[Write or about “that letter you would never send”] Writing was hard with her right hand in the cast, but she managed to wedge the pen just so and got enough movement out of her fingers to make things that looked like letters. Dear Sama. Why the bloody hell aren’t you here now? You’re my little sister. I’m the one who’s supposed to leave first. She crumpled the letter and threw it. It bounced unsatisfyingly off of the wall and landed among her schoolbooks. What are you supposed to write to a sibling who’s got her own problems to deal with, and who really shouldn’t have stayed at home as long as she did? Glad you got out kiddo. Life went to hell in a handbasket when you left. Maybe you were what was holding us all together. Maybe we were what was tearing you apart. She shredded that paper into little pieces and threw those. They didn’t fly satisfyingly, but the flutter of destruction was at least a little more immediate than the dull thud of a ball of paper against the wall. Both beat trying to write with a cast. The door slammed, and Dick poked his head into the room. “Think we need a new carpet, do ye?” She crumpled her last sheet of paper, still blank, and threw it at his head. It bounced off his ear and rolled across the floor. He picked it up and tossed it back. “I think ye dropped this.” Meera couldn’t help smiling. His accent always came out thickest when he was playful. She threw it at his head again. “No, really, I had it where I wanted it.” “Is that soe?” ------------ “I think you need to see this. Here, put this on” He grabbed his bathrobe, ratty and oversized, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She wiggled her good arm through the hole, then managed to drop the sheet she’d wrapped around herself. She turned her head away from him and clutched at the fabric of the robe, not quite able to make it close around her without help. Dick deftly swung the loose half closed, and she mumbled “Thank you.” and turned out of the bed, the purple cast sticking awkwardly out from under the huge bathrobe, with one of its arms hanging limp and empty. “Your uncle is a real piece of work, you know that?” “You don’t say.” “No, really. Look outside.” He gestured through the tiny window that overlooked the rutted driveway. The crate of her things still stood in the mud where it’d been dropped. “It’s a crate.” “Your uncle had some chavs drop it off this morning. Pushed it right out of the truck into the mud, like a body in a mob film.” Meera tore out of the cottage and lifted the lid before Dick could say more. The look on her face could only be described as a mixture of relief and horror.