Tears streamed down Emily’s face as she hung up the phone.  Minutes before she was looking forward to shopping with her boyfriend and going out for a nice dinner.  She was so excited and felt the day out together could only strengthen the relationship.  He had different plans for them.

Emily sobbed as she sat on the toilet pulling the tissue from the roll.  She was so sad that her boyfriend of seven wonderful and dreamlike months had broken up with her.  She was suddenly devastated.  She loved him so much in such a short time.  They shared a connection that only happens once in every one thousand relationships.  The connection stemmed from their compatibility.  They shared so many favorites.  They both loved penguins and Scrabble.  Emily remembered one night they had both combined their letter tiles to beat his mom, the ultimate Scrabble champion.  They dug through the bag to gain a Q and a Z so they could spell the word quiz.  They lost but had the greatest time. 

She was blown away by how much she was hurt and could not control her sobbing.  Nothing would ever make her feel as whole as being with Abram, she thought to herself.  She sobbed away uncontrollably until she heard a light knock on the door.  Her little sister opened the door and walked in. 

Gretta was a little four year old girl with tight curls and chubby cheeks.  She carried a small blue blanket that Emily had knit her when she found out her mother was pregnant.  Gretta looked at Emily with a look of concern.

“What wron’?”  She asked with an exaggerated smile on her face, that no doubt she had learned from Emily.

Emily continued to cry.  She looked into her sister’s huge blue eyes that were twinkling with concern and wondered how she would explain such an adult complication to a small innocent child.  “Sometimes…”  Emily paused and was at a loss for words and could not help but find her sister’s innocent look a small bit humorous.  “You can’t fix people’s hearts when they are broken.”  Emily continued to cry as she moved into her room and made room for her sister to use the bathroom.  She walked past her mother who was busy creating a sign.  She created signs for new businesses and had recently taken on a large project for a small European town who wanted very old business signs restored so they could be hung in the town’s historical society museum.  The sign she was restoring read “Guilford Funeral Home” with a subtext slogan reading, “People die for our services.”

Emily went off to her bed, soaking the pillow with her tears.  As she drifted off to sleep she remembered one night lying in Abram’s bed and listening to the rain.  She was in heaven listening to his heartbeat and the rain creating a romantic harmony together.  It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.  Suddenly she felt a hard ache in her heart.  She slipped off into a sweet deep sleep, thanking God she didn’t have to go into school tomorrow and face him.