THE DRIZZLING SKIES URGED MARTHA to hasten on removing the laundry from the clothesline. As she moved, the chain necklace given by her late father swung back and forth. She reminisced how he used to call her by 'Mimi' like engraved onto the pendant.

Now, she called Laura with that moniker.

Meanwhile, Roberta sat on the porch and played with Jimmy and Johnny's toys. The twin toddlers enjoyed being teased and ragged by her, who loved to act like an older brother. Roberta kept also looking at the farm's gate, anxiously waiting for Laura to return.

She was waiting to annoy her rivalled sister that she was the first to reach home. That was a sport, which she competed with Laura because she had no interest of her own to participate in any of the physical activities in school — as she was mildly obese, and she tired herself out fast.

The only time, she ran in recent months was the day the school bus came late to pick the kids up. It was the day she had walked twenty yards from their front gate to the farmhouse when she noticed Laura was coming behind on her mountain-bike — Roberta started to dash to be the first to reach the porch, with the laughing Laura chasing her rotund sister.

The nine-year-old tomboy then slipped and fell flat — scraped both her knees and elbows. She even later lied to her mother that Laura pushed her from behind — but Martha knew well of her canard of lies...

Martha then had chided, that 'plump' girls should not run because they were unstable on their feet — Roberta hated that remark — it was just as badgering as when her mother sometimes called her 'slow' — in all her chores, studies and thinking — but, those days had long been forgotten — ever since Roberta had kept her record clean, by being the first to reach the porch every day after school — she had just wanted to prove to her mother that she was not slow in everything.

Roberta tore the middle section of her notebook and folded up two small paper boats. Seconds before the rain turned heavy, Martha managed to rush towards the porch. She was greeted with the sight of her twins sailing the boats on a puddle by the wooden steps, as the older sister tried to sink them with her slingshots. Lightning accompanied by thunder roared in the distance — yet Laura still hasn't returned.

Soon more approaching thunderclaps were heard — and Martha was concerned about Laura.

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"Robbie! Get those two in the house!" ordered the concerned mother. The girl looked back at her...

"But Laura's not back yet..." she quickly replied.

As much as Roberta wanted to point out that the eldest one had wandered off with her two friends after school, but she knew that her mother would not buy that. She hated Haley Eastman especially — who pulled her ear that morning when she rebelled and was disrespectful to Laura at school.

She was still waiting for the day for Laura to be lambasted at home for doing something blameworthy — but that day had never seemed to exist.

*

Laura limped and pushed her broken lurching bike in the heavy downpour, near her father's corn farm. She looked up at the lone figure on a tractor in the fields — Herbert wore a poncho and was working hard turning the earth in the rain.

The ablution had the dirt on her body washed away, but blood was still dribbling in diluted maroon from her cuts on her knee. She did not want to bother her father about her fall — nor say anything about the plane she saw earlier.

She just wanted to go home to her mother.

Laura then remembered something she kept in her pocket...

Her fingers ran in, and gently took out the baby Robin that had died — probably, crushed from Laura falling into the ditch — she felt instant morose — and she stopped to bury it on the muddy soil nearby, before limping back home.

Roberta was minding the ebullient twins, who were using long twigs to tow their paper boats in the puddles from the porch steps. She glanced up and saw her sister coming towards the main gate...

"Mum, look, it is Laura!"

Martha dropped the clothes that she was folding in a basket inside the house, and she came out fast to the porch. She saw her disorientated daughter pushing her broken bike in the heavy rain.

Martha was nonplussed when she ran out towards Laura — while Roberta held back her screaming brothers, stopping them from following their mother in the teeming downpour.

Laura's eyes noticed her mother rushing over to her. She dropped the bike down when she heard her mother's dulcet, concerned voice calling...

"Mimi! Mimi, what happened to you? Did you fall?"

Overwhelmed and shaken, Laura grabbed onto her and started to cry for duple reasons — like the terrifying plane encounter, and to the demise of the baby Robin. She hugged her tightly for a while, and Martha stroked her daughter's quivering head to solace her.

Roberta observed the two of them drenched in the rain from the porch. She now bitterly detested them both on the vindication that when she fell, her unfair mother nagged at her — but, when Laura hurt herself, she got a big hug instead...

She deliberately released her repulsive grips in both hands — the two small boys ran out into the rain towards their mother and eldest sister — while Roberta stood dry alone on the porch, watching her abstruse family from afar.