There was a long pause on our end. I assumed my father had launched into a righteous lecture about the rudeness of the late night phone call. He was a busy man, probably due in court early the next morning, and he did not put up with such thoughtlessness from people.
If I had called, the lecture would have been the same.
"Yes, I did say I was calling about Sienna," Ms. Alice said.
And that was the difference. When it registered the phone call was about my sister, my father changed completely. I could almost hear him politely giving my advisor leave to speak, even though she stood a few feet away from me.
"There is no easy way to tell you this, but there has been an accident and Sienna Thomas is dead," Ms. Alice said. She looked as if she had fumbled a live hand grenade. "No, you're right, I should be more specific. Your daughter was found in her dorm room bathtub. She had cut her wrists. She was pronounced dead at the scene."
My father was a lawyer and must have switched into default mode because Ms. Alice spent the next 10 minutes giving short, factual answers to his questions.
Finally, she cleared her throat. "Sir, I have your other daughter here. Wouldn't you like to speak with her?" Ms. Alice did not wait, she just handed me the phone with a barely disguised expression of relief.
He was still talking when I took the phone. "I'm going to need the name of the detective and the uniformed officers. I have her roommate's contact information somewhere."
"Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm going to have to lie to your mother until this is all cleared u
p. She can't handle news like this. We'll tell her Sienna was hurt in a car accident. I'll be there in the morning, Quinn, at 8 am sharp in your lobby," he said.
The line went dead. I dropped the phone on the floor and lay down on the couch. Darla pulled my comforter off my bed and laid it over me as I curled up in a ball.
Somehow, my body woke up at 7:30 am. On autopilot, I showered and dressed and walked downstairs to meet my father.
He was early and impatiently waiting. "Did you talk to her roommate last night?"
"No."
"But you went to her room? The detective said you were there," my father asked.
"Yes. I saw, I saw…" I stopped and clung to the mailboxes in the foyer.
My father pulled open the front door. He then grabbed my elbow and escorted me out in front of him. "We're going to the coroner's. Didn't you tell me you went there with your class? That's my girl, never flinching when there's something useful to learn."
"That was Sienna," I said.
My father scowled as he opened the car’s passenger side door for me. He scowled all the way to the county coroner's office. He wiped it away when the coroner met us at the door. The two men shook hands.
"Has the death certificate been finished?" my father asked.
"Yes, sir. My findings corroborate with the detective's conclusion. Her death has been ruled a suicide," the coroner said.
For once, all the air seemed to be sucked from my father. I noticed how he had lost weight. There was more gray in his hair. The normal command he had over any room was gone, and he followed the coroner without another word.
We stood in front of a plated glass window and stared aimlessly into a small room. White tiles reached halfway up the wall before giving over to an institutional gray color. Two orderlies pushed a gurney into the room. On the coroner's signal, one lifted back the white sheet.
There was Sienna, gray against the bleached white of the sheet. Her golden hair was combed back from her face and still damp from the medical examiner's administrations.
"Sir?" the coroner called as I swayed.
My father clamped onto my arm to steady me. "She was going to be a surgeon. She never flinched, never fainted." His eyes never left Sienna's face. "Her sister was going to follow in her footsteps, but no one could catch up to her."
"You've had a terrible shock," the coroner said to me. "Would you like to sit down?"
"You're not going to faint, are you? Surgeons don't faint," my father said.
"I'm in the nursing program."