AN: I hate plot holes. So when I logged in yesterday morning to upload my next chapter, June, I realized that I had skipped something important. So here is May, enjoy :)

Please read and review.

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds nor I own the information on Celtic colours/symbols.

An older sister is a friend and defender - a listener, conspirator, a counselor and a sharer of delights. And sorrows too.
- Pam Brown

May 2005

Spence and I were right: I cannot finish all of my grade twelve classes in time to graduate this June. I will have four classes left, one semester. Jen has found me a new school to start at in September but for now, I'm doing all my courses by correspondence. If I'm lucky, I can continue to be 'home schooled' this summer and then I can take two summer class exams. This means that I will have only two classes to take in the fall and I can do some pre-university courses and have early admittance to University. Spence was telling me that some of the high schools and universities here let you do that. I think it's really neat.

Right now Jen and I are driving up to Valencia for Memorial Day weekend. We're going to see mama and daddy and Jessie's graves. I am grateful that Jen said we could stay in a hotel. I don't want to stay with Aunt Charlotte and Tanya. My custody hearing won't be until August. I hope Jen doesn't have a case then. I'm pretty sure Aaron would let her take a few days off if necessary. Still, it would look really bad if she didn't show up to court, even if she is in the FBI.

We're almost a month late for visiting. Jen and I wanted to be here for the May 1st weekend but the team had a case. I waited until Penelope was asleep and then I lit the three white candles on my own: one candle for Jessie, one candle for Jenny and one candle for me. Jen even let me use the three candlesticks she made for Jessie. I also lit two red candles for our parents; red is the Celtic colour of death.

I am quite sure that Jen did the same thing, three candles for three sisters and a pair for our parents. I'm also sure that Jenny has been lighting candles for our parents every night since they died. I think it reminds her of losing Jessie. The sister I never knew because I am her replacement.

I am beginning to think that maybe I never really knew my parents very well; Jenny knew them before they were broken. It's hard not to be a little jealous. Logically, I can't be angry with Jessie for breaking them with her suicide, but I am, just a little bit. I wonder what life would have been like if Jessie had lived, I would have been the youngest of three and my parents would not have been devastated by Jessie's death. I think it might have been an idyllic life, but that is not what happened.

Jessie committed suicide a week before her sixteenth birthday, the day after Jen's eleventh birthday. She broke my parents and she almost broke Jen. I am angry with her, it is irrational, but it is what I feel right now and Jen is always telling me that feeling something is never wrong, as long as you don't act on your feelings. You're not supposed to let them cloud your mind, your logic.

I also blame my parents, not for the car crash, not dying, that wasn't their fault. I blame them for my existence. I blame them for creating me so that they could heal. I was supposed to be perfect for them; I was supposed to heal them. That was the reason for my existence. What gave them that right? When I was little, I thought it was normal for my mama to spend days in bed crying. I also thought it was normal for my daddy to lock himself away in the garage or his office. He drowned himself in his work.

Don't get me wrong, they doted on me when they were aware enough to, but Jenny raised me until I was five. She was the one who got me ready in the mornings, who read poems to me at night and made sure I could read some basic words by the time I was three. She taught me to be self-sufficient.

Jenny raised herself after Jessie died and my parents broke. She was and is an amazing soccer player, that's how she got away. She won an athletic scholarship, a full ride to the University of Pittsburg. I remember going to all of her soccer practices and games. Not because my parents were there, supporting her, but because Jenny didn't want to leave me home alone with a mother who couldn't even get out of bed to feed me lunch. Jen used to run home after school before practice and bring me back with her. The coach just considered it Jen's version of warm up laps around the soccer field that the rest of the team had to do.

The year before Jenny left for University, my mama actually stepped up. She started home schooling me. I flew through every test she gave me, this seemed to give her new life and for two years, everything was as close to perfect as it was going to get. I still went to Jenny's soccer games and practices but she didn't have to take me to her study groups. She could leave me home with mama and know that I was going to be fed.

If I'm going to blame Jessie and my parents, then I need to blame myself as well. My best friend Beth and I were kidnapped when we were seven; it irrevocably ruined any progress that my parents had gained. I did not blame Jenny then and I do not blame her now. I know that she needed to get away, to be her own person.

It's funny and sad at the same time. The person who has been hurt the most, Jenny, is undeniably blameless. She did not kill her sister, she did not break my parents and she did not kidnap me. She was the innocent in all of this, and yet, I think that everything that has happened hit her the hardest. She lost her parents the same day she lost Jessie. Then I came along, a replacement to her beloved big sister, it must have been devastating. If I didn't know her so well, I would think it was surprising that she didn't torture me when I was little.

The drive takes seven hours instead of the expected six. I only have one major panic attack. I know that Jen is trying to stay as far away from trucks as possible but sometimes it just isn't possible. I wish Spence could have come with us; I am always calmer with both him and Jen in the car. He is visiting his mum in Las Vegas this weekend; he hasn't seen her in months.

When we arrive we lite the candles at the graves. Mama and a daddy have a weeping willow and three tiny animals on their shared gravestone. It seems oddly fitting for them to have a bird, a butterfly and a cat. Jenny is the butterfly and I am the cat. I doubt Aunt Charlotte would have thought to add them it must have been Jen. I just don't know when she would have had the time. Our parents are buried next to our sister. The bird on my parent's gravestone is identical to the one on Jessie's.