Some traditions are meant to die. The Wayne family tradition lived too long.

?Mother, do I have to??
I remember it like it was yesterday. Sitting in the living room, the flour sack towel stretched tight over the hoop in my hands. I had stitched my way through the printed letters A, B, and C. I had pricked my finger seven times and had to undo no less than fourteen stitches.
I hated embroidering.
?Cybil, we?ve been over this. It?s a Wayne family tradition. Every woman in our family has learned this skill since? well, since as long as I can remember. Now, it?s your and Olivia?s turn.?
I scowled down at my crooked letters and uneven stitches. ?Why doesn?t Jacob have to do it??
?Because?? she sighed in exasperation. ?Because that?s just how it is. Okay? Finish two more letters and you can go outside for the day.?
I perked up at that and returned to my handiwork, stabbing the fabric with a little more force than necessary. Just five minutes later, I?d finished D and E with sloppy, crooked stitches.
I presented Mother with my sampler. She held it and sighed ? I made her sigh a lot in those days. ?Oh, Cybil. I wish you would take this seriously. Why can?t you be more like your sister, Olivia??
Olivia sat on the opposite end of the couch, her posture perfect, not a hair on her head out of place. She?d only stitched A and B, but they were perfect, every stitch done in precise alignment.
At times like those, I couldn?t help but feel the chasm between us. Despite the fact that she was only one year older than I was, she seemed so much more? accomplished. So poised and ladylike. She was the little girl my mother had always wanted.
I was clearly lacking in that department. I preferred torn knees and climbing trees to stitching. Olivia kept a collection of porcelain dolls meticulously arranged about her room. I had a collection of my own ? worms, in a makeshift box full of soil hidden under my bed.
It was easy to see who the favorite was.
It bothered me, of course. It?s hard for any child to know that they are favored so much less than their sibling. But I wasn?t willing to give up my happiness to be the perfect daughter my mother wanted. So, I abandoned my embroidery and ran out the front door to search for my older brother, Jacob, and see if he wouldn?t play catch with me.
Olivia never even looked up from her work, as though nothing but that thin line of thread was of any interest to her.

---

I never got any better at embroidery. My stubbornness won out over my mother?s instructions ? I only ever learned how to do the most basic running stitch.
Olivia, of course, mastered the art. Back stitch, blanket stitch, French knot, lazy daisy, woven wheel, and more. Nothing was beyond her grasp.
Embroidery became her world. She never showed much interest in the other things mother offered to teach her, but it didn?t matter. She?d learned the one thing that mattered. She successfully carried on the Wayne family tradition.
And then my baby sister came along.
I was eleven, Olivia was twelve, and Jacob was fourteen when Margaret was born. Suddenly, my mother?s world shifted and all that mattered to her was the baby.
I didn?t mind so much. Neither did Jacob. We were used to her ignoring us. But Olivia?
I remember the look on her face, as Mother dismissed her time and time again. I watched Olivia watching Mother fawn over the baby. The cold shock in her eyes, the tightness around her mouth. I could almost hear her thoughts screaming not good enough, not good enough, not good enough anymore.
I didn?t know how to make her feel better. The distance between us had only grown over time. She was my sister by blood, but she didn?t feel like a sister ? she was like a stranger living in the same house. It felt too strange, too uncomfortable to reach out to her, to ask her how she was faring. So, I didn?t. I took the coward?s way out. I pretended nothing had changed.
But it had. And soon, those changes became impossible to ignore.
As Mother grew even more distant, Olivia threw herself into her embroidery. Like she could gain Mother?s favor by crafting the perfect piece. Her room was overflowing with projects ? pillows and blankets and dresses. Her art grew more elaborate and involved. She went from an expert to a veritable genius ? even I could look past my jealousy and resentment and see that she was truly gifted.
Mother never even noticed.
One day, I came to Olivia?s room to tell her supper was ready, only to see her carefully-organized projects in complete disarray. She?d begun embroidering over her own designs, her bedspread, the cloth bodies of her ragdolls. If she could stick a needle in it, she was embroidering it.
?What are you doing?? I asked.
She didn?t answer. She?d never been very talkative, but after Mother?s abandonment, she hardly spoke at all.

---

By the time Margaret was one year old, Olivia had only gotten worse.
Mother hardly took notice of her still. I thought that Olivia would come to accept it, after a while, that she?d fallen out of favor.
Her room was a mess of thread, every viable surface stitched into oblivion. There wasn?t a scrap of fabric left for her to use.
It was shortly after she?d run out of room that I noticed her arms.
She was sitting out on the porch one morning, her stare listless and vacant. She didn?t notice me approaching ? if she had, she might have thought to cover the marks.
?Olivia,? I gasped when I saw her arm, ?what is that? What did you do??
Her right forearm was a mess of pinpricks, oozing blood that stained her skirt. She scratched at the marks faintly, her fingertips coming away stained red.
?I?ve been practicing,? she murmured, not bothering to look at me.
?You did that to yourself?? I asked.
?I needed to practice,? she insisted, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
A vision flashed in my head, then, of Olivia threading a needle and pushing it through her skin, fastening a satin stitch over and over and over as the blood dripped down her arm?
Before I could think of anything else to say, she stood up and went back inside.
That night, Father asked if I had noticed anything strange about Olivia. Even though he was hardly ever home, travelling most of the time for work, I was still surprised it had taken him this long to notice something was amiss.
I couldn?t look him in the eyes as I shook my head. I didn?t say a word.

---

Margaret was 18 months old when she disappeared.
Mother had woken up one morning to find that she was missing from her crib. She tore apart the house searching for the baby, screaming her name. All of us helped, even Olivia, who had shaken off her stupor enough to realize something terrible must have happened. Within the hour, the police arrived to ask questions and begin a search. They elected to find Father first ? a man should know his own child is missing, the officer said. He told us all to check the house one more time, probably just to give us something to do. After all, if she was in the house still, we?d have heard her crying.
Father came home that afternoon, escorted by the police. They questioned him and then all of our neighbors. They checked the yard for footprints. They put together a search party to comb the woods behind the house.
Us children were sent to our rooms. I could hear Mother sobbing in the living room while Father comforted her.
I sat on my bed, awake, for hours. I was certain the police would come to the house soon. They would tell us they?d found Margaret and that everything was okay. They had to.
But as the night wore on, so did my patience. My eyes began to droop. My mind began to wander. And soon I was fast asleep.

---

I woke early the next morning, as dawn was just creeping over the horizon. The house was silent as I cracked open my bedroom door.
I warred with myself for a few moments, trying to decide whether or not I should leave my bedroom to face what the day might bring.
I decided that I couldn?t stomach the thought of sitting in my room a moment longer. I crept out into the hallway, afraid of breaking the stillness of the morning.
As I passed Olivia?s door on my way to the stairs, I heard her voice, pitched low and humming a familiar tune, a lullaby Mother had sung to us as children.
Curiously, I twisted the doorknob. ?Olivia?? I called in the loudest whisper I dared, pushing the door open to see if she might come with me downstairs to wait for the rest of the family to wake up.
She looked up at me and smiled for the first time in over a year. ?Hello, Cybil,? she said.
Her face was covered in blood, and so was her nightgown. In fact, it looked like her entire bed was drenched with it. Sitting beside her was her embroidery kit, complete with needle, thread, and scissors.
She was holding something in her arms.
?Come and see,? she said, completely oblivious to my rising panic as I tried to make sense of what was in front of me.
I inched my way closer and peered into her arms.
It was so bloody that I couldn?t comprehend what I was seeing at first. Then, horror began to dawn on me as I recognized my sister?s perfect little embroidery stitches?
Stitched right into someone?s flesh.
The little body was covered in satin stitches, pulled tight through the skin. The mouth had been sewn shut ? the eyelids, too.
?Isn?t she beautiful,? cooed Olivia.
That can?t be what I think it is, I thought.
?Olivia? what have you done?!?
She shook her head and giggled a little, as though I?d said something amusing. ?It?s a gift. For Mother. Do you think she?ll like it?? she asked, peering up at me through her dark lashes.
But I only had eyes for baby Margaret. Or, at least, what was left of her.

---

The rest of the story goes a little something like this.
Olivia had taken Margaret out of her crib early in the morning the day before. She?d brought her to her room, laid her on the bed, and smothered her with a pillow.
Then, she?d taken her baby doll out of its little carriage and placed Margaret inside instead. Since Olivia had taken it upon herself to ?search? her own room, nobody noticed the difference.
That night, as our parents cried in the living room, as Jacob and I were drifting to sleep in our bedrooms, Olivia pulled out her needle and her thread and turned little Margaret into something else entirely.
Her final masterpiece.
My parents discovered what she?d done the next morning when my screams woke up the entire house.
I wish I?d had the presence of mind to wake my father, to tell him what Olivia had done. To spare Jacob and mother from seeing it with their own eyes. But I didn?t. And they suffered the worst shock of their lives.
My mother never recovered from it. She was hysterical, clutching Margaret?s body to her chest, screaming like some kind of wild beast. She was hospitalized and sedated after the police arrived to take Olivia away. She didn?t make it another week ? her heart gave out just a few days later.
My mother died of a broken heart.
Father couldn?t bear the sight of us children after losing Margaret, Olivia, and Mother. He sent Jacob and me away to live with our grandparents, people we?d hardly ever spoken to and who treated us as strangers intruding in their home. I?m not sure when my father died ? three, maybe four years after the murder. Nobody would tell Jacob and me what happened. Knowing my father, I suppose he drank himself to death.
Jacob joined the military as soon as he was old enough. He promised me he would come back, that we would stick together as the only two left of our tragic little family.
He died overseas just two months after leaving.
I left my grandparents when I was of age and became a secretary. There weren?t many options for women back then, but I was good at typing, and that was enough. I lived on my own for many, many years until I met my husband.
We chose never to have children. It was the only way I could live the rest of my days in peace.
But what of Olivia?
Olivia lived out her days in an institution. She received no visitors ? at least, none that I know of. I haven?t spoken to her since the day I discovered she?d murdered our sister. I?ve been in contact with some of the nurses and doctors, but only by necessity.
I know very little about how she spent the rest of her life. I don?t know if they ever let her touch a needle and thread again, although I imagine not. I don?t know if she came to regret what she did, if she really understood what she was doing at the time. If she was born rotten, or if it was something that happened over time.
I could find these answers, if I wanted to. Because, you see, ever since my grandparents died and the burden of maintaining contact with Olivia?s doctors fell onto me, I?ve been receiving letters. Once a year, always dated on the anniversary of Margaret?s murder, Olivia?s letters arrive at my door.
I?ve never read a single one.
This is the first year that I haven?t received a letter. That was how I knew she was dead, even before the doctors called to notify me.
When they called, I told them politely ? but firmly ? that they could burn her and dispose of the ashes as they wished, and I never wanted to hear another word on the matter.
Then, I opened the box I kept under my bed, the box with all the unopened letters I?d received over the years.
I took them outside.
And I burned them.
I?m an old woman, now. The last surviving member of both my mother?s and my father?s families. I haven?t much time left to live, I?m sure, but I can?t find it in myself to mind much.
As long as I know that that damned Wayne family tradition dies with me, I?ll be able to rest in peace.


Source.