A/N: Trigger warnings for loss of a loved one to suicide
November 15, 1955
Ettie looked at the casket. Black against the green grass and blue skies of San Francisco, she watched as the cemetery workers lowered it into the black hole that would swallow it forever. She gripped her mother's hand. Tears sprung into her eyes.
She hated crying. Mom could cry and still look beautiful. Ettie had never been able to learn how to do that. Where her mom had brilliant blue eyes framed by rosy cheeks, Ettie had brown ones like her father. She'd seen pictures from when she was a baby; Ettie missed the dark blue ones she'd been born with.
Even though she knew having blue eyes wouldn't make her crying any prettier, sometimes she liked the blame it on having brown eyes.
Aunt Blanche had always corrected her. But now Aunt Blanche was gone.
She'd heard Uncle Harry and her dad talking. Aunt Blanche had killed herself. Mom had been in the house at the time. Mom had found her.
They'd not let Ettie see Aunt Blanche until the wake. Noelle didn't understand. She was too little. Aunt Kitty and Uncle Harry had flown out to San Francisco to help, and so Noe spent most of her time with little Diana. But Ettie had no interest in staying with Kevin. Like most boys their age, he was rude.
Ettie wasn't stupid. She was the smartest one in her class, the best behaved. She had plans. Big plans. She was going to attend Yale like Dad. Never mind that Yale didn't let girls go there. She would change that.
Ettie wasn't stupid, so she could tell how sad Mom and Dad were. Of course they were sad. But Mom hadn't eaten much since they'd found Aunt Blanche a couple of weeks ago, and she kept smoking all the time. Dad had been drinking.
When Uncle Harry and Aunt Kitty had shown up, Ettie had been able to breathe again. She liked them. But she didn't want them to see her crying herself to sleep at night knowing that Aunt Blanche was gone.
But as much as it hurt that Aunt Blanche was gone, what hurt more was knowing that she'd been sad enough to end her own life. They'd not been enough. Ettie hadn't been enough.
Dad said it wasn't their fault. So did Mom, but Ettie wasn't so sure either of her parents believed that. Ettie couldn't.
The black hole swallowed the casket. They moved closer, Ettie not ready to let go of the rose in her hand that they'd been given to drop in the hole with the casket. She didn't want to say goodbye.
She couldn't say goodbye.
Ettie couldn't stop her tears. Not as she watched her Dad help Noe drop her flower. Not as Dad dropped his. Not as it came to her mom. And not as she took her spot at the edge of the hole that held her favorite person in the whole world.
She couldn't say goodbye.
She didn't want to.
Tears blurred her vision until the black hole and the black box became one gaping void of emptiness. She couldn't say it. So she decided not to.
Instead, Ettie scrunched her face and willed away the tears. She straightened herself in the dress as black as the void below her. She held out the rose.
Ettie dropped it. But she didn't say goodbye. She wouldn't say goodbye. Instead, she closed her eyes and made a wish, like the ones she always made on her birthday cake. But this time the wish formed a promise.
Ettie would go to Yale.
She would graduate at the top of her class.
She would be a good person.
But above all, Ettie was going to find out why Aunt Blanche had killed herself, to make sure no one ever felt the need to do the same.