A year ago this week, they came to her house, and spent the afternoon playing. Just as they were leaving, she remembers, Violet turned to her.

"She looked at me, and she said, 'We can sleep over now.'" Chiumento recalled yesterday. "And I said, 'Oh, you can?' and she said, '...because we're family.'"

Three days later, they were gone.

The sisters, aged 4 and 5, were killed when a natural gas explosion ripped through their Hopkinton home, but Chiumento still remembers that final day.

"We're family now," she said, wistfully, as she stood on the vacant lot that was once the Carey family's home.

Close to 100 friends and family members gathered at the site last night to mark the one-year anniversary of the blast, and many said the memory of the two girls are still close to their hearts.

Just thinking of the two girls, Tiffany Germain had to fight back tears.

"I say things to them all the time," said Germain, the girls' aunt. "I just basically tell them they taught me love. They taught me how to love somebody else more than myself."

It was a year ago yesterday that an early morning explosion tore through the three-apartment building at 65 Main St., collapsing all three floors, and blowing out the windows of nearby buildings.

Rescue workers were able to quickly pull Tara and Heath Carey from the rubble, but their daughters, Violet and Iris, would not survive. The two other families that lived in the building were not seriously injured.

Investigators would later pull pipes, fittings and meters from the wreckage of the building in the search for a cause, but the probe has moved agonizingly slowly.

Though most testing has focused on a "transition fitting," a pipe fitting which connects the gas line from the street to the house's gas system, testing on the material has only recently finished.

A report on the cause should be published by the end of this month, state officials say.

Though the slow search for a cause to the blast has been frustrating, Tara and Heath Carey last night said they wanted to mark the anniversary in their daughters' memories.

"Just being here now, it's so (hard)," Tara Carey said. "It's just reliving everything we did here. This was our home.

"I think the whole year has been difficult," she continued. "We've been grieving this whole year, and that's never going to end."

"You just remember where we were at this point last year, and where we are now," Heath added. "It's pretty difficult."

Most who attended last night's candlelight vigil said the event was a chance to celebrate the lives of two girls who touched many people.

"I think it's a way to remember them," said Aime Johnson, who came from Milford with her father. "But I think it also makes you realize how precious life is and how precious children are."

Earlier in the day, family members held an emotional private blessing of the girls' headstone, during which Tara and Heath Carey thanked family and friends for their support.

Following the blessing, the family released butterflies over the grave, and let a pair of pink balloons drift into the sky.

"Violet and Iris are our whole world. They always were and always will be," Heath said. "We love you Violet and Iris, and we love all of you here."

Jamie Wozniak, 8, her sister Dana, 10, and their mother Trish,
attended the candlelight vigil for the Carey sisters. (Photo by Milton Amador)

Violet Carey

Iris Carey