Three Quarters.

Grier Van Canne hasn’t been whole for a while.

Her eldest sister, Verity, finds her in her room one morning, trying to write a diary entry with her left hand.  Grier’s fingers tremble as they cling to the pen, and the book below her gradually begins to slide away on the desktop.  

“You’re still getting better at it,” Verity tells her from the doorway.  

Grier shrugs.  “You learn to write when you’re a kid, and fifteen years later you’ve got to learn all over again.  It’ll take another fifteen to get it perfect.”

She shrugs once more, the stump of her right arm flailing with the motion.  The doctors amputated it above the elbow, so Grier is without around seventy-five percent of her limb.  Verity still has trouble with prolonged staring, though keeping her legs moving keeps her eyes from being fixed on the stump for too long.

Please.

Verity spots Shane's backpack at the bottom of the stairs on her way down; he must have just returned from school.  In the kitchen, the third Van Canne child (and only son) is flipping through the business section of the day’s newspaper.  

“I thought I heard something moving up there,” he says to his older sister.  She opens the fridge with no want or need in mind, but ends up reaching for a bottle of spring water.  “You the only one home?”

“Grier is up there in her room.”

“Doing what?” he asks, an expression of perplexity stretching across his face.  There are only so many things she can do, after all.

Verity shrugs.  “Writing in her diary.”

“I didn’t know she could write.”

“With her right hand?  Not since the accident.  She’s teaching herself with the left.”  Verity slurps a mouthful of cool water down her throat.  “You’d think that you don’t live here.”

“It’s not something I like to admit,” he says, adding a forced smile.

Verity has no desire to be around him any longer, though also doesn’t want to trek back upstairs to watch Grier struggle with a pen.  The living room will be the only safe haven until Mrs. Van Canne comes home from the firm, wielding what might as well be an iron briefcase and an unquenchable thirst for dry vermouth.  

The white leather couch squeaks under her weight, but the seat offers the best view of the window, and in turn, the best view of the street.

Please don’t.

A few small children are parked at the end of a cobblestone driveway across the street, throwing marbles and jacks back and forth to each other between fits of giggling.

Please don’t hurt me.

A year before, a few grown children sit at the end of their own driveway smoking cigarettes together to celebrate Angeline’s admittance to medical school.  Grier is the youngest, then a few weeks past her eighteenth birthday, but Mrs. Van Canne will have a fit if she catches a trace of nicotine in the house, despite her children's legality (funny, as the kids can't say a word about how soaked in vodka some of the carpet is).  It doesn't matter how old any of them were when a white van turns onto their street.

Please don’t hurt me anymore.

Verity’s eyes move from the street to a side table nearby, to the pictures, before a loud noise from the kitchen sends a chill down her spine.  She arches her back to see into the kitchen, where Shane is cutting into a slab of meat with a cleaver, preparing his dinner.

Whack.

Leave.

Whack.

Leave me.

Whack.

Leave me alone.

Verity will dream of knives, blood and begs for salvation until the day she too feels a limb or her head underneath the wheel of a vehicle.  She will insist she's moved on as well as Shane, and eventually to the extent that Grier will achieve, but she will never be fine.  She will never forgive herself for events that took place long ago.  After all, if she hadn't gotten involved with the man in the white van, a quarter of the Van Canne siblings would still be with us, and the favourite would still be able to write about what she believes was an accident without the blank page sliding across the desk.  

Verity Van Canne hasn't been whole for a while.