neighborhood and children walked with them among the burgeoning tomatoes and military corn.
When her children left her for the unknown territory of junior high school Lucy would squeeze each little hand and whisper ``Be careful. Be very careful!'' and the children would smile without really hearing what she said. And that was long ago. The last class she'd taught was approaching forty now.
It was Letty who first stayed in the hospital more than a day. Lucy sat beside her in her room and did not move, would not move. They brought in a cot for her but she did not lie down.
When Letty died Lucy sighed and mourned but knew also that at last she was a free woman and she went to the Sheriff's office and gave herself up.
``I killed my own father,'' she said.
``And when was that?''
``That would have been sixty-eight years -''
``Sixty-eight years? I don't think there's much we'd want to do about that - why did you kill him?''
She did not say.
``There's people would think you a hero - ''
She thought for a moment.
``I am,'' she said, ``That's what I am.''