Page Turning Books

Three Weeks Earlier
November 3
It was time to let go and move on.
Late Saturday afternoon, Charlie stood over three tombstones, holding three bunches of red tulips in her hand at St. Lucas Cemetery. Several months passed since Charlie lost her family, and this was the first time she visited her family's gravesite since the funeral. It was tough going there knowing what her family had suffered. Within a matter of days of each other, she lost her mother, father and only sibling. Charlie believed it would destroy her. And it almost did. Her sleep patterns were thrown into a flux. She wasn't painting as much as she used to, and she closed herself off to everyone but a select few. Every day she walked around with a dark ghost that hovered over her, reminding her of ruin and just how risky life was.
After the tragedy, she distanced herself from work and sought counseling from her psychologist. Since then, things improved some, but not much. She returned to work, returned to her art class, and even met a few new friends. But still she was immobilized from moving past her anguish, which haunted her.
After she brushed aside the colorful dead leaves from her family's adjacent tombstones, her eyes panned over to the words, Sandy Weiss and Terri Weiss. Gently she laid the tulips on her mother and sister's tombstones, but she could not bring herself to place anything on her father's grave. Her eyes locked in with his name. Maxwell Weiss.
How could someone she loved so much have brought her so much pain? But he did. She hesitated, pushed her animosity aside, and then laid the flowers on his grave. Already having forgiven him, now was not the time to rehash old resentments. The tombstones brought back useless memories, memories that chartered her to an ugly place of despair, a place she had gone many times before. She loved her parents like any normal person would, but she was most affected by the death of her sister, Sandy. Charlie was only a few years younger than her sister, and they looked almost exactly alike, except for the difference in hair color.
Her sister was a redhead.