“It’s a little bit funny,” my mom says. “Prison, actually,” she adds. She’s full-on laughing, and so is Hudson, and while normally the two of them laughing together would be a happy thing—the stepmonster and her stepson, finally bonding—today, the rest of us watch in horror.

“It’s not funny. Not even a little bit funny. Any of it,” Isla says, and she marches right up to Hudson and gets in his face. So much for not being angry and addiction being like cancer. She’s practically spitting. “You almost died. You know how scared we were? This needs to stop. Why can’t you stop?”

I think, not for the first time, that we’ve broken my sister. That if I could, I’d swap her out, send her off to a better family, one that wouldn’t test her so often. At the dinner table, instead of talking prison strategies, they could discuss molecular biology and the work of Anaïs Nin.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m okay,” Hudson says, still wearing that goofy smile, like we’re overreacting, though I catch a thread of nervousness. I don’t know if he’s worried about Isla or pondering the fact that he almost died or if he’s doing calculations in his head about how quickly he can get out of this hospital and get his next fix.

For the first time, my anger mutates into compassion. I know what it’s like to be your own worst enemy, to have inflicted your own deepest cuts, to let the easy way always win. To have dug yourself a hole so deep you wonder if you’ll ever crawl out.

Maybe my brother and I have more in common than I realized.

“It honestly wasn’t all that bad. They didn’t even need to take me to the hospital. This was a precaution,” he says carefully, like he’s testing out a line.

“You need to stop,” Isla says again, though even as the words are coming out, I can see she knows they’re pointless. She’s too smart to think she can reason Hudson into getting clean. We’ve all met with enough family therapists over the years to know at least that much. “Just stop.”

My dad puts his hand on her shoulder and pulls her to him. He kisses the top of her head, then quickly wipes his eyes in hopes that the rest of us won’t see him crying.

I think about all the things money can and cannot buy. A spot at SCC, but not a moral compass. Health care and rehab, but not immunity from our worst impulses. Fluency in Mandarin, but not the ability to talk honestly.

Privilege and large heaping chunks of the world, but not confidence. Or self-reflection.